Half-Life 2: 20 years of Valve’s game-changing shooter

“Rise and shine, Mr Freeman.” 

Half-Life 2 players are first greeted not with a tutorial nor text, but with a command and a piercing gaze. As far as overtures go, the opening minute of Valve’s legendary game more closely evokes the uncanny horror of Bergman’s Persona (1966) than the pleasantries of Super Mario Bros. Opening with such a suffocating close-up doubles as a declaration of intent on developer Valve’s part: you are not a spectator of this world but a participant. 

As Half-Life 2 approaches its 20th anniversary, it remains a landmark title, regularly called one of the medium’s best. Initially tasked with surpassing the first instalment, Valve instead crafted a breakneck adventure that raised the bar for fundamental facets of game design: cinematic storytelling, physics and player agency.

For the uninitiated, Half-Life 2’s narrative pitch hardly radiates the qualities of a tale worth etching into the annals of gaming history. Transported to the Tarkovskian urban sprawl of City 17, physicist Gordon Freeman allies with a guerrilla rebellion to usurp the totalitarian Combine and breach the Citadel, a towering spire entrenching their stranglehold. 

While the story beats lack the nuance of titles like The Last of Us, Valve compensates with their level design. City 17 is a remarkable opening set-piece: players find themselves dwarfed by mechanical Striders (echoing War of the Worlds’ Tripods), catching glimpses of residents peeking from doorways, sneaking around a crumbling milieu. 

Designed as a showcase for Valve’s own Source engine, the vividly rendered dystopia showed the developer adopting the playable game space as a storytelling vessel, rather than using cutscenes. This method has since become widespread in blockbuster narrative games – consider once more The Last of Us and its Quarantine Zone segment, which similarly guides players across an unraveling society. 

Across all 13 hours of Half-Life 2, players never have control wrested away from them. Conversation sequences and explosive spectacle – traditionally relegated to cutscenes — are now bolstered by free player movement and camera control. Half-Life 2 is distinctly linear – as pure a Point A to Point B experience as the medium offers – yet it is entirely player-directed in its pacing and cinematography. 

The impact of this liberating design across media cannot be underestimated. Santa Monica Studios’ God of War (2018) also went on to tout a seamless experience, whereas one-take films such as 1917 (2019) or Children of Men’s visceral Bexhill sequence echo Half-Life 2’s continuity adrenaline rush. 

This advocacy for complete player agency is most potently felt in Gordon Freeman himself. Video games have their fair share of silent protagonists – just ask The Legend of Zelda’s Link or Portal’s own Chell (don’t expect a response though). Freeman, however, embodies the ultimate player surrogate when paired with Half-Life 2’s commitment to first-person action and no-frills exposition. Their specific features may be invisible, but their role couldn’t be more active. When companion Alyx reaches out to Gordon for help or G-Man commands us to rise from our slumber, it doesn’t feel like Gordon who’s being spoken to but us. 

There’s little use in conjuring an evocative setting if players can’t meaningfully engage with its geography. It’d be remiss for any Half-Life 2 retrospective to exclude the Gravity Gun, an ingenious weapon allowing players to grab and manipulate objects from a distance. 

The power fantasy speaks for itself as do the mechanical possibilities: launching explosive barrels at enemies, creating new routes by tearing down barriers or building makeshift weapons out of stray mines. Physics puzzles of this fidelity were unheard of in 2004 but have since become industry standard. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s emphasis on ragtag vehicle construction is a super-sized rendition of the Gravity Gun’s potential. Combined with the earlier influences of Deus Ex and System Shock, there is a clear impact on the immersive sim genre, now best known for titles by Arkane Studios. Prey even boasts an overclocked glue gun (appropriately titled the GLOO Cannon) channeling the Gravity Gun’s retro sci-fi sheen. 

Half-Life 2’s influence may be keenly felt in its contemporaries yet the franchise itself has infamously been out of action for several years. Valve did return to City 17 (sans Gordon Freeman and his crowbar) for VR prequel Half-Life: Alyx – a similarly revolutionary title, albeit one that only nudges fans closer to a true third entry. Valve designer Robin Walker commented that Half-Life is a series that’s used to combat “some real significant problem or technology”. Indeed, the notion of a Half-Life that doesn’t herald a new technological epoch feels paradoxical. 

For its emphasis on player direction, it’s fitting that the series’ strongest evidence of life exists within the community itself. Fan-made campaigns such as this year’s Raising the Bar: Salvation expand the role of minor characters, whereas remake Black Mesa modernises the first Half-Life to the standards set by its sequel. Gordon Freeman may never utter a word, yet his trademark reticence has done little to silence Half-Life 2’s enduring voice across generations.