Half-Life 2, part 1: WELCOME TO NEWARK

[camwyn]

So.

I promised a while ago that I'd write up my progress through HL 2. I'll be heading out to the store soon to see if I can scare up any extra Memorial Day goodies, but right now I wanted to get this in before I forgot.

The game starts with possibly the single freakiest 'welcome to the game' sequence I've ever seen. Namely: the G-Man, about TWO INCHES FROM YOUR EYE, telling you to 'Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman, rise and shine'. GAH. I don't even deal well with humans being that close to my face when I'm waking up- and you can't tell me that guy's human! Anyway, you get his rambling about how things are different and he didn't wake you up earlier because someone would've handed you your big orange butt on a plate (basically- I mean, he uses more handwavey words, but it's down to the same thing in the end). You get a weird little vision of the anti-mass spectrometer and then of something that looks like a cross between a Jetsons-approved means of transportation and certain scenes from The Matrix. Lots of moving pod doodahs, some on rails, some hanging on the walls.

Then, just before you can figure out what the hell any of that means, the G-Man- who my Gordon tends to call 'the blue-suited bastard', since nobody ever used the term G-Man in his presence- tells you it's time to wake up and smell the ashes, and you wake up on the PATH train into Newark, New Jersey.

No, seriously. Gordon finds himself on a grubby, nasty-looking train that resembles a city subway car more than it does the tram from the original Half-Life, and the view you get out the windows rather resembles the approach to Newark on either the PATH train or New Jersey Transit on its way into Newark Broad Street. I recognize that no city looks very good when you're coming into it via train, but honestly, this is the same sort of grubby. The trash, the dispirited buildings, the other trains that you pass...

Oh wait! There's people on the train car! Yep, you have two companions on this ride, and true to, oh, every PATH ride into Newark ever, they're just sort of looking like they'd rather be somewhere else. If you get up and go over to them, one of them will comment that he didn't see you get on. The other one will tell you that it's his third transfer this year. They're both wearing dark blue jumpsuits, which is almost never a good sign unless you're specifically playing a video game starring janitors. And since you're not, well, there you go.

The train stops, and the guys get off and you get off, and AUGH WHAT THE HELL BRIGHT LIGHT IN MY FACE. When you get your vision back there's this hovering robot doodah looking at you, but it turns and goes away. I had a brief image of Gordon being chased by paparazzi when that happened, but hah, no, that's not what was going on- anyway, that wasn't the most important thing, not by half. The fact that some guy in a Steve Jobs turtleneck is talking to the entire station on a big giant screen at the far end of the tracks, now... that's never good.

There's a saying of some kind to the effect of 'if they have to put the adjective in the name, it probably isn't true'. It's usually used to refer to stuff like 'Honest Al's House of Discount Airships' or 'Pope Innocent' or whatever. Me, I'm looking at speechboy up there (yes, I know who it is) and thinking that any speech that ends in 'Welcome to City 17... it's safer here' is pretty nearly the mother of all bad signs.

So is the fact that everybody who works here is wearing a Storm Trooper mask. And they've got one of the vortigaunts doing janitorial duty. And the storm troopers are hassling one of the new arrivals, and- oh, really, it's pretty much Welcome to Sucksville, and when I sent Gordon over to talk to the OH LOOK YET ANOTHER JUMPSUIT OF OPPRESSION, she mentioned 'Overwatch' stopping their train in the woods- do I have to draw a picture here? Congratulations, Gordon. Newark was an icky place before, but it's a flat-out, full-bore dystopia now.

I will take a moment here to note that while there are more signs with Cyrillic letters on them than you normally see in Newark, and no signs in Spanish at all, when one would expect those in Newark, nobody in this friggin' place has even the slightest sign of a non-American accent. (At least, not yet. Yes, I know about Father Grigori. Hush.) It is possible to get through Newark without running into a Spanish speaker, but for a game supposedly set in Eastern Europe, it sure does bear all the hallmarks of being located somewhere in America. I'm just going to assume there's a heavily Russian or Slavic section of Newark and that that's what we're moving through.

Anyway. Once you get into the room with the train schedules, there's other people. One guy says they put something in the water to make you forget, one guy's babbling about how you never see the trains arriving from the other cities, one guy's upset about them taking his suitcase, a couple of guys are talking about how Steve Jobs Turtleneck Man is 'Dr. Breen', and... well, you can't really do anything until you go over to where the Homeland Security guys in storm trooper masks are (sorry- they're standing around in a public area, they're looking vaguely bored for guys in storm trooper masks, and they're fussing over people's suitcases). There's a really neat looking train through the one open gate at the end of all of this, all skinny and shiny and black and labeled "NOVA PROSPEKT". Me, I'm thinking "ESSEX COUNTY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY" or possibly "NORTHERN STATE PRISON". But you can't get through that gate, because: COP. And then: OTHER COP, who wants you to come with him.

We will now pause for the Abner Louima references to get out of my system.

