I think Valve learned a ton about game design between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Half-Life 1 pulls a lot of “gotcha” moments that you just have to reload your save to get through, whereas Half-Life 2 actually make sure to have teachable moments so you know what to look out for, and here’s my favorite example. Half-Life 2 introduces you to a sniper enemy right after Ravenholm by having a traceable laser pointer that’s shooting escaped headcrab zombies. The sniper is concerned with them, not you, so you have time to be aware of the threat and know what it looks like. Half-Life 1 introduces the sniper enemy by having you round an ordinary looking corner and get shot in the back. After reloading your save, you can squint at the hole in the wall in that alley, knowing it’s there this time, and say to yourself, “Yeah, I guess that kind of looks like a sniper’s nest.”

The gimmicks that you refer to in Half-Life 2 are, I think, phenomenal examples of how to properly pace a video game and make the game memorable. While Gordon Freeman is a nothing character and more of a focal point for everyone else in the game to talk about, those characters are good, well-written characters.

I think this is an astute take-down. Half-Life 2 was very concerned with showing off all the “advancements” it made. While those advancements were certainly novel at the time, they seem less novel and less cohesive now that the entire industry has followed suit.

The physics in Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom make the physics in the Source engine look like a fucking joke. So it’s really hard to go back to a game like Half-Life 2 and have it stand on those merits because they’ve been overshadowed for so long. The character design and facial physics have similarly been left in the dust. Once again, it’s overshadowed by the entire industry following suit on these technological changes, and the story lacks the depth to make up for it, years down the line.

Half-Life had far fewer gimmicks and in many ways was a more traditional first-person shooter with an excellently put together story. The writing in Half-Life 2 was still strong, but Half-Life was much stronger (this is common for sequels, because you’re having to extend a story you already wrote an end for).

In fact, I think that’s part of why we never got a Half-Life 2: Part 3. They were entering a phase of what you might call “fiction-debt” where the past choices in the story were beginning to slow down the story and make it less intriguing. Sometimes the more you reveal about the mystery, the less interesting it is. Half-Life left years of mystique behind it because so many parts of the story were still open ended and unexplained. It can also be argued that this “fiction-debt” is why they had to go into the past and do a pre-sequel with Half-Life: Alyx.

Also, the choice to make it so you can’t kill major characters in a game breaking way is a loss, in my personal opinion. I don’t like games that prevent me from doing dumb things. Like at the beginning of Halo: Combat Evolved, I can shoot Captain Keyes right in the face, and every space marine around me will lose his shit and attack me until death. It’s actual consequences for negative actions instead of just making a character an unkillable bullet sponge. Similarly in Half-Life you can accidentally kill scientists and security guards that you need to be able to open certain doors.