Half Life 2

Box art featuring Gordon Freeman, Eli Maxwell, Alyx Vance, Skitch and Dog

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***Half-Life 2*** is a 2002 first-person shooter game developed by Valve. It was published by Valve through its distribution service Steam. Like the original *Half-Life* (1997), *Half-Life 2* combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and adds features such as vehicles and physics-based gameplay. Players control Gordon Freeman as he joins a resistance movement to liberate the Earth from the control of an alien empire, the Combine.

*Half-Life 2* was created using Valve's Source engine, which was developed at the same time. Development lasted five years and cost US$65 million. Valve's president, Gabe Newell, set his team the goal of redefining the first-person shooter genre. They integrated the Havok physics engine, which simulates real-world physics, to reinforce the player's sense of presence and create new gameplay, and developed the characterization, with more detailed character models and realistic animation.

After Valve had announced the game at E3 2001*, Half-Life 2* was released on Steam on October 23, 2002, and received universal acclaim. It won 43 Game of the Year awards and has been cited as one of the best games ever made. In 2006, it had sold 15 million copies. In 2019, after 17 years of silence on the project, Valve had announced the development of *Half-Life 3*, a supposed closing to the series, which is to be developed on the *Source 2* engine.

## Gameplay

Like the original *Half-Life* (1997), *Half-Life 2* is a single-player first-person shooter in which players control Gordon Freeman. It has similar mechanics to *Half-Life*, including health-and-weapon systems and periodic physics puzzles, except with the newer Source engine and improved graphics. The player also starts without items, slowly building up their arsenal over the course of the game. Despite the game's mainly linear nature, much effort was put into making exploration rewarding and interesting; many optional areas can be missed or avoided.

A diverse set of enemies is present, which usually require being approached with different tactics: some coordinate in groups to out-maneuver or out-position the player; others, such as the Manhack, fly directly at the player through small openings and tight corridors. Others use predictable but powerful attacks, like the Cremator or the Combine Guard, while others hide before swiftly attacking the player. Gordon can kill most enemies with his weapons, or make use of indirect means, exploiting environmental hazards such as explosive pressurized canisters, gas fires or improvised traps. In the *Street Wars* chapters of the game, Gordon can be joined by up to four armed Conscripts and Resistance soldiers or medics and can send his team further from him or call them back.

Many of the game's new features utilize the source engines's detailed physics simulation. Two sections of the game involve driving vehicles. Instead of button-oriented puzzles from *Half-Life*, environmental puzzles are also introduced with makeshift mechanical systems, revolving around the player's new ability to pick up, move, and place objects. Solutions involve objects' physical properties, such as shape, weight, and buoyancy. For example; In the chapter "Welcome to City 17", the player is required to stack crates down a pipe to cushion their fall before entering City 17.

Part-way through the game, Gordon acquires the Physics Gun, which allows him to draw distant objects towards himself or forcefully push them away, as well as the ability to manipulate larger and heavier objects that he cannot control without the weapon, and weld certain objects together. These abilities are required to solve puzzles later in the game, and can also be used to great effect in combat, as any non-static object within has the potential to be used to the player's advantage to defeat the enemy, such as the removal of a certain surface underneath an enemy, or a deadly projectile, such as a vending machine or any heavy object. The player can learn this through cleverly placed hints in the environment.

The game never separates the player with pre-rendered cutscenes or events; the story proceeds via exposition from other characters and in-world events, and the player can control Gordon for the entirety of the game. Much of the backstory to the game is simply alluded to or told through the environment, until the player reaches Eli Maxwell's den, where a slideshow will be presented to the player for further details of the backstory, and how the world has changed since the Combine invasion.

