Half-Life - A Legacy In Gaming

I knew it would end like this. . .

Introduction - Time Lost:

Rise and shine, Mister Freeman. Rise and... shine. Not that I... wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job. No one is more deserving of a rest, and all the effort in the world would have gone to waste until... well, let's just say your hour has... come again.

The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So, wake up, Mister Freeman. Wake up and... smell the ashes...

When I first played Half-Life I was much younger than I am now, not necessarily in terms of age but also when it comes to maturity. As kids, we often have a disregard for the deliberate design of the things that adults produce, yet I'm sure that despite that they've been able to make an impact in some way or another. Yet today, on my birthday no less, I look back on my own first exposure to this series.

Of course, I never really cares about the story or the intricate layering and construction of the world. In fact, my first exposure to the game was through GoldSrc's Counter-Strike 1.6 and later Source's Gmod 9. When i did get to Half-Life, the trend and I did what any other kid would do when they learned of the infamous console command 'sv_cheats 1'.

Yes, I used cheat codes. As a 10-something-year-old, I enjoyed being the harbinger of death with God Mode, 'impulse 101', no-clip, among others. Which is fair, I guess, as a kid I never really cared about the stories each game had. I still cringe whenever my vain criticism of But John is the only Spartan!" for Halo: Reach resounds in my head.

However, its been about a decade since then, and now as a 20-year-old man, I can see this franchise with a newfound sense of maturity. Now that I am finally able to put my hands on this game after a long time, I can finally say, deep from my heart, that I love every second of the experience Valve Software has created. In a way, that is the beauty of revisiting older titles, because as we mature so does our perception of the medium we enjoy. While it may be sad to let go of experiences we once held dear as we find out they are more shallow than we remember, its also truly satisfying to go back to something and realize that its not only as good as we remember, but much better than that because of the things we can see only with age.

Yet, even the things we love must come to an end, which is the case with this great franchise neglected by its creator. Even without the highly sought after third installment and with the somewhat recent release of Marc Laidlaw's Epistle 3, I think we have enough closure to truly examine this franchise as it starts and also as it ends.

Well then, it seems my time has come again to wake up and write a new article, this time the very anticipated Half-life topic I had been working on for four months or something now. And here I am, waking up to smell the ashes on December 29th, 2017.

I hope everyone enjoys this one, it took me long enough.

Here's a gift I found a while back that I kept saved, something that will showcase a lot of Half-Life's greatness in one place, I'm sure some of it may be wrong, but still, this is the Black Mesa incident All In One video

Press X For Cinematic:

Before a time where gaming focused so heavily on 'cinematic' moments, Half-Life existed to prove that you don't need to interrupt the gamer's experience to deliver amazing narratives that are bereft of the dreaded immersion breaking tools such as quick time events, used to terrible effect in games like Battlefield 3 and beyond, which were the norm set in many games before the industry decided to chew upon itself.

Play the game and experience the story. The story was the gme itself, and each cinematic was happening to you in the eyes of the player and in full control of their actions. Your surroundings were full of small details and each of the main character's actions decided to take advantage of them. The world of Half-Life always felt alive and the player was always a central part of it. The experience felt fluid and natural, with the player indulging in the unverse rather than being told about it.

You found your way, you weren't told. Even if you missed something the first time around, it was this immersive experience that made you want to go back and experience it all over again to see what you missed the first time around. And if you're told, Half-Life will tell you indirectly without any lazy markers or direct expository dialogue. It will show you with clever level design, from a balancing puzzle to taking down enemies and throwing objects. They will show you and you will learn, all through playing.

This is far more important than anything gaming has to offer nowadays, with the exception of games that keep a strong loyalty their roots like this year's Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus or even DOOM 2015. It is this strong fidelity to wanting to deliver on the player's experience rather than the developer's vision that makes any of these games feel more like that rather than wannabe films. They do what games do best, which is keeping the player involved in the narrative.

Hunt Them Down:

Health stations, health packs, power stations, power packs. Hunt them down, scavenge, explore.

These strong ideas often give the player a line of thought that legitimizes their involvement with the world and give a purpose to their exploration. Through far more than just Lambda markers, Half-Life wants you to see what the world has to offer so you can move to the next point in the story. The exploration is always rewarded with items, or even small story details like with the elusive appearances of the G-Man throughout the game. This kind of commitment to making the player feel like a natural element in the world has been missing in many current games, which treat its levels like hallways that are built to perpetuate an illusion of grandness while keeping the player away from most of the actual interaction or scale.

