Half-Life Feature Preview

Ever since Sierra first announced it would bring its popular first-person shooter to the Dreamcast, the list of possible enhancements to and features of the game has been in a state of constant flux. Fortunately, we were able to speak with the game's producer to get the skinny on the enhanced graphics, the multiplayer mode, the rumored Internet play, and the exclusive new single-player adventure, Blue Shift.

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The Dreamcast version of Half-Life will contain the original Half-Life adventure exactly as it was presented on the PC, plus an entirely new single-player adventure, Half-Life: Blue Shift. Both games will be available for play at the start of the game, and neither game will offer a multiplayer mode. Randy Pitchford, the game's producer, comments: "Half-Life for the PC has heavily focused on the single-player experience. That's what's earned Half-Life more than 50 game of the year awards on the PC, and it's what we wanted to give the most attention to." The single-player game in both the original Half-Life adventure and the new Blue Shift episode should be enough to satisfy most fans, but with the Dreamcast versions of both Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament supporting online play, Half-Life's solely single-player experience may leave some Dreamcast owners wanting more. Sierra's answer is two entirely separate Half-Life games - this one without online play, and a new multiplayer-focused title sometime in the future. According to Pitchford, the second Half-Life game will focus entirely on the multiplayer experience and might even contain ports of the PC expansion packs. "We've talked about including Half-Life deathmatch, Team Fortress Classic, Half-Life: Opposing Force deathmatch, and capture the flag, and we may even include one or more of the popular Half-Life mods [to the multiplayer game]," Pitchford said. "If it turns out to be viable, we'd likely also add the entire single-player game of Half-Life: Opposing Force as a bonus."

Half-Life tells the story of the Black Mesa complex - a massive secret government lab built into a plateau in the middle of the desert. In the original Half-Life adventure, you play as Gordon Freeman, a midlevel scientist who's involved in a strange classified experiment that goes awry. This horrible accident causes major damage to the facility and kills several of the staff, but it also appears to open some sort of gate to another dimension, and hordes of terrible alien beings have sprung from the portal and are killing everything in sight. As you progress through the game, the plot becomes more involved, and you learn there's more to the experiments and the Black Mesa complex than you originally thought.

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In the new Blue Shift adventure, you play as Barney the security guard, a regular security guard at the Black Mesa complex who also witnesses the accident and must deal with the alien threat in his own ways. Blue Shift involves more than simply switching skins on the characters - Barney has his own adventure that, while existing in the same time and place as Gordon's, has different objectives and story mechanics. Barney's narrative parallels Gordon's, and in some places the plots of the two adventures cross paths. This, according to Pitchford, allowed the team to create some fun scenarios where the two heroes cooperate. "I think the coolest thing about Blue Shift is that we've been able to toy with the player's experience," Pitchford said. "People who have played Half-Life know certain things about what's taking place and what characters and enemies to expect to encounter. When Blue Shift starts, Barney the character doesn't know any of that. The player, however, knows what Gordon was doing at any given time and will get a kick out of the times when we show Barney what Gordon or any of the other characters are up to."