Half-Life 2 Writer On Plotting Freeman

Thanks to Planet Half-Life for their interview with Marc Laidlaw, writer on both the Half-Life games, who answers questions about Gordon Freeman's (and other less cipher-like NPCs') genesis, suggesting "...some of the character creation process is very analytical... but a large part of it remains intuitive", and goes on to point an admonitory finger at Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces: "I have great respect for Campbell, who never intended to create a boilerplate for insecure storytellers, but the mythological hero has been done to death." Above all, Laidlaw hopes you have a good time come Half-Life 2's September 29th appearance, saying: "I think the only sector of the audience likely to feel any disappointment are those fans who adored long-jumping between bits of floating rock on Xen."

Comments

Inreasing the immmersion factor of Half-Life

[Kenshiro70]

One of the most interesting aspects of the original Half-Life is that Gordon Freeman never spoke - all of the lines written by Laidlaw were generic enough that you could imagine yourself asking the question or making the comment which provoked the line. It drew you into the story even further by making you project your own dialog into it. It's strange that very few other games have tried this technique, as it seems to have worked very well.

Re:Inreasing the immmersion factor of Half-Life

[Senjutsu]

IIRC, every Zelda game going back to Link to the Past does the same thing.

Actually, the more I think about it, most games put out by Nintendo that involve dialog use the same technique.

Re:Inreasing the immmersion factor of Half-Life

[bluesnowmonkey]

It's strange that very few other games have tried this technique, as it seems to have worked very well.

It's not a game, but the Matrix did this. Neo only speaks a few dozen lines, all of them insubstantial (except for his final monologue).