This Week In Retro: Half-Life (Patreon)

November 19, 1998: Why I can't forget about Freeman

by Diamond Feit

I know this may sound ridiculous, but I believe every video game tells a story. Yes, every video game. Always has, always will. Even when a game lacks traditional narrative elements like plot and characters, the moment a player presses start, they will begin to construct a tale of their very own.

Naturally, the ways in which different games tell their stories varies greatly from genre to genre and title to title. The simplest cases revolve around the thrill of victory versus the agony of defeat. A 100-hour RPG containing enough text to fill an epic novel, on the other hand, can deliver a yarn featuring a massive cast that traverses faith, politics, romance, philosophy, or any number of other topics.

The humble first-person shooter lies somewhere in-between these two extremes, for while it can use narration and dialogue to communicate ideas directly to the player, the gun that permanently rests in their on-screen avatar's floating hands will limit their potential responses. If my only in-game options as a player are "fire pistol" or "fire rocket launcher," actions such as conducting a press conference or attending couples therapy will prove extremely difficult.

25 years ago, the genre received a major shot in the arm with the debut of a new kind of first-person shooter. So-called DOOM-clones had flooded the market, each offering new weapons or monsters but all delivering a very similar experience to id Software's 1993 hit. Yet the arrival of Valve's Half-Life not only sounded the death knell for that reductive genre descriptor, but it would codify video game storytelling techniques for generations to come.

Half-Life invites players into the shoes of 27-year-old Ph.D. recipient Gordon Freeman, a dutiful employee of the Black Mesa Research Facility. From its earliest moments, we see one element that makes Half-Life such a startling experience, as the game opens with Gordon riding an underground rail system to work. Absolutely nothing of consequence takes place during this five-minute-long time period—which doubles as an opening credits sequence—but the player remains in full control of Gordon regardless. This accomplishes two things at once: First, it lets the player adjust to moving around as Gordon inside the tram without any threat of injury. Second, it introduces the player to the world of Black Mesa, a massive facility full of high-tech equipment, advanced robotics, military hardware, and hazardous waste.

Video games of this era tended to introduce their stories with lengthy lore dumps at the very start, usually with a long scrawl of text or a few paragraphs written inside the paper manual included alongside the software. As hardware technology advanced throughout the 1990s, dramatic cutscenes showing the protagonist leap into action or get into trouble became increasingly common. Either way, players would spend their initial moments reading or listening to the story while their controller or keyboard sat idle in their hands.

Half-Life rejects this practice wholesale by insisting players maintain their agency as Gordon throughout the game. Once the tram arrives, Gordon must disembark onto a walkway, pass through a heavy security door, then find his way to the locker room so he can don his custom environmental suit before beginning today's big experiment. The player controls every step of this process, free to take their time or blaze ahead at full speed, advancing the story at their own pace.

Gordon accomplishes all these tasks while a variety of computer-controlled characters mill about Black Mesa, all with their own routines. Some will deliver important info to Gordon as he approaches, others will chide him for running late. The security guards come across as friendly, offering to buy Gordon a beer once the day ends. The scientists on duty, all older men, are much more curt, insisting that Gordon hurry along to the test chamber so they can start collecting data. Again, the player may pester these people relentlessly or ignore them and get right down to business; the choice lies entirely in their hands.

With all necessary preparations complete, Gordon enters the test chamber of the Anomalous Materials Lab to introduce today's sample into the anti-mass spectrometer. Inside the silo-sized space, Gordon starts the rotors to begin the boot-up process, waits for the power to reach maximum levels, then pushes the sample into the beam to begin the experiment proper. Things go wrong immediately but the scientists manning the control booth fail to shut down the power before disaster strikes.

Waking up to discover the test chamber in ruins and alarms ringing in his ears, Gordon has no choice but to escape and make his way back to the surface in hopes of calling for help. This segment where he backtracks through the same hallways he took on his way down to the lab is not only a savvy re-use of existing environments, but it also adds to the illusion that Gordon is trapped in a real space. Having seen a "normal" morning at Black Mesa only underlines the destructive power of the accident—known as a Resonance Cascade—in the eyes of the player, since all the dead bodies scattered across the floor were up and about just minutes earlier.