Okay, well, anyway, I'd been told to look around and talk to people wherever possible before getting to the PEOPLE ARE SHOOTING AT ME part of the game, so despite being herded along by a storm trooper cop, I had Gordon peek through one of the doors as he was going down the corridor. Not that this helped much, but it did set the atmosphere, because the dude in there was all "OMGWTF MISTAKE MISTAKE MISTAKE" before the storm trooper cops blocked me out. When Snarly the Cop opened the door and ordered Gordon to go in, there was a brief moment of 'ahahaha no', because:

1. Barbershop-looking (or maybe dentist-looking) chair in a police controlled area?
2. With BIG DAMN BLOODSTAIN on the floor?

But, well, the plot stops if you don't go in, so in we go. There's shiny telescreeny stuff on one wall, and cameras, and the cop snickers about shutting off the cameras for this, and Abner Louima references go through the mind again, and then-

OH HAI SURPRIES BARNEY.

Who, we should note, is looking a good deal older than the security guards in game 1 did. Not that this is bad. I liked his character design now that he's out of the vaguely Death Star Operator helmet thing they had him in back in game 1. This is the exposition section of the game, really, so this is where I sat back and let him call up Dr. Kleiner (same voice actor as the original Black Mesa scientists, and pretty much the same face as White Bald Scientist) on the telescreen. Gordon's name gets said in a way that makes me think it's actually a British swear word or an American euphemism. This, kiddies, is what we call foreshadowing- at least if we're me, and I know I am.

Anyway, the conversation doesn't last long, because apparently there are only so many beating rooms to go around. Barney makes you leave out the back door, which leaves me wondering what he told the other cops after you left. I'm assuming they didn't actually come in, because the only possible alternative- given that the cops aren't chasing you to any degree that I can see- is that he let out the world's biggest burp and made a Donner Party reference. This part is how they make up for the hazard course no longer being available; you have to demonstrate the ability to pick up objects, stack objects, climb a ladder, jump, etc. to move along. Picking things up works much better in this game than it did in the first, and you can even throw things respectably far, too (I pegged a cop in the head with a soda can, but he was totally asking for it). Too bad you can't throw things at the telescreens, since Turtleneck Boy is blithering on again, and this time he's talking about how humans aren't being allowed to reproduce any more. Basically, because our alien overlords are being Nice and giving us Respite from Terrible Terrible Urges, and they'll give us back the ability to breed once we can prove we don't need it any more.

Uh HUH.

Well, it explains why you don't see any kids in the game...

anyway, the plaza you wind up wandering into is gorgeous, and detailed, and makes you wonder if it's really designed by the same people who programmed the first game. It's not HL 1's fault. They did the best they could with the graphics at the time. HL 2 is just much more visually gorgeous, that's HOLY COW WHAT THE !*&() IS THAT IT'S A THIRTY FOOT TALL DADDY LONGLEGS WITH AN OVIPOSITOR WHUT

yeeeah. Um.

Floaty robot paparazzi and storm troopers are one thing. Giant tower of giganticness in the distance (I forgot to mention that, it's there like every time you turn around) is one thing. But the GIGANTIC SPIDERY WALKER THING OF ICK is something else again, and that was kind of the point when Gordon decided it would be good to get inside, grab someone by the collar, and ask them WTF was going on. It took a while to find his way to a place where that was even remotely possible, but before he could talk to more than one or two of the jumpsuited people in the apartment he found, the cops started storming the building. Run, nerdboy! Run for your tiny little life! Run even though you have NO FRIGGING CLUE WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!

OH GOD THERE ARE JOHN WOO PIGEONS ON THE ROOF

MAKE THE ROBOT PAPARAZZI GO AWAY, I'M TRYING NOT TO DIE HERE

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING WITH THE DANGLY BITS IN THE SKY

THEY ARE SHOOTING AT ME AUGH WHUT

oh yay! Open window! Leap for the window! .... reload the game! Leap for the window! .... curse the mouse and keyboard control scheme! Scramble into the window! Okay, we're inside, we're not getting shot at, there are stairs, we're running downstairs-

AUGH COPS

*check other door*

AUGH MORE COPS

*a scene of unimaginable violence ensues, strongly reminiscent of the Mugging By Marines in the first game*

... hey, you're awake, and there's a woman! And she knocked out the cops! And she's not wearing a Jumpsuit of Oppression! Sweet. Anyway, that's Alyx Vance, who does more exposition for you as you go along. I like to think that Gordon spends most of this time fishmouthing, because she was Eli Vance's daughter, and she would've been about three years old at the time of the Black Mesa incident. And she's grown up and all that now, and Gordon's just taken a bunch of headblows, and THIRTY FOOT TALL SPIDER OF EW, and, well, anybody would be making mute faces of anguish trying to integrate it all at this point. So when she looks expectantly to you for your reaction and says, "Man of few words, aren't you?", I kind of assume Gordon looks back at her with an expression roughly similar to:



yeah.

Anyway, she finally gives you the name of the Steve Jobs Turtleneck Man, which is to say, Dr. Breen, the old Black Mesa administrator. Now, considering that all the chatter in the first game pinned the urge to rush and go faster and force the equipment to do things it wasn't supposed to do on an impatient Administrator, doesn't that suggest to you that Turtleneck Boy might just possibly not have had the best interest of the human species at heart from the beginning? Bastard...

Anyway, that's where the first chapter ends. It was a fairly long one, for all that it was mostly expository and training, but they did a really good job of introducing the setting and showing off the interface and the physics. I'll give you more in the next writeup.