Half Life 2 - Final Impressions

All good things must come to an end, and my playthrough of Half Life 2 is no exception, even though the experience spanned a good three weeks. This is a game that constantly made me feel like there was something else to do, through clever additions to the existing game mechanics, including mixing driving stages into simple shooter stages, controlling swarms of antlions, managing squads of resistance fighters, and the thoroughly enjoyable romp through the Citadel with the powered up Gravity Gun in the last level of the game. I could talk about the visuals in the game (still crisp and sharp, even though they are starting to show their age) or the atmosphere (it could just be me, but I felt that the game developed an overarching tension that became more palpable in the later stages), but all of this has been hashed and rehashed many times. That's the price you pay for playing a game that's 4 years old.

The area of the game that really impressed me, and the one I'd like to focus on, is the character development, specifically that of Alyx. When you first run into her, rescuing you from Civil Protection forces, she's a cocky and brash girl, the daughter of Eli Vance. As the game progresses, she becomes an ally, a director, a savior, and a friend, all through the development of her dialogue and how the voice acting communicates her feelings and moods to you, the player. Valve pulled off something that you don't see in video game writing: a relationship between the player and an NPC that seems to transcend the in-your-face obvious motivations and cues. There were two specific points to illustrate my point, and they both occur near the end of the game. The first is Alyx's talk with you as you ride the elevator while following Breen up further into the Citadel. Her facial features, her words, and the tone conveyed by Alyx's voice actor, Merle Dandridge, clearly add up to Alyx possessing deeper feelings for your character (Dr. Freeman). What makes me mention this scene is the fact that it's not thrown at you with an obvious physical cue, but more of the sum of all the cues you can heed from this NPC. It was refreshing to see some subtlety utilized in video games.

The second point comes when Alyx activates the elevator for you to follow Breen into the reactor core of the Citadel. As the elevator starts to descend, Alyx approaches the elevator and wishes you luck. The gripping part of this is the tone of her voice and the way she places her hands on the glass as she disappears from sight. Those simple cues communicate genuine concern and feeling for you as you embark on what ends up being the final conflict of this chapter in Half Life 2. While I really enjoyed everything about the game, including the gunplay, the level design, the puzzle solving aspects, the graphics and sound, it was the fact that I really cared about the fate of the characters in the game that will stick with me when I remember this game.

On another note, the fact that I finally finished the game paves the way for me to pick up Fallout 3 tomorrow. I made a vow to myself that I wouldn't buy another game until I finished Half Life 2 and I've done my best to live up to that vow. Tomorrow I move from the post apocalyptic world of City 17 and Black Mesa to the future-retro post apocalyptic world of Washington, D.C. I'm sensing a disturbing trend in my video game taste. I think I need to go play a game of Super Mario Brothers to cleanse my palette.