Half-Life 2's 20th Anniversary

12/4/2024

Fans may recall that last year, I gave the original Half-Life a revisit for the 25th anniversary. It's still one of my favorite games from those "golden years" of PC, first-person shooter games. Half-Life 2 is another beast entirely. It's a universe of technologies, game distribution (Steam), design, and craftsmanship that has continued to echo through these past twenty years. Half-Life 1 is an amazing game, but Half-Life 2 is nothing less than monumental.

I was first exposed to the Half-Life series through The Orange Box, a 2007 compilation that included the complete Half-Life 2 experience up until that point. It also introduced the world to Team Fortress 2 and Portal. It seems a bit bizarre now to include these other two brilliant, genre-defining, now classic games as sort of a side feature, The Orange Box was a great value. Just as important, The Orange Box made it to the consoles of the time, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (that's me!), introducing it to a wider audience. Yes, Half-Life 2 earlier had a remarkable, but maybe not ideal, port to the Original Xbox, but these newer versions ran much better, particularly the 360 version. The PS3 version was more flawed, and Valve would be somewhat openly disdainful of the PS3's unusual architecture.

Regardless, this would be my gateway into the "Valve universe". I had never heard of Steam before this. But eventually, it all led to hours (367, in my case, but almost all of my friends have WAY more) of Team Fortress 2, and many high school evenings spent on Garry's Mod. I didn't stick in the PC gaming sphere forever, or even very long, in retrospect. Regardless, these were all great, fun, memorable experiences for me that wouldn't have existed without Source, Steam, and Valve.

Over time, though, I would recall Half-Life 2 specifically with less and less fondness. I will paraphrase the general complaints and ideas as such:

• This game is nothing like Half-Life 1.
• What was with all the driving?
• These physics puzzles are silly and toy-like.

After I finished Half-Life 1 and its Gearbox expansions, I didn't even really want to play 2 again. But, all the 20th anniversary fun warmed my cold, cold heart again. Did I just forget about "Pick up that can?", the Gravity Gun, and a fascinating dystopian world? Of course there was a ton of great stuff in this game!

Playing it again cleared many misconceptions I had developed, and other times, affirmed some grudges. So, let's start...

"This Game Is Nothing Like Half-Life 1!"

Oh, bull, me from a few months ago! It has much, much more in common than I previously recalled. Sure, there's no Dune Buggy, speedboat, or Gravity Gun in the original Half-Life, but an awful lot of design made it over. Nova Prospekt, in particular, can be very reminiscent of Black Mesa, even lifting the electrified water scene and happily placing sneaky headcrabs under boxes.

Beyond any one particular set piece or scene, a lot of the general philosophy exists in the moment-to-moment gameplay. It's certainly evolved with the new technology, however. Recall from my HL1 review that the Marine AI has some tricks in it to guide it to certain spots regarding their tactics. They weren't actually, dynamically hyper-intelligent, but it worked. That is what survived into Half-Life 2. A general blending of dynamic and more scripted elements to help create cinematically paced and exciting gameplay, without shoving a designer's exact idea down your throat.

...usually, anyway.

Half-Life 2 has a lot of things it wants to show you. There are new physics objects eeeverywhere. You can blow up red barrels. You can make your own platforms. You can blow up red barrels. You can...push a washing machine into a basket. You can break wood, and it's realistic looking. Did I mention red barrels?

The game is just not always graceful about these things. The Combine seem to go out of their way to stand next to things that will absolutely kill them, making them feel more like Star Wars' Stormtroopers instead of credible threats. You can't leave rooms until you do some fairly mundane, only occasionally novel task. Alyx will gladly remind you, multiple times, to set up turrets. So on, and so on. Valve's game designers are clever; immerse yourself in the brand new 20th anniversary commentary to verify that. Just about everything has been rigorously playtested to make sure players understand what's expected of them. But they're so clever at it that I sometimes feel the game putting its hand on my shoulder, guiding me into making sure I do the right thing that will look good and get me into the next section. Come on Freeman, get in the lighthouse!

That sort of 'hand-holding feeling' is stronger in some sections than others, and it's going to come down to personal taste. The beginning raid on the apartments, where Freeman is defenseless, still puts a smile on my face. No foul. The antlion bait tutorial is just that, and this even gets a note in the commentary as being something they couldn't work out how to introduce more naturally. Understandable, as it's fairly complex and novel, even today.