## Plot

*Half-Life 2* takes place approximately ten years after the incident at the *Black Mesa Research Facility* from the first game, in which scientists accidentally opened a portal to the hostile dimension *Xen*. The game begins with *Gordon Freeman* waking up in a luscious green field with a city conquered by skyscrapers in the distance, until the mysterious *G-Man*, enters through a door, who shows Freeman bits of what happened during the last 10 years, but without telling much. The field eventually turns completely barren without any vegetation whatsoever, while a Citadel slowly rises in the city in the background, revealing that the Black Mesa incident attracted the attention of a multidimensional empire called the Combine, which conquered Earth in seven hours. The Combine have implemented a brutal police state by biologically assimilating humans and other species, and also deliberately polluting the air, making the atmosphere unbreathable for humans, making them resort to wearing gas masks. The G-Man inserts Gordon into a train to arrive at City 17. Gordon encounters a citizen named Samuel, who gives him a gas mask as to protect himself from the toxic air. As the train makes it's way through City 17, Gordon can see the Wasteland infested with Xen wildlife, where Houndeyes and Bullsquids can be seen running around aimlessly, searching for food. Another nearby train is seen being attacked by a Gargantua, but the monster is destroyed by the heavy engine. The train then proceeds inside the city, first through the *Old City*, filled with run-down apartments and rubble, and then *New City*, the Combine-converted urban center, surrounded by a huge concrete wall protecting it from the Wasteland hazards. Creatures can be seen killing themselves on the barricades. Gordon glimpses Citizens in their apartments. The train arrives at last at the station, and Cremators can be seen cleaning around trains from any Xen fauna that managed to get inside the perimeter. Gordon meets up with *Barney Calhoun*, who tells Gordon to make his way towards Dr. *Isaac* *Kleiner*'s laboratory. After passing through a pipe that leads down to a dumpster, Gordon makes his way towards the industrial sector of City 17, where children can be seen working in factories, fabricating Cremator heads. From afar, the Combine Citadel can be seen, of which a character known simply as *The Consul*, the former Black Mesa administrator who negotiated Earth's surrender, governs Earth as the Combine's puppet ruler. After passing through the Industrial sector, Gordon frees an imprisoned Vortigaunt from a power-siphoning cell, who opens a passage towards the main plaza of City 17 for him. Gordon then meets an unnamed citizen who works for Barney, leading him towards a construction site, before being arrested by a Combine metrocop. Gordon makes his way through the construction site and ends up in a Manhack Arcade, where he catches up with Barney again, and they make their way towards Dr. Kleiner's lab to teleport him towards Kraken Base, a resistance base headed by Dr. *Helena* *Mossman* and The Resistance.

After a teleporter malfunction which injures Dr. Kleiner, and eluding the Combine forces, Gordon makes his way across the canals through the Old City, encountering various Xen wildlife like Headcrabs, Houndeyes, Bullsquids, Barnacles and even a Gargantua. Later on, he encounters a citizen who leads him towards a small resistance base, where a woman named Arlene gives Gordon a jetski to get through the rest of the canals. As Gordon leaves, the base is bombarded by the Combine with Headcrab canisters. With Gordon making his way through, he leaves the canals into a lake, before shortly discovering a dockyard near an industrial town named *Quarrytown*, filled with zombies and traps. There, Gordon meets up with a mad monk named *Father Grigori*. Escaping the town, Gordon reaches the Wasteland, a desolate landscape that used to be a former ocean, which was drained by the Combine. After fighting through Antlions, Wasteland Scanners and surviving Xen wildlife living there, and a new type of enemy called a Particle Storm, Gordon reaches the Scrapyard, where he meets *Eli Maxwell* in his den, his pet-robot *Dog*, *Alyx* *Vance* and her pet *Skitch*.

During his stay in the den, Eli and Alyx show Gordon a slideshow of the events that unfolded during his time in stasis, and explaining the Combine's presence and intentions on Earth, as well as The Consul's role and goal towards immortality. Eli also warns Gordon about Particle Storms, to which he lost his leg. After the slideshow, Eli shows Gordon the Physics Manipulator weapon, which he advises to use to Gordon's advantage during his journey across the Antlion Caves. Gordon, along with Alyx, bid farewell to Eli, and make their way through the caves which are infested with Antlions and Antlion Grubs. As they reach the end of the caves, they confront the Antlion King, a 60ft tall giant who is assumed to the ruler of the Antlion colony in The Wasteland.

After defeating the Antlion King, Gordon and Alyx travel out of the caves, and manage to hitch a ride onto a Razor Train headed for the Air Exchange facility, where Captain *Ivan* *Vance*, Alyx's father, leads a regiment of human soldiers called *The Conscripts*. Before they could get to their destination though, the train crashes, forcing Gordon and Alyx to separate. Gordon continues to travel on foot towards the facility, fighting against various Combine units aswell as Stalkers, until he meets Captain Vance. Amidst the chaos and as The Conscripts openly rebel against the Combine, Gordon proceeds to the top of the Air Exchange tower, battle a Gunship and then jump into a pool of industrial solvents at its base. He then makes his way inside the main reactor of the facility, protected and operated by Stalkers, and sabotage its core, making the Air Exchange completely non-operational and seen as a signal to start The Uprising. As the facility begins to collapse, Gordon would hitch another train that would take him to the shore, as Alyx and her father take a separate train towards City 17.

