by Karl Parakenings
“…His figure is synonymous with the darkest urges of instinct, ignorance, and decay. Some of the worst excesses of the Black Mesa incident are laid directly at his feet. And yet, some continue to imbue him with the worst romantic power, giving him such dangerous poetic labels as “The One Free Man, the Opener of the Way.” Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking.” – Dr. Wallace Breen, Half-Life 2
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Half-Life series.
Genre’s a tricky thing. It’s one of the most imprecise ways you can talk about a given medium; the film noir genre, for example, was only established in retrospect. Similarly, it’s rare that horror games are actually horrifying; for the most part, as we covered in our first installment, they try too hard. Games in other genres have more flexibility; we don’t expect them to scare us, so when they do it disturbs us all the more. For that reason, among others, I’d name Half-Life 2 as one of the most horrifying games ever developed.
Gordon Freeman enjoys a central place in the gaming canon. Game culture today seems to prize the Half-Life series as one of gaming’s few triumphs; the bespectacled theoretical physicist with a crowbar seems to legitimize many of our desires for the growth of the medium. He’s smart, a man of few (or no) words, able to take action when he needs to, can’t help but attract the nubile daughter of his co-worker while not having to worry about what to say to her… compared to Gordon Freeman, what wish can Nathan Drake hope to fulfill? On the surface of things, he’s one of the most heroic figures we have.
But who is Gordon Freeman, really? Let’s re-examine the Half-Life series; we have enough distance from it now that we can see it properly, I think. At the time, Half-Life and its sequel made tremendous strides in the art of storytelling in games. These days, if either of them came out we’d see them as just as bad as Call of Duty, if not worse: they’re linear corridor shooters where everyone does everything for you and in which story you have no true presence at all. It seems to be basically Homefront. But then again, as we’ve seen, true horror is never what it seems to be.
At the beginning of Half-Life, Gordon Freeman is a newly hired theoretical physicist at the lowest rung of the nerd ladder. While his colleagues seem to welcome him to Black Mesa, his actual duties paint him more as a guinea pig than a scientist. He tests the Hazardous Environment Suit by wearing it into a hazardous environment, and his “pivotal” role in the experiment which goes awry is just pushing a cart into a laser beam. Hardly Nobel-worthy.
On the other hand, it’s Freeman’s subsequent conduct which truly distinguishes him. Faced with a horde of aliens, shadowy marines bent on erasing the complex from the map, and the unsavoury implications of Black Mesa’s research, he manages to reach the world of Xen and defeat the Nihilanth, the hydrocephalic fetusy alien who controls the invading forces. Earth is saved! The mysterious G-Man appears, congratulates Freeman on his crowbar piloting, and offers him a choice: either work for the G-Man and his employers, or fight an unwinnable battle.
As the player, you have the option to enter the G-Man’s portal and accept his offer. If you don’t, however, he teleports you into a cavern filled with aliens. Without a weapon, you stand no chance, and he politely registers your resignation before the screen fades out. Not a problem, right? Simply reload the game and choose the other option – that’s what I did, and I’m sure what you did.
CLASSIFICATION: MOSTLY HARMLESS
But would the seemingly omnipresent G-Man really offer that choice? If Freeman had really distinguished himself, it seems very uncharacteristic of the G-Man to let Gordon choose self-destruction when he could potentially be so useful. What sheds light on this event is the contradiction later in Freeman’s story. At the end of Half-Life 2, the G-Man appears again and informs Freeman that, this time, instead of offering the “illusion of choice,” he’s taking the liberty to put him in storage again, until the next offer comes along. This seems to reinforce our theory: the G-Man offered you a choice you couldn’t refuse. However, at the beginning of Half-Life: Episode One, the same events occur: the reactor at the top of the Citadel explodes and time freezes… only this time, the Vortigaunts appear and rescue you and Alyx. The G-Man glares at you and mutters “We’ll see about that” before leaving. So which one happened?
If we adopt the G-Man’s view – as, I argue, we have been the whole time – then the answer seems clear. They both did. Gordon Freeman is a stubborn research physicist, and it doubtless took a lot of tenacity to get hired at Black Mesa and survive the ensuing events. Offered the choice of employment or battle, of course he’d choose the battle – at least there’s dignity in that death rather than living as a puppet of the G-Man. But the G-Man’s own comments indicate this wasn’t a true choice, that it was the “illusion of freedom”. So, we can deduce that when Freeman inevitably chose the battle, the G-Man simply ‘reloaded’ so that Freeman could choose the other option. At the end of Half-Life 2, Gordon remains in the G-Man’s employ. If you (the player) stop there, that’s what happens. But if you buy and play Episode One, the Vortigaunts rewind ‘reality’ and save Gordon and Alyx. It’s a new timeline that over-writes the old one. It’s similar to how Valve changed the ending of Portal before the sequel’s release; in much the same way, the end of Portal left Chell hanging, unconscious on the ground outside the Aperture Science facility. But when it seemed that the sequel would require her to be recaptured, the game was patched so that a robot carried her off while unconscious. Again, if you left it installed after release, it would be patched, but the timeline of events still wouldn’t change for you unless you replayed it.
In this light, how could Gordon be the saviour that game culture paints him as? He’s a puppet in many ways. He’s the player’s avatar, for one, so that he never really acts as his own free agent. But more broadly, he’s the G-Man’s puppet; Gordon can only ever live a “half-life,” because the instant he does something that the G-Man doesn’t want, he’ll simply rewind time until he does the “right” thing. This puts every metagame action in a new light: every time you save the game or reload, that’s Gordon’s fundamental existence massively reshaping itself. When you exit the game and make a sandwich, Gordon’s suspended in no-space waiting for your return.
Needless to say, this reading of the game has profound implications for the rest of the game’s plot. We’ll continue examining the life and times of Gordon Freeman soon. Next time: back to the horror genre to look at some underdogs and what they do right.
Further Reading:
(Youtube)
On What I Stan For (Medium Difficulty)
Nuns with Guns (Medium Difficulty)
