Slouching Toward Black Mesa

The Escapist this week is themed around stories and storytelling. The article that resonates the most with me is a Tom Rhodes piece called Slouching Toward Black Mesa. It explores the connection between the journey of Gordon Freeman and literary explorations of similar end-of-the-world themes. "Freeman isn't slouching toward Black Mesa, he's converging on the great citadel in the middle of City 17, the Bethlehem of our story. Bethlehem is a holy place in Christian theology, which makes it the perfect location for the beast of Yeats' poem to encroach upon. In City 17, that ideal is flipped on its head, replaced with a center of darkness and powe ... In an even more direct rejection of Yeats, however, the forces in Half-Life 2 are non-supernatural. It continues the series' theme, man as a force in this world; whether for good or ill is his choice. It is this choice, this need to carve out our own destiny and define ourselves based on our own hopes, dreams and fears that makes us human. So what is slouching toward Bethlehem? We are." The issue also features an article entitled The Ending Has Not Yet Been Written, about the never-ending story of Massively Multiplayer Online Games.

Comments

I don't buy it

[stoolpigeon]

The tie to Yeats is so loose it isn't funny. Yeats was working with themes common to humanity and so of course there will be some overlap - but the entire thing seems to argue against itself at least half the time. And the end? Didn't even make sense. So I'll give it points for bringing attention to great poetry - but that's about it.

Re:I don't buy it

[reverseengineer]

Yeah, the essay tries way too hard to shoehorn Gordon Freeman into the notion of the "rough beast" of "The Second Coming." Now, one nice thing about a silent protagonist in a video game is that all manner of feelings and motivation can be projected onto Freeman by the player. Perhaps Freeman is a bit bemused and cynical about the adoration heaped on him by the human resistance, knowing himself to be the puppet of larger forces. Comparing Freeman to the sphinx-like juggernaut of "The Second Coming" is stretching it a bit though.

If anything, the point of this essay would have been made far more effectively by comparing Freeman to a more traditional heroic/messianic figure. The apocalyse Yeats describes is not about the final triumph of good over evil, but the end and beginning of historical eras, punctuated by a moment of destruction and revelation. The "rough beast" isn't interested in saving anyone, as evidenced by its "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun." It is a god of destruction, one that could be described as great and terrible, but not evil as Yeats saw it, since the annihiliation would precipitate rebirth. If there is a character in the Half-Life series that resembles this, it might be the G-Man, who is clearly willing to spread chaos and destruction to achieve his (or his employers') mysterious goals.

Gordon Freeman, on the other hand, hews more closely to the epic hero type in literature- a comparison to Beowulf, whose story is more about saving innocent people from monsters, would have been fitting. YIt unfortunately seems though that the author of this essay got fixated somehow on comparing Half-Life 2 to this Yeats poem, and instead of abandoning the notion, decided to keep trying to make it work.

Ugh

[Fallingcow]

This sounds like the kind of crap I might come up with were I to use my knowledge of lit-crit terminology and thinking to make up deliberately-stupid but syntactically- and factually-correct bunch of bullshit for my own amusement.

Want me to write something like this holding up K-Fed's song "PopoZão" as an intelligent bit of verse, in the vein of, say, Lindsay's "Congo"? I can. It won't be true, but it'll sound as good as this crap.

(don't get me wrong--I think that the Half-Life series has given us a damned-good balance of action and story, and is probably the best "pure" FPS series in existence. This article, however, is stupid.)

Pretentious

[RogueyWon]

Ugh, this kind of pretentious clap-trap illustrates perfectly what I found objectionable about Half-Life 2.

Now, don't get me wrong, I still think the original Half-Life was one of the greatest fpses ever made. Sure, it's not aged all that well and feels a little primative now, but compared to the competition at the time (basically Unreal and Quake 2), it was superb. It had a plot that made sense, an environment that actually felt plausible and AI which, while relying heavily on scripting, *felt* convincing and realistic to the player.

Half-Life 2, however, left me utterly cold. It reminded me of nothing more than the pretentious student-videos I'd had to sit through at University, put together by people who thought that "OMG SILENT MOVIE" or "OMG BLACK AND WHITE" were original, ground breaking concepts, never thought of before.

The biggest problem I had with HL2's storytelling was that it took the technical limitations imposed by the general state of the genre at the time of HL1 and made them into supposed virtues. The biggest obstacle to immersion for me was the "mute protagonist". I'm sorry, but this is absolute bollocks. We're supposed to be playing *Doctor* Freeman here. I've spent my share of time in academic circles and I have never known a PhD who could stay silent for more than 10 seconds at a time. However, we are supposed to believe that this mute, inexpressive guy whose visage is largely obscured by a bulky hazmat suit is some kind of inspirational resistance leader? Pull the other one. He's also got this strange, stuck-firmly-in-the-freaky-valley woman who obsesses over him and who seems to be on the verge of orgasm every time he stares blankly at her or hits a bit of the scenery with a crowbar. Immersion by this point is so badly blown as to be irretrievable.