Then, at least for me, there are still times where I die and wonder, "What exactly do you want me to do?". You can make your own Valve Playtester joke if you like. Water Hazard is a guilty chapter for me, as my boat seemingly gets stuck on random geometry to get slaughtered by gunfire, or doesn't seem to fit through the shipping container the first time. One section seems like you should explore the building to raise a gate (there's one small room with health packs, at least), but you really must notice a small piece of fence in the water to drive your boat over. I felt deflated upon discovery, not 'ah-ha'.

Any scene with Striders gets dicey, as one step in the wrong direction can get you killed quickly. Maybe that's not completely inappropriate in the last third of the game or so (I praised Half-Life 1 for creating a sense of hostility through the game), but I didn't find dealing with them in Follow Freeman much fun. These are the kind of scenes that feel like you must do something exactly as someone intended, which isn't always something I enjoy.

Combat is where it works very well, and resembles Half-Life 1. Yes, the sheer number of explosive things would make the Acme Corporation blush, and that lack of subtlety diminishes the feeling of cleverness I think it's supposed to inspire in me. But I can still crack a smile when my makeshift wooden crate cover starts to crumble, or I toss a toilet at a Combine soldier, or throw their own grenade back.

Side Note Of Relative Unimportance: This is only a pet peeve, but I don't usually like it when NPCs praise me for doing the things I have no choice but to do in a game, or otherwise worship me like a hero. Half-Life 2's resistance members treat you like a god, with a lot of "Great work, Gordon!" from almost everybody. It adds to a sense that this is all a big illusion to make me feel good.

Half-Life 2's dynamic physics and environment only sometimes create emergent gameplay, or at least a sense of it. It also frequently stops dead in its tracks or is blindingly obvious about the new tech and design ideas to try and show it off. This is something that the Episodes are better about, which I'll cover at the end.

Overall, though, I came away with the feeling that Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 1 are connected; there's a unique style to it that survives beyond the Black Mesa facility. It deviates, sometimes heavily, with new puzzles, physics, and more story scenes in the mix. But when taken with a big-picture view, I have a much easier time believing Half-Life 2 is a sequel.

"What's with all the driving?"

This one will be simpler to explain, for I had simply inflated the amount of vehicle sections in my memory. In my mind, Highway 17 happens right after Water Hazard, WHICH IS VERY DEFINITELY NOT WHAT HAPPENS! I guess I just forgot when Ravenholm takes place.

Highway 17, in particular, has plenty of opportunities to hop out and explore random houses, and includes the famous bridge scene. There's plenty of on-foot gameplay, but you don't have to constantly stop if you don't want to. As a teen, I remember being very confused by the crane section. But I remembered that this time, and found an amusing note about its existence in the commentary. Being lowered by the crane in the beginning of the chapter serves a dual purpose, helping players make the connection for later, and teaching them how to flip over the car before they ever really drive it. There's that cleverness at work again, in this case totally lost on the young me.

Water Hazard, though, I still have my qualms with. I think it comes at a point too early in the game, Gordon has only recently acquired a weapon and begun the game proper. Here comes this boat, though, when I really believe the "core" gameplay should continue. Of course, the game has two vehicles, so where should you put it? I suppose that isn't Water Hazard's fault, and it's got the same (but not as many) chances as Highway for good ol' shooting. I've never liked this chapter, it seems the most prone to things going haywire. The boat seems to have the weight of a rubber bouncing ball as it glides all over the place. The fight with the helicopter is okay, but still feels a bit awkward to me.

I can't think of another place to mention it, but since it's sandwiched between the two vehicle-focused levels, let's talk about Ravenholm.

I am with the consensus on Ravenholm. I think this is the place where everything about the game, old and new, comes together in a fluid, relatively natural way. Ravenholm is intentionally designed to make sure you start getting low on ammo, but you've still got plenty of shooting available in certain spots. Yes, there are red explode-y things everywhere, but Father Grigori's various traps and machinations finally merge the new physics system with the rest of the game. Enemies can attack you while you work on a puzzle section, rather than being alone in a room with NPCs staring at you to pull switches and connect wires.

