Half Life 2 thoughts
I haven’t played this game since I was, oh, 19? And I was surprised at how little I remembered of it. The opening in City 17 was familiar to me, and Ravenholm, but the entire back half of the game was basically completely new. And overall I was disappointed by the writing. I can understand why this is considered one of the greatest games of all time for its gameplay, even if the high-octane action sequences started to wear on me. I also am not particularly interested in videogames aiming to make an interactive US action movie as the ultimate goal in game design, rather than doing something interesting with video games as a unique medium. But nonetheless, the gameplay, physics, level design, enemy variety, etc. are all inarguably impressive for their time.
But the writing…
City 17 is an excellent opening. Briefly, you must live as any regular citizen in a dystopic alien-run city, I’m guessing mainly inspired by Children of Men. (EDIT: Oh, the film came out after HL2. Nvm!) The player character’s powerlessness is effective, as is the environmental storytelling. Then you start shooting things and that’s the end of that. And when we get to the scripted/dialogue scenes, the influence of Shitty US Action Movies becomes impossible to ignore. All of these characters are flat, and Alyx feels especially dated as the spunky-but-not-so-competent-she-challenges-the-player size 0 gal.
But I really wanted to talk about Dr Breen. Oh, what a let down. Of course, I love Evil Dictators, and I was initially so intrigued by his character. Breen has negotiated with the aliens to allow humanity to live in an oppressive dystopia, but the alternative was complete extinction. This is interesting! Is living in such poor conditions worth the continuation of the human race? I especially loved Breen defending the Benefactors’ suppression of human reproduction, because it’s possible that there is some truth in framing this as a necessary step in humanity’s evolution (and if not, it’s interesting to think about how Breen has to try to justify the Benefactors’ amoral practices to humanity). Imagine Breen as a figure who must construct a meaningful philosophy out of the Benefactors’ horrifying rule, trying to create a means to envision any kind of future for humanity in this new hell. This is interesting!!
And then you get to the end sequence and Breen is revealed to be the most two-dimensional mwuahahaing stock villain you can ever imagine. Not an ounce of complexity. He loves power and he’s Evil. Okay. He does the extremely familiar “stroking the face of the kidnapped but defiant heroine” thing because I guess we’ll throw in a bit of predatory domination for no reason. He has no philosophy, no principles, he’s just an evil villain happily working with the aliens in exchange for power (and why do the aliens trade with him and try to let him escape? What do they care?). Wow, what a deeply boring conclusion. I found myself missing the tiny subversion when you meet the dictator (Father) in the terrible Christian Bale film Equilibrium. Imagine missing the writing of Equilibrium!! It really is that flat.
I know that not every US property with a vaguely Communist-influenced dystopia is going to gift me a rich dictator-villain who I can counter-read as Right All Along—but I had expected more substance from one of the “best video games of all time”.
