Dustin Jethro

RHET 1312 22
Professor Cox
14 March 2016
Half-Life: The Pinnacle of Storytelling in First Person Video Games, and the
Reason that other Games have Emulated its Approach and Failed to Capture
the same Appeal
Half-Life, a first person shooter game released by Valve Softworks in
1998, was met with critical praise for its fast-paced gameplay, cutting-edge
graphical capabilities, and most importantly, its innovative method to
storytelling. Half-Life is a game that pioneered interactive storytelling in first
person shooters, and is the one that has done it best in the past eighteen
years.
At the time of its release, storytelling in first person shooter games was
restricted to strings of text to provide the background and objectives for the
player, as in Marathon, released by Bungie Softworks in 1994, and simple
lines of text, such as Demons on Mars, go kill them, as in DOOM (1993),
and Demons killed your pet rabbit, kill them back, as in DOOM II (1994).
Half-Life flipped the script from the player being the single driving force in
the world (save the Phobos base from the aliens in Marathon, kill the demons
in DOOM), to a method of storytelling in which the major events of the story

happen around the player. The game is structured in that all background and
the current situation is told through the environment and various nonplayable characters that the player interacts with throughout the game. One
of the most popular examples of this is at the beginning of the games 11th
chapter, Questionable Ethics. In this chapter, after exiting a vent shaft, the
player comes across a caged room filled with dog kennels and the games
Houndeye enemy. This revealed to the player that the catastrophic event
that occurred at the beginning of the game (which triggered an alien
invasion) was not the first time that the games fictional science corporation,
Black Mesa, had come into contact with these aliens.

(Image from the chapter Questionable Ethics, Half-Life)

Another noteworthy thing to mention is that Half-Life was one of the
first games that did not rely on cutscenes (breaks in gameplay to develop

plot points or to point out relevant information) to tell its story. From the first
moment of the game on the areas tram system, to the final moment
escaping from the alien world, control is never taken from the player. The
creators of the game simply lock off areas until the non-playable characters
have finished conversations to give the player background on the events of
the story and what is happening that the player has not seen.
Since its inception in 1998, Half-Life is the only first person shooter to
portray an interactive story where the main characters growth and actions
are not the central element of the story, many games have attempted to
emulate the same sort of interactive adventure approach to storytelling,
and many have failed. Games such as Gone Home (2013), The Stanley
Parable (2011, 2013), The Witness (2016), and Dear Esther (2012) have been
released since then, and have since been dubbed with the term Walking
Simulator, because the main gameplay element revolves around
exploration of the environment created, as opposed to combat or completing
objectives. Games such as these can range from comedic effect (The Stanley
Parable) to the Myst style of approach to discover the secrets of an
environment, albeit minus puzzles (Gone Home, Dear Esther). These games
may have had well-received stories, but achieved nowhere near the same
praise and reception as Half-Life is because of the lack of a focus on anything
other than exploration, puzzles, and story.

The following is an excerpt from Walking Simulators and the Theory of

Fun from Not Your Mamas Gamer, in response to the book A Theory of Fun
by Raph Koster:
Often, when people talk about walking simulators, theyre talking about
largely story-driven games, games about discovery, games that might be
written off by some as not games at all due to lack of combat or other more
traditional game system mechanics Gone Home is a frequent mention
when walking simulators come up, because in Gone Home the player walks
around, finds items, looks at them, and pieces together a story. The only real
interaction or game-movement is moving, hence the reference as a walking
simulator. The phrase, however, is often used in a derogatory fashion, as a
more recent take on the gatekeeping discussions of what is and isnt a game
(and thus, who is and isnt a gamer). Whats the point of a walking simulator,
detractors huff. All you do is move around.
But Gone Home, like many games categorized as walking simulators, offers
something that cant really be achieved in other forms of media. Here, its
the experience of discovering your familys emotional turmoil during a yearlong absence, and further, its a strong metaphor for being outside an
emotional experience of becoming that can be difficult to understand for
someone who hasnt been through it. As with stories, the player (reader) can
find cognates with the foreign experience within their own experiences,
but an interactive experience does this in a different way than does a book
or story. (Karabinus)

And an excerpt from PC Gamers review of Dear Esther (2012 release):

It began life as a Half-Life 2 mod that preferred story to shooting. It was a
slow-paced experience more than a game, praised for the way it adapted
first-person exploration to tell a complex tale of grief, illness and loss. Its
hour-long playing time and experimental ambitions were a natural fit for a
mod, but it remains mesmerising as a paid-for title. (Thursten)
As of November 2008, Half-Life had sold 9.3 million copies over
physical media, not counting Valves own digital distribution service for video
games, Steam (which could possibly add two or three million to the sales
figures) (Remo, 1). Why, then, have games such as the ones discussed prior
not been met with the same reception? This could be due to multiple factors.
Valve Softworks, before it became the front-runner for digital games
distribution on the PC, was relatively unknown, as is described by this review
of Half-Life from IGN, posted shortly after the games release:
You've got to hand it to these guys. Valve Software is a start-up, a
relative unknown, with no track and, really, no business making such a
mighty game. But mighty it is, the best single player shooter I've ever
played. (IGN)
Other factors to consider are the ways that the games industry
has grown and evolved to include more than just the standard computer
nerd, to include nearly everyone who owns a smartphone or a computer. Yet,
while Half-Life appealed to the standard late 90s FPS junkie (fast-paced

action, run-and-gun fun, and mazelike levels), Gone Home appeals to the
casual gamer, who is not into fast action and blowing up badass aliens like a
badass space marine. The reason seems to be that, while Half-Life combines
aspects of popular games at the time, such as fast action, brilliant artificial
intelligence, and difficult puzzles, while Gone Home is simply an explorative
adventure where the player pieces the story together. However, this is the
same situation with Half-Life. The player is required to figure out the story of
the game for his/herself.
Half-Life was released in 1998, yet it still continues to be praised for its
story, excellent visuals (for the time), and fast-paced gameplay. The game
required the player to piece together the story for his/herself. Since then,
other games have tried to emulate the same style of storytelling, yet none
have received the same amount of praise and fanfare as Half-Life.

Sources:

Half-Life. Valve Softworks. 1998. Video Game.

Remo, Chris. "Valve's Lifetime Retail Sales For Half-Life Franchise." Analysis:
Valve's Lifetime Retail Sales For Half-Life, Counter-Strike Franchises.
Gamasutra, 03 Dec. 2008. Web. 09 Mar.
2016.<http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/112269/Analysis_Valves_Lifeti
me_Retail_Sales_For_

HalfLife_CounterStrike_Franchises.php>.

Karabinus, Alisha. "Walking Simulators and the Theory of Fun." Not Your
Mama's Gamer. Not Your

Mama's Gamer, 20 Jan. 2016. Web. 12 Mar.

2016. <http://www.nymgamer.com/?p=12617>.
"Half-Life Reivew - IGN." Half-Life Reivew - IGN. IGN, 25 Nov. 1998. Web. 12
Mar. 2016. <http://www.ign.com/articles/1998/11/26/half-life-5>.
Thursten, Chris. "Dear Esther Review." Dear Esther Review - PC Gamer. PC
Gamer, 12 Feb. 2012.

Web. 13

Mar. 2016.

<http://www.pcgamer.com/dear-esther-review/>.