Toronto Thumbs

Everything Old is New Again
Masterworks in Gaming: Half-Life 2

City 17 is immediately presented as classic science fiction dystopia. I step from the train only to be herded by masked security forces and processed before entering the fortress. I catch half conversations alluding to other cities. The streets are deserted except for the patrols. I enter a housing flat to find worn civilians muttering to themselves and a couple sitting together on a sofa panicking about the soldiers that will soon break down the doors.

Welcome to Half-Life 2.

Years before I would experience this game I came across an essay by social theorist Roland Barthes that has greatly impacted my perception of literature, film, and video games. It was entitled “Death of the Author,” wherein the central concept is that there is no situation in which an author creates an original work. It’s a broad statement, but at its core is a criticism against a reader’s tendency to take any aspect of a work’s creator(s) into account with the creation. He felt to do so placed a limit on the work.

Instead we should move toward seeing a text, or subsequent media as an amalgamation of experiences and influences that preceded it. Anything I may write today is not to be seen as the original notions of a man who emerged from a vacuum, but as cultural influences and societal experiences that have merged within me and naturally emerge from my creations.

1984.

In this sense the world of Half-Life 2 is harmoniously sewn together from a long history of dystopian works and scientific ideas. Stepping into City 17 is immediately reminiscent of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the posters of Big Brother merely replaced by Dr. Breen and the propaganda of the Combine. One of the greatest advantages to the still relatively young video game industry is that it has been not only born from a growth of technological advancements but also that it benefits from a long history of social theory and cultural enlightenment. Victorian literature for example lacked the advancements of psychological discussion and was forced to often explore the internal through dreams because they lacked those ideas. Video games however have the immediate advantage of history on side, and developers can take their media savvy audience and place them within a complex society with little explanation and still expect the player to comprehend.

So when we enter City 17 we immediately recognize the scenario. But this does not deprive the player of the full experience. This is a new media opportunity to experience these ideas in a truly immersive sense. And We initially experience the oppression of the Combine without the means to defend ourselves and are ultimately at their mercy. We are not the gun carrying hero, but are instead equal with every other civilian being ushered into City 17. And this is really where Valve demonstrates Barthes’ ideas and creates a science fiction masterpiece.

In the first Half-Life game we still played the role of Gordon Freeman. We start a typical day as a brilliant theoretical physicist which soon develops into a disaster as our experimental project causes a resonance cascade and creates dimensional rifts through which aliens begin invading Earth. I don’t know about you but I can totally relate to that because it happened to me last week.

Half-Life was an incredibly successful entry into the genre of first person shooters and set the foundation for the narrative directions Valve would take. But despite the means by which it differentiated itself, it is still an action game. We play as Gordon, fighting our way past aliens, brain sucking parasites and the military in our quest to reach the surface of the facility and ultimately to survive. However there is never a deep attachment in which one really feels that they are Gordon Freeman. But then how does the sequel differ?

In Half-Life 2 we emerge from a train again, but with no idea why we have been brought to this place and no real comprehension of why the world is the ruin of ash that it is. We know that it must stem from the events ending Half-Life, but the history of the events in between remain unknown to the player. We don’t know because Gordon doesn’t know, and we enter this game having become Gordon Freeman. And what begs to be asked in all of this is whether or not Gordon Freeman is a hero.

Blade Runner.

Blade Runner has recently been given the full DVD treatment, and remains the most prominent example of science fiction film making as a key film in influencing the genre for decades after its initial release. And among the many elements that it introduced to the genre was the idea of the protagonist as the anti-hero. Rick Deckard is essentially a police employed assassin working to hunt down renegade replicants. And for all the menace of that image the audience watches as Deckard plays against the conceptions built around the idea of what a hero is. Deckard only accepts the assignment when there is no choice left to him. If he loses his gun along the way he is likely to run. He introduced film audiences to the human condition collected within a realistic character. He presented us with aspects of ourselves, which may be part of the reason the film initially did so poorly.

In the same way Gordon Freeman did not choose to come to City 17. In fact throughout the game Gordon doesn’t choose any direct course of action. He is continually thrust into situations beyond his control in which the player takes control in order to try and do the one thing Gordon is always working toward, to simply survive. And through all of this we meet characters who revere Gordon and regard him as a hero. The story of his survival has become an epic legend of a man leading a resistance against the Combine. But none of these people have witnessed Gordon’s deal with the G-Man or have any real knowledge of where Gordon has come from or what he wants to do. So who is Gordon Freeman?

The answer can only be that we are. Whenever we pick up the controller and enter City 17 we take on the role of Gordon Freeman. And so the question as to whether he is a hero can only come from each individual player that puts on his suit and picks up a crowbar. And this continues the second half of Barthes’ idea. That the reader of a work, the one experiencing the creation, is the one who will ultimately bestow meaning upon it. That every experience we have had and every perspective we have come into contact with influences what we will take from the work. My Gordon Freeman is not the same as your Gordon Freeman. For instance, mine does not lunge into a firefight with the Combine. He prefers to take cover and carefully plot a means to take them out from a safer distance. When the Combine attack the power plant and Gordon is forced toward Ravenholm, my Gordon hesitates. He stares at the dark corridor ominously because he just knows he doesn’t want to go there while Dog patiently holds the door open. And believe me when I say that when my Gordon reaches the depths of Ravenholm he becomes incredibly nervous and fires blindly as drain spouts shake and alien skeletons lunge toward him.

Of course Half-Life 2 is part of a long series of first person shooters where you “take on” the role of the protagonist. But Gordon’s complete lack of dialogue and choice establish our place as him and prevent the snappy one-liners that spoil the illusion in so many other titles. But it is much more than this that puts us into the suit.

The narrative direction of Half-Life 2 is immediately relatable to our experience even though our experiences differ. It speaks to the greater human experience. It presents us with a world we have no control over and very little understanding of. We are dropped into the center of it and expected to survive. And for all the people that want to help us it seems there are always more working against us. It seems we never make a real choice about what we are doing, only the way in which we do it. And yet no matter what we do we seem to get to where we need to be. We react more than anything, hoping that it will lead to a beneficial resolution. Whenever we feel that we are in control, there is someone to remind us that we are not. And even if we wanted to change the world, at the end of it all we can only try to do the best that we can and hope that it makes a difference.

Posted in Features |