Chapters and Story
Hazard Course
"Hello and welcome to the Black Mesa Hazard Course, where you'll be trained in the use of a hazardous environment suit."
When opening a new game in Half-Life, you are given the option to play the Hazard Training Course. This is
basically a tutorial level that serves as an in-universe training certification for Gordon.
It's a bit of an odd chapter,
most of Valves design principles focus on tutorializing the player as they play. They normally don't make a tutorial level, because
every level serves as a tutorial. In fact, this chapter spends a good portion of the time teaching players features that don't show up
until half-way through the game or the final chapters.
So when you start the training, you find a hologram of a woman in an HEV Suit. This is Gina Cross, and she stars in the co-op expansion "Half-Life: Decay". She is also the voice of the facilities tram-system and was originally going to be Gordons wife. Supposedly Half-Life was going to be like Resident Evil, where you could choose between a male and female character for the campaign.
I did a paper in college on Holograms, or Holography to be specific. My goal was to find applications for Holograms in a museum, where exhibitors would interact with holograms of items that were too fragile to be put out on display. It goes without saying that we have yet to have holograms like Half-Life. Most holograms you see at theme parks that look like this aren't actual holography, they are just an illusion where an image is casted on a piece of glass. Not to get into specifics, but holograms are 3D, not 2D. Animated ones are typically made on LCD displays. Currently there is a patent for a device that would use dust in the air to create a volumetric display, but I'm not sure how far we have gone with that.
So she talks for awhile and you are introduced the H.E.V. suit, but I'll go more into that in later chapters. She teaches you the basics of jumping, climbing, ducking, all the while you are being observed by Scientists. I find it really funny how later on they make take damage from high distances, steam, fire, toxic gas, and they even have a firing range. Again, this is supposed to be some kind of certification for Gordons job. Does that mean all the scientists have to break their ankles and recieve third-degree burns before being authorized to work in a lab? Do the scientists regularly fire guns in the office?
I'm not a scientist, but the only thing similar to this is the cybersecurity training they made me do for a couple of jobs. Though to be fair, most of my jobs have been remote. Maybe if I worked in-office, I would have to prove I can do a hurdle before working at my desk.
Anyways, this was a brief run-through of this tutorial. It's not at all important outside of how ridiculous it is compared to the rest of the game. Let's move on to the actual game.
Chapter 1: Black-Mesa Inbound
"Morning Mr. Freeman, looks like you're running late."
Welcome to Black-Mesa, a research facility which is basically Area 51 in the Half-Life universe. the game starts you on a tram ride, showing off a lot of the setting. There are giant pits, missiles, robots, and military vehicles across the facility. You see a guard knocking on a door, other scientists doing their day to day jobs, and guys on forklifts that don't show up anywhere else in the game.
This part is also meant to display the technical prowess of the Gold-Source Engine. Every area has some scripted event happening, leaving always something for the player to look at. There are even two animated mechanical arms that interact with eachother, which was a big deal back in the day. Nowadays, we still have games that try to hide interactions between two animated objects because of how difficult it is to make it seem natural. The main wow-factor for Half-Life is that it is all running in real-time, meaning that the player is still able to move, look at, or ignore any of the things provided.
I wasn't alive at the release of Half-Life and this intro is still prettty impressive to me, especially considering what games were like back in the day.
We also get information about the player, Gordon Freeman. He is 27, has a PHD in theoretical physiccs, and is a Level 3 Research Associate Scientist. I think that last part about him having a PHD and having an associate role is the most realistic thing about the game. It isn't said in the game, but the manuel clarifies some stuff about Gordon. He wrote a thesis on the teleporting matter and he briefly lived in Austria to conduct experiments in Innsbruck. He later gets hired at Black-Mesa because his mentor from MIT (Dr. Kleiner) offered him the job. That is also realistic, and I can't help but envy Gordons networking skills. He is one the most well known silent protagonists in gaming, and yet he is able to land jobs through sheer charisma.
Another fun fact about Gordon that will you never see in the game or the art, is that he has a ponytail!
Anyways, he is heading from Level 3 dormitories to Sector C test labs. Actually I never thought about it, but does Black-Mesa designate dormitories based on security clearance? Like if you were the administrator of Black-Mesa, would there be a clear difference in quality regarding your dormitory or is it purely for security reasons? Either way, getting a promotion must suck, you probably have to move across the facility with all your belongings. Okay, I'm sorry, let's actually move on.