It is important to create a story of course, but it is also important to give your game's layouts and structures a purpose beyond just being a vessel for your gameplay. They need to be a part of the world and a compliment to the experience of the game, thus making it interesting to run, gun and explore around it.

This kind of level design made it interesting and important to keep your eyes open to every corner of the world around you, thus making the world feel more dynamic and natural than the illusion of the game's engine is capable of producing. The aforementioned Wolfenstein 2 did excellently with this level design, building a truly naturalistic and fluid world that was interesting to explore.

It is truly a legacy that works; gone ignored for so long because most don't know how to truly replicate it. Yet it doesn't go beyond studying the game with several playthroughs to understand what makes it great, which is a great attention to detail from the developers to make the level design and gameplay come together in a cohesive whole.

Power Fantasy Realised:

And obviously, this is what came from that combined effort between those two sections of the game development team, a set of games that not only works best when you improvise and make your own journey within their own rules ensuring the best experience possible for you and everyone playing the game but also one that will carry you forward in a power fantasy like no other, running across an entire place behind heavy occupation, getting assaulted by multiple enemies and making your way with the use of amazingly clever puzzles that will leave you more than happy each and every time you come across their solution at your own terms - of course, if you haven't played or looked up the solutions first.

Both Half-Life games are ones that respect your intelligence as much as it respects your efforts as you continue to experience their carefully crafted world and gameplay. Gordon Freeman may be just a wimpy MIT graduate, as opposed to the strong and highly trained Master Chief or Doom-Guy, yet he is still a protagonist comparable to these two thanks to the game's ability to allow the player to fill in his relatively modest shoes and become the power fantasy hero themselves.

This kind of experience is one of the best that the industry can offer, and should continue offering in the future. A game that will respect you and your playstyle, no matter how you do it. There's always something here for everyone and it is at its best when it gives you the controller and allows you to play, no matter what set piece you see in front of you and no matter what steps in your way.

This power fantasy is yours. And this world is your playground.

Thank you, Marc - A Legacy:

Finally, I also really wanted to take the time to thank Marc Laidlaw for bringing us the much-needed closure we deserved that Valve has not given us and likely never will.

Thank you, Marc, for your dedication, your love, your compassion to us, and your 'fanfiction' that will obviously live on with us.

For those that haven't read it, you may find it here: http://www.marclaidlaw.com/epistle-3/

It is truly a beautiful and much deserved conclusion to a story that has been missing for a whole decade and while it makes me sad like no other to see it end like this, I am glad that it has been given the rest that it deserves.

Conclusion:

We will probably never see a new Half-Life game in our lives, but we can at least see the reinventions that talented men and women in the Half-Life community create and hope that the games get the Source 2 treatment someday if Valve is never going to make new games under their continued tenure.

Even without Valve, we can still appreciate the works of developers like the Crowbar Collective who have worked hard to bring us experiences that stay true to the Half-Life spirit such as as Black Mesa.

But then again, who'd blame Valve? They have Steam, they don't NEED to create new games, they can sell new games. Yet, this disrespect for the wishes of their fanbase can only create more disdain and indifference towards their creations.

Which is why I wish that more developers and creators will continue to look at this series as the grand masterpiece it deserves to be for many years to come and to learn and grow with it. Half-Life deserves any and all love it gets. Because we can learn more than we could ever know from this series.

Never forget the Path of Borealis.

Author's Notes:

Thank you, for bearing with me as I struggled to find my bearings with this article, I really did struggle to find a way to word my thoughts in a very finite but concise manner that really accentuated the way I thought about Half-Life as a whole, and here we are, at the end of the year and I have finally composed this love letter to Half-Life that will obviously change in years to come, but for now it is finalised and I continue to hope for games in the future to continue to take notes from this fallen video game angel.

Let us play our games. That's how you will find success in this industry where games like Cuphead, NieR, Zelda, Wolfenstein and beyond have already allowed us to experience more and more greatness. You don't need to be like a hollywood blockbuster to be good, you just need to be a video game. That's when the medium becomes something beautiful. When we stop taking notes from our big brother and we start to carve our own sense of beauty and what a game should truly be like. That, I think, is the lesson I learned from Half-Life.

Los Patrones:

And now, to thank each and every one of you beautiful bastards that continue to support my endeavours and my random ass work with my random ass schedules.

Thank you, you lovely bastards

- Act Man

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