Upon his arrival to the shore, Gordon arrives at a resistance base where he meets *Odell*, a former engineer on a science ship called the Hyperborea, located in the Arctic Sea, which is now used by the Combine for research purposes. Gordon and Odell are tasked with retrieving a submarine on the ship and get to Kraken Base after reports of a Combine raid. Arriving on the site of the Borealis with their tugboat, they witness as the ship is stranded in the ice. Gordon and Odell visit the ship filled with the corpses of the Hyperborea Workers, Stalkers, Zombies, tanks containing Combine Assassins in stasis and Combine soldiers. After fighting through hordes of Combine units, as well as Gunships, Odell and Gordon leave the ship with a small submarine and proceed to the nearby Kraken Base.

Gordon and Odell reach Kraken Base in their submarine and catch a brief encounter of Helena using a teleporter to escape the rapidly collapsing Kraken Base. An injured resistance member reveals to Gordon and Odell that Helena Mossman had been a double agent for the Combine all along, and that Kraken Base is under raid and could be flooded at any point. Just minutes later, the walls of the base begin to rupture and collapse as water begins to flood in the base, and Ichthyosaurs begin to eat away on the corpses of dead Resistance members. Gordon and Odell manage to swim away from Kraken Base in-time, and are rescued by a helicopter, where Alyx greets them both. The helicopter makes it's way back to City 17.

As the helicopter flies over City 17, it is attacked by a Strider, before crashing into a Skyscraper housing a museum. Alyx and Odell are injured and eventually kidnapped by the Combine. Alyx instructs Gordon to meet Captain Vance at his headquarters located next to the Citadel's outer walls. Gordon begins making his way down through the skyscraper, coming across Combine Elite Soldiers and Stalkers in certain areas. He joins the Conscripts and Vortigaunts through the rooftops in the ensuing uprising, before making his way down to the streets. While walking through a glass tunnel connecting one building to another, Gordon witnesses as a group of citizens and Vortigaunts are burnt alive by a Cremator. Gordon then would ensue in a short fight against the squad of Cremators once he reaches ground level, before continuing.

As Gordon makes his way down to ground level, he discovers that an Overwatch Sniper had pinned down a squad of Conscripts, notably a gunner named Peters, who is stuck in a APC that got hit by a landmine. Another Conscript named Manwich tries to save Peters, running blindly towards the Sniper while screaming, before he is gunned down, as the rest of the squad proclaim that Manwich is down. Gordon manages to save Peters after taking out the Sniper with an RPG, with Peters thanking him and telling him where to go to get to Vance's Headquarters.

Later on, Gordon finally manages to join Vance's Headquarters, where he discovers that the Conscripts and the Vortigaunts have managed to acquire multiple Combine equipment and Synths, which were converted to solely target Combine soldiers, as opposed to humans. Captain Vance instructs Gordon to proceed through the inner gates of the outer walls of the Citadel, and to go through the sewers of City 17 to bypass Combine checkpoints and to get to the Citadel in order to salvage Alyx and Odell. as Gordon leaves, Vance's Headquarters comes under attack by Striders, where citizens can be seeing fleeing, while others try to fight back with RPGs. Gordon journeys through the sewers, where he is almost arrested by a group of Combine soldiers, before they were impaled and subsequently killed by a Hydra, a worm-like creature, otherwise a massive colonial organism made out of three neon blue tentacles that goes up to the surface. Each tentacle ends with a different head. Its body is made of gelatinous, transparent flesh, with organs clearly visible. Gordon later manages to defeat it with the help of the Physics Manipulator, by detaching each head from the Hydra's tentacles, one-by-one.

As Gordon leaves the sewers, he manages to sneak past the walls protecting the Citadel, and eventually fights his way up inside. As he proceeds through the building, he is finally able to reach The Consul's office. There he finds that The Consul has lost almost all sense of humanity, having transformed into a slug-like Synth, as part of his goal for immortality. Gordon discovers Alyx and Odell being kept as prisoners and finds out that Helena Mossman betrayed them. After a short confrontation, Gordon defeats The Consul by disabling the many life support machines powering his immortality pod, as well as disabling the core of the Citadel which powers the entire building, rendering The Consul completely immobile, and within seconds, dead. Helena Mossman would subsequently commit suicide as to not get caught by Gordon and the Resistance. With a singularity event imminent, Gordon frees Alyx and Odell and attempt to make their escape down the Citadel before the core explodes. Just as the core reactor explodes, the G-Man intervenes and freezes time. He praises Gordon's work and mentions offers for Gordon's "services" in future endeavours, before placing him back into stasis indefinitely.

