First, some background: I first became aware of PC gaming in 2012 (15yrs after HL1, 7yrs after HL2). I played both games back-to-back and then later replayed both separately.
There’s so much to be said about these two games, but I’ll sum up my feelings in a few bullet points:
- HL1 is more thematically unified. It plays true to its Sci-Fi & Die Hard roots up to the point of campiness, but that fits rather well for a game whose protagonist is effectively a nerdy Doom Marine – more a force-of-nature embodiment of survival than traditional hero.
- HL2, on the other hand, feels weighed-down by this legacy. It wants to tell a serious story about a charismatic freedom-fighter. That’s an aesthetic which clashes terribly with HL1’s mute, stoic survivalist.
- HL1 has a better core gameplay loop. It plays to its strengths: gunplay & level exploration. Exposition & puzzling are almost always delivered through these mediums wherever possible. Those few chapters which depart from this philosophy (On a Rail, Xen) are the weakest in the whole game as a result.
- HL2, by contrast, seems almost insecure. It only trusts the player to stick with the core gameplay-loop for a few chapters at most before pivoting into yet another gimmick – almost all of which (barring the gravity gun sequence) feel painfully drawn out:
- Water Hazard: Boating
- Highway 17: Driving
- Sandtraps: Physics “Puzzling” + “Platforming”
- Nova Prospekt: Wave-Based Point Defense
What do you guys think? There’s a lot worth unpacking here which I couldn’t quite articulate. What are your takeaways?
Oh, especially at the time. At least society had grown a little by the time they decided to make Alyx the main character of a game, and so criticisms on changing the main character were more subdued than they likely would have been in 2004. I can hardly imagine the screeds of text that would have been written online about “BUT WHAT ABOUT GORDON?”
Also, its interesting to think, with a new main character, they could have revealed a lot less about what was going on in the story and kept a little bit more of the mystique that infected the original.
Honestly, it’s the same thing with Portal. Part of the reason the original works so well isn’t just the unexpected dark comedy tropes, but also that there’s still a lot of mystery about the place you’re in and why it is the way it is. Leads to lots of fan speculation, which is people thinking about and talking about your game and getting other people to buy it and play it. After the introduction of Cave Johnson in Portal 2, we know a lot more about the place, and it begins to lose the intrigue that made it such an interesting place to explore. It’s probably a good idea that Portal 2 is the end of that story, because I don’t think there’s a whole lot more interesting to explore there.