The art direction is absolutely fantastic. Look at that screenshot! The poison headcrabs and zombies are gross; I hate them, in the delightful way you want to hate a game enemy. The horror theming is strong. Ravenholm presents a self-contained story within Half-Life 2, and leaves Father Grigori's fate to the imagination. I adore the atmosphere when you exit back out into City 17 proper, and you see the transition of a zombie-infested area back into Combine territory. It's everything great about Half-Life 2. The new technology, the attention to detail in the world design and story, a memorable character, and exciting gameplay that looks and feels great for the entire duration.

I don't know if it was possible for the entire game to be of a Ravenholm quality. It's a rush for that hour or two you spend there, but how could one expand it?

"These physics puzzles are silly and toy-like."

The answer might be: "You can't." I don't think it's entirely Valve's fault that a lot of this falls flat. There was a general industry-wide interest at the time for better and more realistic physics. Crysis was a few years away, with a lot of similar objectives to Half-Life 2. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) featured the very popular Havok physics engine (at least part of Havok powers Half-Life 2), and even included a new character, Silver, to utilize it. Grand Theft Auto 4 turned Niko Belic into a crash test dummy. There's more of these early 360/PS3 Havok-ish games than I can remember. But as the generation wore on, interest in physics engines seemed to decline a bit, outside of ragdolling corpses.

I don't think anyone really figured out how to include these as a core gameplay feature. Sure, it's neat to see stuff break apart and stacks of boxes or barrels fall over, or a ball roll down a hill. But that was pretty much it. Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun is probably a best-case scenario, up until, say, Breath of the Wild came along, not caring how players traversed the environment or spent their time. The Shrines in BotW are a little more like Half-Life 2, where you are placed in a fairly isolated area and asked to solve a puzzle of some kind to progress. Breath of the Wild has a zillion different powers, but the Shrines (at least, the ones that I've played) are still fairly "designed" with an intended solution for players to discover.

I know it's not totally fair to Half-Life 2 to compare it to far-future games, but Half-Life 2's awesome action coming to a grinding halt for a see-saw doesn't sit right with me, even when I played for the first time on The Orange Box. This is almost certainly the worst example of it in the game, where it feels like this first-person shooter is suddenly asking you to play blocks, but the feeling creeps up every now and again.

Some of my complaints here are definitely part of the original game. It wouldn't be very Half-Life-like if you only fired guns and occasionally threw stuff at waves of Combine. Half-Life is filled with moments where things seem to pause, either for storytelling purposes or for a puzzle setpiece. Who else had fun dealing with the minefield? It's not a crime to have a story scene, when so much of Half-Life's appeal was in its novel storytelling and unbroken first-person perspective, as if you were really in Black Mesa.

Half-Life perfectly blended the Doom/Quake style with this new approach, creating a sweet spot that I feel hasn't been matched since. Half-Life 2 is trying to innovate something new with that style as a base, moving away from Quake, and it generally succeeds. The general Half-Life 2 style became the norm as time went on. There are some distracting moments where it feels like they retrofitted the amazing technology into some video-game-shaped pieces.

Maybe it had to be like that. Valve were (are?) some of the best in the business at a lot of this stuff, but Half-Life 2 went through a troubled development. For a game released in 04, it's still damn impressive, especially in motion. The rhythm of the action, the attention to detail in almost everything, and a memorable, expanded world from the original. If anyone else had handled this kind of project, it probably would have fallen apart, which is exactly what happened to Arkane's Ravenholm game.

The Phantom Menace

This at-times clunky blending of new technology and FPS gameplay is something that is greatly improved in the Episodes. I have to imagine that once the technology and designed were nailed down after the initial release, it would be much easier to design for expansions. It's not perfect. In Episode One, covering Antlion nests with cars is cute when you realize you can do it (something, to my knowledge, not directly prompted by Alyx but necessary to progress), but it simply gets repeated again later.

There's a moment in Episode One where Alyx picks up a sniper rifle. Pretty cool, after the base game only had snipers as enemies. Gordon walks through a hallway that's blocked off by sheets of metal. Nobody tells you that you can rip them off to give Alyx a shot, nor does the game trap you in this room until you remember that you can. If you remember that you can lift this metal in the midst of a combat situation, you get rewarded, but you can still proceed without it. I wish there were a few more scenes like this in the game. There's also a huge shootout with a million zombies, in the dark, still with a comical amount of red objects. But it's nice to see the flashlight get drained and have a little tension; there are a few ways to create temporary sources of light with the objects around. Episode One is really damn solid. I think "more Half-Life 2" isn't a wrong description, but the improvements in the design should get a shoutout.

