![]() Half-Life wants you to know that other things are happening in the world. As in Ridley Scott’s Alien, Half-Life allows the creatures to fester in your imagination, ramping up your dread before they are unleashed. Meanwhile, the monsters scuttle about unseen: you hear them in the ducts and behind locked doors you see the eviscerated bodies of your workmates. From here, you stagger through a series of sequences that work like disaster-movie scenes: pockets of survivors – gravely injured scientists, desperate security guards – drip-feed you information, drawing you further into the plot. Freeman, weak and disorientated, must grab whatever he can to survive and the game’s first and most iconic weapon, a crowbar, symbolises your role as a worker rather than a soldier. The game progresses not as a power fantasy, but a survival story. ‘You can stand and listen, or just wander off’ … Half-Life gameplay. The message is simple: you’re trapped here too. ![]() The lack of cinematic cutaway scenes showed great faith in the world and the player, and deepened your relationship with the environment and the protagonist. In this way, Half-Life is naturalistic, which was a revelation in 1998. You can stand and listen or just wander off. As you enter the facility, fellow scientists chat to Freeman about a forthcoming experiment, voicing concerns and discussing trivial details. The opening accustoms us to the Black Mesa research facility, tells us a little about Freeman’s role and sets up the narrative universe – all without leaving his perspective. The brilliance of Half-Life begins with its immersive storytelling. ![]() It was the first hint that this new game from fledgling Seattle-based developer Valve was going to be something interesting and unusual. ![]() In the background, a computerised female voice issues safety information, while through the windows we see tableaux of life at the institution: weird robotic machines, bespectacled scientists, a security guard desperately banging on a sealed door. ![]() A monorail carriage slowly transports everyman scientist Gordon Freeman to his new job at a remote science facility, Black Mesa. M ost action video games begin with an explosion. ![]()
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