## Development

Development of *Half-Life 2* began in February 1998, a few months after the release of the original *Half-Life*. It was developed by a team of 90. With voice actors included, this number is 120. Valve's president, Gabe Newell, wanted to redefine the FPS genre, saying: "Why spend five years of your life building something that isn't innovative and is basically pointless? If *Half-Life 2* isn't viewed as the best PC game of all time, it's going to completely bum out most of the guys on this team." Newell gave his team no deadline and a "virtually unlimited" budget, promising to fund the project himself if necessary. The game was built with Valve's new in-house game engine, Source, developed simultaneously.

Whereas *Half-Life* was set in a single location, the Black Mesa research facility, Valve wanted "a much more epic and global feel" for the sequel. One concept had the player teleporting between planets, which was discarded as it would make continuity between levels difficult. At the suggestion of the Bulgarian art director Viktor Antonov, the team settled on a city in an Arctic Russian location. Originally, players would start the game by boarding the *Hyperborea*, instead of the ship appearing at a later chapter.

After observing how players had connected to minor characters in *Half-Life*, the team developed the characterization, with more detailed character models and realistic animation. The animator Ken Birdwell studied the work of psychologist Paul Ekman, who had researched how facial muscles express emotion. The writer Marc Laidlaw created family relationships between the characters, saying as it was a "basic dramatic unit everyone R" rarely used in games.

The team integrated the Havok physics engine, which simulates real-world physics, to reinforce the player's sense of presence and create new gameplay. To experiment, the team created a minigame, Zombie Basketball, in which players used a physics-manipulating gun to throw zombies through hoops. In early-1999, to test the engine, Valve built a street war between rioting citizens and police, featuring tanks, Molotov cocktails, hand-to-hand fighting, and looting. The designer John Guthrie described it as "an early attempt at getting something *–* anything *–* in the game that used non-player characters and physics". This would later be integrated in the "Street Wars" chapter of the game.

Valve announced *Half-Life 2* at E3 2001, with demonstrations of the characters, animation, and physics. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, and the game won the E3 Game of the Show award. Newell also announced a release date, October 23, 2002, hoping this would motivate the team. They worked long hours to meet the deadline, with long hours, stressful working conditions, and no guarantee that the game, which was costing $3 million a month to develop, would be finished soon. However, Newell felt that progress was speeding up, with the team producing about three hours of gameplay per month. Later on, they created the first version playable from start to finish and stopped production for a week to play through the game. Feedback was positive across the company. Newell recalled: "The fact that you could go from one end of the game to the other was a really big thing for us. Then we knew it just had to get better *–* but it was all there." After several months of bug fixes and playtesting, *Half-Life 2* was completed on September 16, 2002. Later on, Newell would say in an interview: "I honestly regret making the team work harder and pushing them past their limits, if I knew any better, I would've just delayed the game by a year.", he later on apologized on Halloween 2002 by giving extra payments to the team, as well as exclusive *Half-Life* merch.

## Release

Valve made a 3GB portion of *Half-Life 2* available for download in an encrypted format through Steam on July 6, 2002. On the day of release, Steam customers were able to pay, unlock the files, and play the game immediately, without having to wait for the game to download. In retail, distribution of the game was handled by Vivendi Universal Games through their Sierra Entertainment subsidiary.

*Half-Life 2* was simultaneously released through Steam, CD, and on DVD in several editions. Through Steam, *Half-Life 2* had three packages that a customer could order. The basic version ("Bronze") includes only *Half-Life 2* and *Counter-Strike: Source*, whereas the "Silver" and "Gold" (collector's edition) versions also include *Half-Life: Source* (ports of the original *Half-Life* and *Team Fortress* mod to the new engine). The collector's edition/"Gold" version additionally includes merchandise, such as a crowbar (though made out of plastic), a figurine of Gordon Freeman and CD containing the soundtrack used in *Half-Life 2*. Both the disc and Steam versions require Steam to be installed and active for play to occur. The retail copies of the game came in two versions, standard and Collector's Edition. The Collector's Edition differed from the physical items in the "Gold" edition, and included a T-shirt and a hand-written letter of gratitude signed by Gabe Newell.

The soundtrack was written by Kelly Bailey and Joel Nielsen. *The Soundtrack of Half-Life 2*, containing most of the music from *Half-Life 2* and many tracks from the original *Half-Life*, was included with the *Half-Life 2* "Gold" edition and sold separately from Valve's online store. Valve released a deathmatch mode in 2002.