The tram stops at Sector C, and a guard greets Gordon. This is where you find out you're late to work. Shit.
Chapter 2: Anomalous Materials
"They're waiting for you Gordon...in the test chamberrr."
After a long commute, Gordon has made it to the front desk of Sector C test labs. The guard says he had messages for you, but his computer crashed and "he's still trying to find his files" while he stares at a blue screen. He also says that there were problems in the test chamber too and that you should head to work asap. There are a couple things you can do before the suit that I love. You can turn on the emergency alarms behind his desk and get yelled at. The player can also use a computer in the corner that a scientist will also yell at you for using.
The player can interact with the NPC's as well. Usually the scientists get annoyed and tell you to leave them alone. The guards are bros, they just promise to buy a beer after work.
This chapter has a lot of little interactive elements like that scattered around the lab. You can turn off the lights to mess with scientists, ruin a casserole in the microwave, and bother people by trying to open the bathroom stalls.
This is all for the sake of immersion. By making the environment react to trivial player actions it makes everything feel so much more real. I also like to credit sections like this for preparing the players playstyle. These are areas that reward the player for exploring and experimenting with small interactables around a level, which in turn supports the idea of them doing so in future levels.
Something interesting to note here is that we see a mysterious man in a suit arguing with a scientist. He is never explicitly named in game, but he is called the gman in the
credits. We did technically see him for a brief moment in the previous chapter, but this is the players true introduction to him. Some people have tried to translate what the mumbling voice lines
are saying but nobody can make it out. We do learn more in this chapter that points towards this little scene. But that's for later, we need to hurry up and get to work!
"Why do we all have to wear these ridiculous ties!?"
Like any scientist, Gordon wears a giant suit of armor like doom guy. It is called the Hazardous Enviornment Suit or the H.E.V. MK IV. It has a voice that monitors both the users health and energy. It claims its meant to protect you from hazardous enviornment conditions. It is meant to protect Gordon from radioactive materials, even though the suit lacks a helmet. The original suits designer is never mentioned, but we do know that Dr. Keller from Half-Life: Decay was involved in the MK V prototype testing (unknown if this is the same MK V from HL2).
"Morning Mr. Freeman, looks like you're in the barrel today."
After heading down an elevator, you keep walking until you enter a room where 3 scientists face the player. They explain the sample is being sent to the test chamber and that they are pushing the machine to 105%..something. The scientist says that its a bit of a gamble and your boss, the adminstrator, wants conclusive analysis on the sample. Perhaps that had something to do with the Gman earlier? I always liked how creepy these 3 are, just standing there waiting for you. It's like them saying "hurry up and get the game started!"
In the next room, a computer explodes and two scientists run to it. "What the hell is going on with our equipment?" and "It wasn't mean to do this in the first place!" And then as you continue, you meet two other scientists. They talk about how this test isn't the standard work Gordon does, and they are worried about something called a resonance cascade. This all serves as a slow build up to the inevitable, you just know something bad is going to happen once the test starts.
"Gordon doesn't need to hear all this, he's a highly trained professional!"
Here we are, the test chamberrrr! What you are looking at is the antimass spectrometer. What the hell does it do? Well a regular mass spectrometer measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions by ionizing it? I don't fully get it, but I guess we are measuring antimass or antimatter? How did we determine something has antimass? I feel like that alone is kind of a crazy breakthrough, but this is secret government stuff we are looking at. Gordon is only an associate after all.
The big moment comes after you turn on the machine. The scientists still do some bantering over a speaker. Everything still seems tense and the scientists act professional, but you just know every one of them knows this is a bad idea. Finally, you have to push a cart holding the specimen into the machine. The specimen is a big yellow crystal, where did it come from? Who knows. We just have to push it into the big yellow beam. What can go wrong?
"IT'S NOT SHUTTING DOWN!"
Everything goes wrong! Explosions, lasers, scientists die, and you're teleported to alien worlds!
Chapter 3: Unforeseen Consequences
Chapter 4: Office Complex
Chapter 5: "We've Got Hostiles"
Chapter 6: Blast Pit
Chapter 7: Power Up
Chapter 8: On A Rail
Chapter 9: Apprehension
Chapter 10: Residue Processing
Chapter 11: Questionable Ethics
Chapter 12: Surface Tension
Chapter 13: "Forget About Freeman!"
Chapter 14: Lambda Core
Chapter 15: Xen
Chapter 16: Gonarch's Lair
Chapter 17: Interloper
Chapter 18: Nihilanth
Endgame
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