- carolynmichelle
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I'm proud of many things. I'm proud of having graduated from Occidental College, where I studied English and theater with a healthy side of cultural anthropology. (Naturally, I'm making the big bucks now as a result!) I'm proud of having spent four years teaching English to teenagers. But mostly, I'm proud of my keenly developed ability to identify voice actors in video games. I mean, how many people, when playing Half-Life 2, heard Eli Vance's voice for the first time and thought to themselves, "Oh, snap! That's Robert Guillaume! The dude who played Benson on Benson, and later was on Sports Night, the best network television comedy of the past ten years!" Maybe, maybe a scant fifteen percent of players. And I was one of them!
Even my talent has its limits. I couldn't pinpoint the voice behind Dr. Breen, whose visage dominates screens throughout City 17 and constantly bombards its residents with pro-Combine propaganda. I finally looked it up on imdb and saw that it was The Greatest American Hero's Robert Culp. Oh, I felt like such a fool!
Why does it matter who did the voice acting? Because Half-Life 2 and its follow-ups have, in my mind, one of the best, most well-written stories in video game history. It's a story that doesn't spell everything out for you, but thrusts you into its world and hints at the state of affairs through little details--things glimpsed through doorways, a quick word between a father and daughter. It respects your intelligence enough to do that. And crucial to bringing this story to life is the superb voice acting. I don't know just how much money Valve has made off of these games, but I hope it's a whole mess, because, to paraphrase the brilliant last episode of Sports Night, "Anyone who can't make money off of writing, voice acting and, oh yeah, awesome gameplay like this should get out of the moneymaking business."
See, I think there's one thing that all good storytelling has in common, and it's the one thing that the stories of most games are severely lacking. Humanity. And Half-Life 2 may or may not have it, but it sure comes closer to having it than most video games.
"This brings me to the one note of disappointment I must echo from our Benefactors. . .How could one man have slipped through your force's fingers time and time again? How is it possible? This is not some agent provocateur or highly trained assassin we are discussing. Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physicist who had hardly earned the distinction of his Ph.D. at the time of the Black Mesa Incident. . .The man you have consistently failed to slow, let alone capture, is by all standards simply that--an ordinary man." --Dr. Breen
Our Benefactors. Our Benefactors. You hear that phrase time and time again from the Combine's human mouthpiece, Dr. Breen, as you fight your way through City 17. What a perfect little detail. The Combine do not attempt to rule over humanity through brute force alone. No, they take control of the media and attempt to exert psychological dominance as well, trying to keep people docile by positioning themselves as benefactors of humanity. How much more interesting than your typical videogame alien takeover. And fighting this threat is Gordon Freeman, no military-trained supersoldier or badass secret agent. He's just an ordinary man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and so, naturally, became a hero.
"Far distant eyes look out through yours."
"Could you but see the eyes inside your own, the minds in your mind, you would see how much we share."
"How many are there in you? Whose hopes and dreams do you encompass?" --Vortigaunt comments about Gordon Freeman
Of course, Gordon isn't entirely ordinary. He's unusual in the way that so many video game protagonists--Mario and Link and Samus and GTA III Guy and so on--are unusual: he doesn't speak. (I don't count "It's-a-me, Mario!" and the like as speaking.) The benefit of this is that, as the vortigaunt quotes above suggest, it lets each of us who plays the game project ourselves more fully onto him. We all look out through Gordon Freeman's eyes. He encompasses the hopes and dreams of all of us, as well as those in City 17 who have placed all their hopes and dreams on his shoulders. The drawback is that, well, it's kinda weird for a guy not to say anything. But that's okay. The people around him do more than enough talking.
There are moments in Half-Life 2 which are among the most human moments ever to occur in a video game, in my opinion. A particularly good example are the moments shared between Eli Vance and his daughter Alyx. They are fleeting moments--they don't drag the game down, and before long you're back in the thick of the action--but they tell you everything you need to know about how much these two people mean to each other. That's effective storytelling. And it makes all the action feel like it matters.
Speaking of Alyx, what a terrific character. I agree with Jeff in GameSpot's Orange Box review when he writes, "Most of her speech seems to follow the formula of 'Hey, Gordon, look at this [key item you need to interact with to proceed]' or 'Whoa, look at this [scripted sequence of things falling down or exploding]!'" And yet, despite this somewhat robotic behavior, I still think she is one of the most human-seeming companions a game has ever provided. She's strong and brave and warm and funny. And it's also worth noting that while she's beautiful, it's not in some cartoony teenage male fantasy sort of way, but in an entirely believable and realistic way.
And while, for instance, the soldiers in Halo 3 seem to have no shortage of wisecracks, despite being engaged in a struggle which ostensibly could mean the end of the human race, the people you meet in Half-Life 2 and its sequels at least seem to take their predicament somewhat seriously.
"Tell me, Doctor Freeman, if you can: you have destroyed so much... what is it, exactly, that you have created? Can you name even one thing?! I thought not." -Dr. Breen
But let's get back to Gordon himself. If he chose to respond to Dr. Breen's question, I think the response would have been clear: Hope. Hope, which is perhaps the most dangerous thing to the Combine, which is perhaps the most dangerous thing in the oppressed to any oppressing force. And yet, despite the fact that people see a hope for freedom in Gordon, despite the fact that his last name is Freeman and that he is frequently referred to as "the One Free Man," Gordon Freeman isn't free at all. He seems entirely beholden to the will of the G-Man, the creepy, mysterious figure in a suit who we finally start to learn tantalizing bits about in Half-Life 2: Episode Two. (Incidentally, in addition to advancing the story in some very cool ways and setting things up perfectly for an explosive finale in Episode Three, Episode Two is also easily the best the series has yet seen in terms of gameplay. It's short, sure, but it's also one of the best shooters of the year.)
In my mind, Gordon's personal struggle for freedom is what really makes him interesting, and I also think that his story must end with him not only earning freedom for humanity from the Combine, but also, freedom for himself. Here's hoping we get to kick the G-Man's ass in Episode Three.
I think video games still have a very long way to go in terms of trying to emulate realistic human behavior. But I think Half-Life 2 and its follow-up episodes are an important step in the right direction.
Long live Gordon Freeman.
- Posted Nov 4, 2007 12:42 am PT
- Category: Games
- 23 Comments
23 Comments