T
he magic of Half-
Life 2 lies in how it
tells its story. In most
games developed in
the early 2000s you’re
forced to endure endless exposition
about the world and the state it’s in- usually in the form of cutscenes.
In Half-Life 2, a few scraps of old
newspaper stuck to a notice board
achieve the same goal; and in a
much more evocative way. In the
secret laboratory of eccentric
scientist Isaac Kleiner, this entirely
missable detail refers to a “seven
hour war”, Earth surrendering to
the invading Combine, and villain
Wallace Breen being declared
administrator of Earth.
It’s everything you need to know in
one unassuming texture file – but
also, importantly, it leaves enough of
the finer details out to let your
imagination run wild. This is more
effective than an elaborate, expensive
cinematic showing the Combine
invasion of Earth would ever be, and
puts you on a level playing field with
Gordon Freeman. Having just been
yanked out of stasis by the G-Man, he
knows as much as you about thisRavenholm.” And that’s all it takes.
That sentence is absolutely loaded
with meaning, and it also makes your
first tentative steps into the place
scarier. What did she mean by that?
Valve understands the power of
holding back, that less is more, which
is something that eludes many
developers even now, 16 years later.
Of course, storytelling is just one
part of the package. Half-Life 2 is also
a great FPS, with the gravity gun
adding an improvisational feel to its
firefights. Switching to this once
revolutionary physics-manipulating
weapon when you’re backed into a
corner, plucking a saw blade or
radiator out of the level and
transforming it into a deadly weapon,
still feels incredible. The raid on Nova
Prospekt, the brutal Combine prison,
is tense and thrilling, and working
with the resistance in City 17 towards
the end of the game features some
superb set-pieces.
If you haven’t played it for a while,
you might wonder if the people who
still eulogise Half-Life 2 are half-
remembering it through a mist of
nostalgia. But play it and you realise
that, although it has aged in some
ways, it still feels like an important,
landmark game. It still delivers as a
first-person shooter, and the way it
relays its story is still wonderfully
subtle and restrained. It’s also
exciting to revisit when you consider
that Valve may be falling back in love
with the series. The end of VR
prequel Half-Life: Alyx dramatically
opens up the very real possibility of a
Half-Life 3, teeing up a sequel I’d lost
all hope of ever being made.RAISING THE BAR
The subtle, hands-off storytelling of HALF-LIFE 2
is still hard to beat. By Andy Kelly
bleak, Orwellian nightmare world;
that is, ‘not much’, which only adds
to the unsettling mystery of how
Earth ended up like this.
This kind of environmental
storytelling continues throughout
Half-Life 2, painting a more detailed
picture of everything that happened
while Freeman was on ice. And as
you learn more about the invaders’
infrastructure, the extent of their
assault on the planet becomes
chillingly clear. At several points in
the game you catch glimpses of
Stalkers; human bodies gruesomely
retro-fitted with alien technology,
turned into mindless slaves. Seeing
one out of the corner of your eye is,
again, more affecting than having
someone sit you down and tell you
everything about them.FREE REIN
Half-Life 2 is a game that plays to the
strengths of the medium, using player
agency as a way to tell a story in a
more interesting, intimate way. It’s
also a masterclass in subtlety. When
it’s time to travel to Ravenholm, an
abandoned town infested with
headcrab zombies, all Alyx says,
gravely, is, “We don’t go toHALF-LIFE 2PC GAMING LEGENDS
TOP LEFT: Freeman
drives his junker of a
car along Highway 17.