Episode 2 goes further, finally getting our characters in a new location. Driving comes back and there's a general, pleasant sense of freshness. I can't help but think that the Poison Antlion tunnels somewhat resemble Xen's infrastructure, though I suppose most caves would. The major setpiece battle at the end that involves the car, the Magnusson device, is another Ravenholm style "This is everything this game could be" moment. Everything that Half-Life 2 presents is successfully merged here, and it's wonderfully tasty, more matured game design.

Episode 3

...it all sort of ends on a bitter note as you remember that the story has ended here since 2007. The collective pain of the Half-Life community is something that I imagine keeps it held together. For all the crap I've given it for only occasionally being clunky and heavy-handed, and for my posturing that the cinematic style became the norm in FPS games, I'd offer that nobody has truly done it like Valve. Half-Life 2 is, still, somehow, one of a kind. Sure, many games have real time dynamic physics. Plenty of games have shooting and the storytelling style. Other games have lovable characters and dark, imaginative worlds.

Maybe it's the sheer attention to detail in the art direction. Maybe it's how forward-thinking the technology was. Maybe it's the gaping hole in gamers' hearts that keep us looking at Half-Life again, and again, and again. As I said for Half-Life 1, there's a very specific flavor to this series that seems really damn hard to find anywhere else. Anyone who can describe that exact quality is a wiser writer than I.

Mr. Gabe Newell said something interesting on Episode 3's non-existence. He says...

You can't get lazy and say "Oh, we're moving the story forward.", that's copping out of your obligation to gamers. Yes, of course they love the story, they love many, many aspects of it. But sort of saying your reason to do it is that people want to know what happens next...we could have shipped it. It wouldn't have been that hard.
My personal failure was being stumped. I couldn't figure out why Episode 3 was pushing anything.
-Gabe Newell, 2024

He sounds a bit heartbroken when he says it, and I think therein lies what makes Half-Life so special. There's a genuine spirit and desire not just to make a great game, or to be different, but to innovate. It's built into the DNA of the series. It's raison d'etre, if you will. I have seen a lot of interesting commentary on the nature of Gabe's comments. Some believe that yes, they should have "just shipped it" and given fans the closure and complete story. On the other hand, Valve ignoring that spirit just wouldn't be Half-Life. But what was left to do? Like I suggested earlier, what could be done with this that hadn't been seen before? The whole end of the documentary echoes some of that sentiment, as well as others. There's regret, there's sensible reasoning not to do it, there's unfortunate timing. It's hard to watch, in a way.

I think an Episode 3, or Half-Life 3, that releases to a reception of "That's Half-Life, that's what I expected; now I can move on with my life." is a death sentence. That doesn't feel right, at all. I've found myself empathizing more and more with Mr. Newell's sentiment. If Half-Life's purpose is new technology, new design, and new ideas, well, it's understandable that it might have stalled out right at the end. This is pretty clear to me in the documentary's final minutes. What is Half-Life without innovation in gameplay and technology?

I'm still not holding my breath for it. It would be rude not to mention Half-Life Alyx here, the new technology to explore being VR, but I have no first hand experience with the game. The fact that game made it out, understandably, instills a lot of hope. This whole twentieth anniversary celebration has been a joy. Personally, I've had enough Half-Life 3/Mother 3/Smash Bros. Characters style speculation and teasing. If it's not announced, it's not announced, and that's it.

I'd like to celebrate Half-Life 2 again at 25, 30, and a while longer. I only give it some flak because seeing it again is like seeing an old friend. A friend who dared to dream big, and took a break at the height of their career to go live in the woods. There's no clear, singular, satisfying answer when you finally catch up and ask why they left. And so, we ruminate and reminisce on what was, and what could have been.

Half-Life 2 isn't flawless, but cracks in the design and gameplay never tear down the amazing foundation. It's natural that a game that was this ahead of the curve on almost everything would have a few pieces of tape holding it together. If there's any game that deserves to be celebrated for everything it brought to the table, it's this one.

Happy birthday, old friend.

- Jane