On November 19, 1998, a special video game came into the world. It wasn’t the first first-person shooter game (Wolfenstein, Doom and Co. were already there and had created an army of clones), but it was a deeper game and had the calling to go beyond, to be realistic, to delve into the to deepen the plot. to give the player an experience that he hadn’t had before. It was Half Life, a game with a goatee-bearded scientist dressed in a hazmat suit and armed with a red lever, faced with an experiment that went wrong and led to the invasion of the world by a very intelligent alien race. In addition to being very good, the game rises to the middle Olympus because everything it has brought about in the industry is of the utmost importance and because, at first glance, the game has a groundbreaking (even provocative) direction: How many glasses wearers had we seen in the world of video games before Half Life?
Opinion articles tend to exaggerate. But in this case, “everything that triggered” refers to a simply amazing list. Its strange mix of action, terror, dystopia, its highly thought-out and extremely effective atmospheres, its reputation for revolution in the technical field, all of this had a major influence on the games to come. In addition, the game showed an uncompromising commitment to real time, as there are no cinematic scenes that take us out of the adventure, only characters that explain to us what is happening during the game itself, while allowing us to freely move around the stage. But beyond its own merits, part of its greatness lies in how it has transformed the entire digital ecosystem.
Image from “Half Life 2”.
The company behind the game, Valve, and Gabe Newell, his alma mater, have not renounced the modifications that users have made to the game at home. In fact, these mods have given rise to games as important (as utterly transcendent for the entire sector) as Counter Strike. As if that were not enough, Newell, convinced that the future of the sector lies in the abolition of physical games and the transition to digital games, created a digital platform to publish updates for Valve games, which later used everything as a starting point for founding Steam, the largest (and most popular) digital game store.
As if that wasn’t enough, Half Life 2 (2004) was even better at the time of its release and was particularly advanced in terms of animations, graphics and physics. And the company’s success gave rise to the development of another absolute and revolutionary masterpiece: Portal (2007). The word “revolutionary” is not in vain, because that is a different word: all Valve games function in part as an experiment in what the medium can achieve in its simulated world aspect. A huge example is Portal, but perhaps the best example of this is Half Life 2 itself, whose physics (particularly through its gravity gun) were later replicated by countless titles. Or the virtual reality game Half Life: Alyx (2020), an incredible qualitative leap in VR games, the benefits of which we will certainly see in a variety of games in the future.
All of this came about with this strange and groundbreaking game 25 years ago, but as the article gets too hagiographic, it’s time to close with a pinch of discomfort. Everything Valve does is very good, yes; When it comes to Half Life 3, we’ve had the same news for many years. That means none. Newell, please don’t become the George RR Martin of video games. The world needs Gordon Freeman again.
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