At this point Gordon must also fight for his life as hostile alien creatures have begun teleporting into Black Mesa. The initial foes are small, simple creatures who rush Gordon at first sight, easily dispatched with the crowbar he grabs on his way up. He soon faces larger beasts capable of attacking him from long range, though none more dangerous than other humans which Gordon learns firsthand when the marines arrive. Rather than perform a rescue operation, the soldiers seek to cleanse Black Mesa of all traces of the experiment—including witnesses. Gordon spends the rest of the game bouncing between two opposing forces as he fends off extraterrestrials one moment and the combined might of the U.S. military the next.

I first saw Half-Life in 1999 on a coworker's home computer. I remember the day well because we had met with the express purpose of showing each other video games; I brought my NEO•GEO over with The King of Fighters '98 and Metal Slug X while he prepped his PC with a slate of new releases. I'm sure he had a good time mowing down an army of exquisitely animated faux-Nazis, but my jaw hit the floor when I witnessed what Valve had created.

Even though I had spent an uncountable number of hours engaging with 3D software on PlayStation, Saturn, and the Nintendo 64, Half-Life's presentation and sense of immersion were unmatched. The game resembled DOOM in the broadest possible sense but it felt completely different. By year's end I bought my first gaming-quality PC, making sure to pick up my own copy of Half-Life before the boxes arrived from Dell. When I showed my friends the game—the same friends who had devoted so many nights alongside me playing Resident Evil and GoldenEye 007—they came away just as shocked.

A decade or so later, after I joined Valve's Steam service, I looked through my CD collection and discovered I still had my copy of Half-Life. Years of graphical advancement had not diminished its impact in the slightest; rather, I found myself impressed by how familiar Half-Life felt in comparison to more modern titles. Memories of BioShock and Batman: Arkham Asylum were fresh in my head at the time, both of which have their own version of the Black Mesa tram ride sequence to start the game.

Jump ahead to today and Gordon Freeman's adventures remain as relevant as ever. The first-person shooter genre has expanded and even splintered into multiple sub-genres at this point. Big-budget releases tend to lean towards realism, restricting the amount of weapons and ammo players can carry, unlike Doomguy or Gordon who can lug around entire arsenals in their pockets. However, many modern games will sell the utter spectacle of their setting with elaborately scripted action set pieces that bring to mind encounters seen in Valve's 1998 classic.

Meanwhile, smaller "boomer shooters" aping back to 90s hits like DOOM and Quake will likewise include nods to Gordon Freeman; I've lost count of the number of games that had me exploring underground corridors with a crowbar in my hands. A 2022 release called ADACA, described by its solo developer as an "old school FPS experience," has so much in common with Half-Life that fans call it a Half-like.

Considering that Half-Life arrived during a time when print magazines regularly applied the term DOOM-clone to any first-person shooter, I find it ironic that I struggle to think of other games that could qualify as a Half-like. The design decisions Valve made 25 years ago have spread far and wide such that a list of similar games would simply read like a greatest hits collection of the 21st century. A 2013 IGN ranking of the greatest first-person shooters listed Half-Life at the top, noting that the history of the genre "breaks down pretty cleanly into pre-Half-Life and post-Half-Life eras." PC Zone magazine named Half-Life the Game of the Millennium, an honor that sounds hyperbolic given that the medium only began a few decades ago but one that only seems more appropriate as more time passes.

Alongside the release of Half-Life 2, Valve remade the original game in their then-new Source engine in 2004, improving various physics and particle effects but otherwise featuring identical content. Later, the company authorized a third-party remake called Black Mesa which overhauls the visuals and makes several changes to the levels. All of these versions coexist on the Steam store and while I can certainly see the arguments for the upgraded experiences, I find the first Half-Life just as compelling today as I did decades ago.

I say this even though I personally cannot call Half-Life my favorite game—it's not even my favorite game of 1998—yet it has a timeless quality that few others can match. In my eyes, remodeling the Black Mesa Research Facility is akin to redesigning EPCOT Center; updating what was once futuristic to better match current expectations strikes me as a fool's errand. The story of Half-Life is utter science-fiction that gains nothing from any attempts to make its environments or characters appear more "real." I don't care that all the scientists have the same voice or that the game's final chapters blend together once Gordon leaves Earth for a bizarre outing on the aliens' homeworld. I'd rather enjoy the journey as-is than attempt to recapture the magic with higher resolution textures and millions of new polygons.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.