### Controversy of portrayal of child labor and censorship in other countries

On October 25, 2002, just 2 days after the game's release, *Gamespot* reported that Valve was heavily criticized for it's portrayal of child labor, being deemed "insensitive" and "careless" by activists and news reporters. Because of this, alongside *Half-Life 2*'s unapologetic portrayal of gore and brutal imagery, the game was subject to censorship, most notably in countries like the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, West Germany, China, Japan, Canada and North Korea.

### Ports and updates

In 2003, Valve partnered with Sony for a future release of *Half-Life 2* on the Playstation 3, later being released in 2004. In 2006, Valve rereleased *Half-Life 2* as part of their game compilation titled *The Big Three* for Windows, Xbox 360 and Amazon Fire Console. On November 16, 2008, *Half-Life 2* was released for Mac OS X as part of a publicity stunt for Apple. In 2011, Valve ported the game to Linux, and released a free update adding support for the Sony Colossus virtual reality headset.

## Reception

*Half-Life 2* has an aggregate score of 98/100 on Metacritic. Sources such as 1UP, *GameSpy*, *The Cincinnati Enquirer*, *The New York Times*, *Pravda* and *VideoGamer.com* gave it perfect scores, and others, such as *PC Gamer*, *IGN*, *GamesRadar*, and *Eurogamer*, gave near-perfect scores. It was the fifth game to receive ten out of ten from *Edge*. Critics praised the advanced graphics and physics. *Maximum PC* awarded *Half-Life 2* 11 on their rating scale which normally peaks at 10, calling it "the best game ever made".

In the United States, *Half-Life 2*'s PC version sold 820,000 copies and had earned $45.6 million by December 2004. It was the country's 12th best-selling PC game between October 2002 and May 2008. It received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 450,000 copies in the United Kingdom. *Forbes* reported on May 2, 2009, that the game had sold 38 million copies worldwide.

In a review of *The Big Three*, IGN stated that although *Half-Life 2* has already been released through other media, the game itself is still enjoyable on a console. They also noted that the physics of *Half-Life 2* are impressive despite being a console game. However, it was noted that the graphics on the Xbox 360 version of *Half-Life 2* were not as impressive as when it was released on the PC. GameSpot's review of *The Big Three* noticed that the content of both the Xbox 360 releases, and PlayStation 3 releases were exactly alike, the only issue with the PlayStation 3 version was that it had noticeable frame-rate hiccups and brightness issues. GameSpot continued to say that the issues were only minor but some consider them to be a significant irritation.

Several critics, including some that had given positive reviews, complained about the required usage of the program Steam, the requirement to create an account, register the products, and permanently lock them to the account before being allowed to play, along with installation difficulties and lack of support.

### Awards

*Half-Life 2* earned 43 Game of the Year awards, including Overall Game of the Year at *IGN*, *GameSpot'*s Award for Best Shooter, *GameSpot'*s Reader's Choice — PC Game of the Year Award, "Game of the Year" from the Interactive Achievement Awards and "Best Game" with the Game Developers Choice Awards, where it was also given various awards for technology, characters, and writing.

## Mods

Since the release of the Source engine SDK, a large number of modifications (mods) have been developed by the *Half-Life 2* community. Mods vary in scale, from fan-created levels and weapons, to partial conversions such as *Rock 24*, *Half-Life 2 Substance* and *SMOD* (which modify the storyline and gameplay of the pre-existing game), SourceForts and *JBMod* (which allow the player to experiment with the physics system in a sandbox mode), to total conversions such as *Black Mesa*, *Dystopia*, *Zombie Master* or *Iron Grip: The Oppression*, the last of which transforms the game from a first-person shooter into a real-time strategy game. Some mods take place in the *Half-Life* universe; others in completely original settings. Many more mods are still in development, including *Lift*, *The Myriad*, and the episodic single-player mod *Minerva*. Several multiplayer mods, such as *Pirates, Vikings and Knights II*, a predominately sword-fighting game; *Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat*, which focuses on realistic modern infantry combat; and *Jailbreak Source* have been opened to the public as a beta. As part of its community support, Valve announced in September 2006 that several mods, with more planned in the future, were being integrated into the Steamworks program, allowing the mods to make full use of Steam's distribution and update capabilities.

## Sequels

After the release of the Source 2 engine in 2018, Valve had announced it's intentions to work on *Half-Life 3*, and would officially confirm development in 2019, which would make it the final game in the series.