People talk about *proper* cut-scenes destroying immersion, but frankly, compared to the nasty, cut-price story-telling in HL2, the classic "Mark Hamill at his worst" cutscenes of the Wing Commander 3 era are masterpieces. I fail to see what is so great about being able to run around during vital plot exposition, to the point that half the time you don't even realise it's happening until you've missed half of it.

Finally... this idea that the back-plot can be filled in through newspaper cuttings and the like? Fine... that can work. If done properly. Unfortunately, HL2 didn't have anything like enough of it and finding a good chunk of it involved spending way too much time staring at every inch of wall in the game in the hope of finding something relevant. I found HL2's contemporary, Doom 3, did this whole business much better, with the audio-logs system.

Re:Pretentious

[The MAZZTer]

Valve could have made Gordon speak in 1997 with the original Half-Life if they had wanted to. I like to think they chose to keep Gordon's character largely vague to improve immersion... you ARE Gordon Freeman. If they had better defined Gordon's character and given him a voice, he's just another character who you happen to control.

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion about Alyx. The only weird parts I see about it are that Gordon used to work with Eli, and Eli has aged 10 years but Gordon hasn't since GMan did some trickery to seemingly move him 10 years into the future without aging. Maybe she has a crush on him, I dunno, but it's not quite like you're implying. Have you tried HL2 Episodes 1 and 2? One of the things Valve said they didn't like about HL2 was that you didn't get to fight alongside an NPC partner much. In Episodes 1 and 2 you do this a lot (and mostly with Alyx) so they had the opportunity to flesh out her character more. You should at least give the episodes a try. I enjoyed them. And if you don't like the idea of spending so much time with Alyx, it's not for the whole of each episode, and they are short games.

The mechanic where the player is always in control and there are never out-of-body cutscenes or cutscenes which remove player control (unless it's plausible, IE the teleporter cutscene in HL2) was an important one to Valve. If you would rather have a cutscene where the game takes control away, you are welcome to remove your hands from your keyboard and mouse... but really, some exposition is needed in the world of Half-Life.

There aren't many out of the way plot details hidden in HL2, and I'm again surprised that you think they would be essential. All of the essential plot details are conveyed via cutscene / expository dialog. When I was playing through HL2 for the first time I don't recall ever feeling confused or not knowing why I was supposed to do something. Any out of the way bits (such as newspaper clippings) are merely extras designed to reward players who take the time to look for such things.

I suppose recording of plot dialog might have been helpful (Valve, there's still time to put a new feature in the HEV Suit!) but the plot isn't THAT complex. You have three factions... resistance, combine, and xen aliens. They all try to kill each other. You have to make sure the resistance comes out on top. See that tall spire? That's where you're going eventually. Other than this, HL2 is largely linear. You just push forward until you find your objective.

I actually am surprised with all your nitpicking at Half-Life 2 you don't seem to point out one of the more unbelievable aspects in both it and the prequel... how the hell is a PhD guy better with such a wide array of weapons than the US Army? Here is a case where there's a tradeoff of plausibility for fun. Half-Life would have been a short game if you couldn't use weapons well.

Re:Pretentious

[ZorbaTHut]

I always figured Gordon Freeman a bit differently.

He doesn't talk, and he never does anything particularly scientific. He's mute out of confusion. He's been dropped into this world, completely out of nowhere, and while there are people claiming to know him, people claiming to have been friends with him for decades, he, like us, has absolutely no memory of any of it.

He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know what he's doing here. All he knows is that he's trying to survive, and things try to kill him, and . . . well, he could just walk away, right? But he never had a chance to get out during the events of Half-Life 1, and in some ways this entire mess is his fault, and, well, these people are relying on him.

So he soldiers on. But he still doesn't know any of the people, events, or places that this is happening in. So if he opens his mouth one time, people might realize he's not actually the person they think he is. So he keeps his mouth shut, and somehow things seem to work out, everyone always knows where he has to go next, and nobody suspects a thing.

Except, of course, for the G-Man, who knows everything that's happened, and knows where Gordon came from, and knows what Gordon is sent to do.

Is that all really subtle enough that people are missing it? It seems pretty clear from the beginning and ending of most of the games that, whatever Gordon is, he's certainly not just some random dude with a PhD. The sheer existence of the G-Man proves that. I'm honestly rather impressed that Valve's kept it up this long without spilling the beans. I honestly think that Gordon is just as in-the-dark about the world of Half-Life as we are.

Re:Pretentious

[htnprm]

"You mean you don't fill in Gordon's lines yourself?"

LOL. Doesn't everyone else nod with the mouse every time Alyx asks you a question? :-)

Re:Pretentious

[mrchaotica]

I'm honestly rather impressed that Valve's kept it up this long without spilling the beans.

Everything you said made perfect sense except for that line. Not only do we and Gordon not know who Gordon is, but Valve doesn't either! This makes it rather easy for them not to "spill the beans" -- there aren't any to spill in the first place!