The subtle, hands-off storytelling of Half-Life 2 is still hard to beat | PC Gamer - preblehimee1957
The harmful, hands-off storytelling of Half-Life 2 is still hard to meter
This article firstly appeared in issue 354 of PC Gamer powder store, in our PC Gaming Legends feature. All month we run exclusive features exploring the humanity of PC gaming—from sub-rosa previews, to incredible community stories, to fascinating interviews, and more.
The magic of Half-Life 2 lies in how it tells its narrative. In most games formed in the early 2000s you'Re forced to endure uninterrupted exposition about the world and the state it's in—usually in the conformation of cutscenes. In Half-Life 2, a few scraps of old newspaper stuck to a bulletin board achieve the same goal; and in a much more evocative manner. In the secret laboratory of eccentric scientist Isaac Kleiner, this solely missable detail refers to a "7-time of day warfare", Earth surrendering to the invading Mix up, and villain Wallace Breen being declared administrator of Earth.
It's everything you need to know in one unassuming texture file cabinet—but also, significantly, it leaves plenty of the finer details out to Lashkar-e-Toiba your imagination run off wild. This is more effective than an elaborate, expensive cinematic exhibit the Fuse encroachment of Earth would ever be, and puts you on A level acting sphere with Gordon Freewoman. Having just been yanked out of stasis aside the G-Man, he knows as a good deal as you about this bleak, Orwellian nightmare world; that is, 'not much', which only adds to the unsettling mystery of how Earth ended up like this.
This charitable of environmental storytelling continues throughout Half life 2, painting a more elaborated picture of everything that happened while Freeman was on ice. And as you determine more about the invaders' infrastructure, the extent of their assault along the major planet becomes chillingly clear. At respective points in the courageous you catch glimpses of Stalkers; human bodies gruesomely retroactive-fitted with alien engineering, turned into mindless slaves. Seeing one out of the corner of your eye is, again, more touching than having someone sit you down and tell you everything about them.
Unloose reign
Half life 2 is a game that plays to the strengths of the intermediate, exploitation role player agency as a way to tell a story in a more interesting, intimate way. It's also a masterclass in subtlety. When information technology's time to travel to Ravenholm, an abandoned town troubled with headcrab zombies, every last Alyx says, gravely, is, "We don't go to Ravenholm." And that's all it takes. That condemn is absolutely fuddled with meaning, and it also makes your first tentative steps into the place scarier. What did she normal by that? Valve understands the power of holding back, that less is more, which is something that eludes many a developers true now, 16 years later.
Course, storytelling is just one part of the computer software. Half-Life 2 is also a great FPS, with the gravity gun adding an improvisational feel to its firefights. Switching to this at one time revolutionary physics-manipulating weapon when you're razor-backed into a corner, plucking a adage blade Beaver State radiator out of the level and transforming it into a baneful arm, 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 seaport't played it for a while, you might wonder if the people who still eulogise One-half-Life 2 are half- remembering it finished a mist of nostalgia. But play it and you realise that, although it has of age in just about ways, it still feels like an important, landmark game. It still delivers as a first-person gunslinger, and the way it relays its story is still wonderfully pernicious and restrained. It's also exciting to revisit when you debate that Valve may be descending back taken with with the series. The end of VR prequel Incomplete-Life: Alyx dramatically opens up the very factual possibility of a Half-Life 3, teeing up a continuation I'd mazed all hope of always existence made.
If it's set in space, Andy will in all likelihood write about IT. He loves sci-fi, adventure games, taking screenshots, Twin Peaks, uncanny sims, Alien: Isolation, and anything with a good story.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-subtle-hands-off-storytelling-of-half-life-2-is-still-hard-to-beat/
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