nixsight

Dear Journal,

Here is my summary of the final act in Half Life 2, as promised. As stated before, J. and I really did believe it was the best way to finish this phenomenal game, and these words fail to do the programmers’ work justice, but here, in my own humble way, I pay tribute to them. Spoilers:

After fighting his way through several hours of carnage, beaten and distressed by the events in which he has become inextricably involved, Gordon Freeman wearily turns his attention to The Citadel. It is time to “get the girl and kill the baddies”.

After some jumping about, and some killing, Freeman finds his way into a kind of coccoon-based monorail which takes him on a journey through the guts of the monolithic building which has cast a shadow over the whole game… and the creators have gone some distance to recreate the feeling of helplessness and mounting fear one would feel once stuck in such a monorail… for nearly an hour and a half, Freeman, and the player looking out through Freeman’s eyes, are taken on a journey down darkened corridors so upsetting, so horrifying, that I barely looked away from the screen to thank J. for any of the three cups of tea he made me during it.

After this macabre vision of an otherworld of almost clinical (if dank) efficiency, complete with, over the course of the journey, rooms full of cloning banks and life-support tanks more vivid and real than the similar ones in The Matrix, massive, truly massive, “Lovecraft” massive halls replete with the various gigantic monsters Gordon has been blowing up and otherwise destroying throughout, several unisex toilets like the one in Ally Mcbeal, and endless banks of cubicles with telemarketers frantically speaking on the phone in broken english, the player really is completely immersed in the life of Gordon Freeman… you really do feel as if you have gone mad with the horror of it all.

So, anyway, all this finishes, and all of Freeman’s weapons get taken away from him. Except one… The gravity gun. This weapon gets supercharged, and Freeman’s body becomes infused with god-like power.

Combine soldiers start to appear, and Freeman raises the gun, aims, fires… The first soldier is lifted high up into the air, and disintegrates, screaming, a fine mist of blood spraying down upon his squad mates. It is truly terrible. Everything slows down. Horrified by what he has done, Freeman drops the gravity gun. As the Combine soldiers raise their guns, you find yourself frantically clicking the “fire” button on the mouse, but there are no weapons. What happens instead, dear Journal, is Freeman raises his hand, palm out, and the Combine soldiers each give a little, tinny gasp and drop to their knees, heads down, shaking with the realisation of the wicked things they have done.

And then… Gordon Freeman speaks. I didn’t believe it at first, but J. assures me it really happened. He simply says, in a low, authoritative voice (I think they used Mel Gibson): “There is another way”.

It is an awesome, risky moment in computer gaming, but I feel the gamble pays off, as for the next twenty minutes or so, Freeman makes his way along the futuristic corridors of The Citadel to his final showdown with the species-traitor Dr Breen, his only weapons inner peace and regret at man’s inhumanity to man. It’s not without challenges… sometimes you find yourself almost overwhelmed by soldiers, and if you strike them down with awe in the wrong place, it can make the thinner platforms and corridors fairly difficult going, let me tell you…! At one point, you come across one of the scary tripod things that you were fighting earlier on, and the palm waving isn’t strong enough… you have to work out for yourself that the secondary fire-mode lets rip with a heavenly choir that brings it to it’s twenty foot high knees!

Finally, you walk calmly into Breen’s inner sanctum, expecting to do some pretty heavy negotiating for the safe passage of your friends and the return of earth to the human race… but when you get there, you are startled to find that Alex and Dr Eli are unshackled, and are staging an intervention. Breen is on his knees in front of them, crying in sorrow and shame for his transgressions. Suddenly he breaks away from the group, and heads towards the roof elevator, swearing to throw himself off to his ultimate death… and it’s your job to get there in time and talk him down, for the good of the human race, and his immortal soul…

I won’t tell you the rest, as that really will spoil the game, dear Journal, but needless to say, it totally delivers the goods.

I can’t wait for Half Life 3!