This VGC Essay was first published on November 29, 2018
“Good morning and welcome to the Black Mesa Transit System. This automated train is provided for the security and convenience of the Black Mesa Research Facility personnel.”
It’s just another day at work for Gordon Freeman. The well-groomed scientist is running late for an important meeting and he’s forced to board the tram alone as he travels to the secure wing of the Black Mesa Research Facility.
It’s a rather lowkey introduction to one of the most ambitious games ever created, but easing the player into the game’s world was a big part of what made Valve’s Half-Life so ambitious. You’re free to move about the train car as you’re ferried from the facility’s living quarters to the research levels belowground, but for those five minutes, you’re also at the mercy of the developers and how they want you to interact with their game.
VGC Essays are original articles discussing each title from the Video Game Canon, as well as their place in gaming history, how the community embraced them in the past, and how they might help shape games in the present day.
With his manicured goatee and horn-rimmed glasses, Gordon Freeman has become one of the most recognizable figures in gaming. While never speaking a word, the incongruity of seeing such a person fighting off alien invaders with just a crowbar is an outlier among video game heroes even today.
But the world’s most recognizable nerd didn’t always look like that. The original character model for Gordon was a “cyber-lumberjack” with an unkempt beard known as “Ivan the Space Biker”:
“Ivan the Space Biker was the name for the first version, yeah…” Gabe admits, rather sheepishly, regarding the square-headed cyber-lumberjack that would eventually transmogrify into Gordon Freeman.
Other character designs were whipped up, and one caught Gabe’s eye. “We were always trying to be somebody that was a little more identifiable; this guy went to college.” Unlike say, Duke Nukem. “He doesn’t have a loincloth, he doesn’t talk, there is always that idea of transparency.” This was the antithesis of FPS game characters: thoughtful, introspective, wiser than his 27 years. He was the first MIT graduate to bludgeon sharp-fanged aliens into squishy matter.
Ivan was just a stopgap while Valve spun up a playable version of Half-Life to show the press, but as the edges were sanded off and Ivan became more synonymous with the Gordon we all know, his early morning train ride became an important part of the character’s journey.
Stepping back onto the train car, it’s easy to see that his commute isn’t just an introduction to the character, but also the initial proof that things are not as they should be at the Black Mesa Research Facility.
While your eyes dart back and forth at your colleagues performing their own experiments, you also spy the increasing level of security as you delve deeper into the bowels of the facility. There’s also a worrying amount of radioactive material in one of the last rooms before Gordon reaches his destination, but the chipper PA system is happy to inform you that radiation tests are available.
This sinister streak is repeated throughout the seemingly mundane series of announcements delivered over the loudspeaker. When the tram reaches a series of locked doors, you’re told that the “Hazard Course Decathlon” is scheduled for later that night, and that “more lives than your own may depend on your fitness.” Even with things operating “normally,” the Black Mesa Research Facility seems to have trouble retaining employees. A broadcast begging for more applicants to bolster the “low-level security” division hinted at the horrors to come.
And though you didn’t know it at the time, you also caught your first glimpse of the enigmatic G-Man in one of the other train cars just as the ride is coming to an end.
Half-Life‘s opening minutes didn’t only dole out a few small morsels of story, they also served as a very cinematic entrance into the game’s world. Valve aped the style of the latest Hollywood blockbusters to introduce players to their Area 51 stand-in, and they even included on-screen credits for the entire development team. It was a style that action game fans would have to quickly get used to, especially after the release of Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid a few weeks earlier.
Valve’s attempt to create a more cinematic introduction to the Black Mesa Research Facility contrasts sharply with the opening to id Software’s Doom. In 1993, John Carmack and John Romero began their story right in the middle of the chaos, skipping over any in-game explanation of who the Doomguy was (Romero always liked to say that the character had no name because the player was the Doomguy) or why demons had overrun the facility (like Half-Life, they’re the product of a failed teleportation experiment).
After selecting a difficulty level, the menu faded to black while the game’s opening guitar riff immediately put the player on edge with a strong signal that something’s coming. The jarring notes seemed to say that if you didn’t start moving, that something would get you. Within seconds, the taciturn Doomguy was ready to fight.
Though he was designed to be the polar opposite of Duke Nukem, Gordon’s “just going to work” introduction would be indirectly parodied by Duke Nukem Forever in 2011. But instead of cultivating curiosity at the unknown and a massive sense of place, Duke was invited to scribble dirty jokes on a whiteboard and fish a turd out of a toilet bowl (for which he was given the “Turd Burglar” Achievement) before doing battle with a monstrous alien on a football field.
A straight line from Half-Life‘s opening tram ride can even be drawn to the genesis of the “walking simulator” genre, as Christian Donlan did for Eurogamer in 2018:
I realised that the games we now – often reluctantly – call walking simulators frequently share something crucial with the start of Half-Life. Okay two things: the absence of a weapon in a first-person perspective where we’re used to see a gun barrel jogging along at the bottom of the screen, but also that sense of an unspoken rebuke to other games, that violence from the get-go may be the easiest option, but is it the most interesting? Is it the most effective option in terms of pacing, in terms of storytelling and world-building, in terms of exploring what games can be and what they can do?
Valve’s games (including Half-Life, which was originally expected to launch in 1997) are delayed so often that fans jokingly say the company runs on “Valve Time.” But delaying the start of Half-Life by five minutes might be their most enduring legacy.
How To Play It Today
Half-Life was originally released for the PC in 1998 and it’s still available to download through the Steam storefront. A PS2 release appeared in 2001, and used copies of the game’s only console port have become something of a collector’s item.
In the years since, Half-Life has been remade twice for the PC. Half-Life: Source was released in 2004 (a few months ahead of the sequel), and it’s a “digitally remastered” version of the game built using the developer’s then-new Source engine. Eleven years later, and with Valve’s blessing, a group of fans known as the Crowbar Collective followed up the Source remake with Black Mesa, a “contemporary reimagining” of the game.
Game Information
Publisher: Valve / Sierra Games
Developer: Valve
Release Date: November 8, 1998
References and Further Reading
Hodgson, David – Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar – Prima Games – 2004
Donlan, Christian – Eurogamer – 20 years on, Half-Life’s opening tram ride is still an audacious bit of theatre – 2018
Yin-Poole, Wesley – Eurogamer – Valve on Valve Time: “It’s charming. It’s kind of a compliment.” – 2012
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