20 years of "Half-Life 2": The best shooter of all time?

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"Half-Life 2 is a masterpiece, a milestone, an absolute must-have for every PC gamer, shooter fan or not," wrote a certain Paul Kautz at 4Players in 2004. With all these superlatives, it is very easy to forget that "Half-Life 2" was by no means a sure-fire success. On the contrary, the game was an extremely difficult birth that pushed its development team far beyond its regular limits. Exactly 20 years later, however, it is still clear that this effort of blood, sweat and tears was worth it.

"Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman!"

Work on "Half-Life 2" began in the early summer of 1999, shortly after the release of its groundbreaking predecessor. And it was not to be a quick fix: Gabe Newell, founder and CEO of the development company Valve Software, wanted to create nothing less than the ultimate first-person shooter, for which he was prepared to risk not only his company's money, but also his personal finances.

A team of more than 100 people were to work on the game and the technology behind it for more than five years. Unlike its predecessor, which relied on a greatly expanded "Quake" technology, Valve developed its own 3D system for "Half-Life 2". This engine, called "Source", was created in parallel with the game and customized for use in "Half-Life 2".

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"Half-Life 2" wird 20 Jahre alt (20 Bilder)

The result of all these efforts was supposed to be released in September 2003, but this did not work out. What was released that month, however, was the source code of the game, which the German hacker Alex Gembe had stolen from the Valve servers. This then found its way into the vastness of the Internet via detours and was compiled into an executable build by interested hobbyists. This showed that Valve was not as far along with the development as it had actually promised. Hacker Gembe was caught and given a suspended prison sentence (and bizarrely received an entry on the Guinness World Records website as the first person outside of Valve to have played "Half-Life 2"), work on the game continued despite this motivational blow – and the game was finally released on November 16, 2004.

Steam = hot air?

"Half-Life 2" was initially only released on the PC and turned out to be the first major test for the still very young distribution system called "Steam", also developed by Valve Software. Although the game was also available in stores as normal, it had to be activated via Steam and linked to the corresponding user account in order to be launched. Thousands and thousands of players wanted to perform this maneuver at the same time. As a result, Valve's Steam servers collapsed non-stop. When the game was launched, nothing happened for hours and sometimes even days.

However, the annoyance of this annoying step into a brave new digital world evaporated at the latest when the game was finally running and was immediately replaced by confusion. Because "Half-Life 2" is by no means a direct continuation of its predecessor, but takes place around 20 years later: The alien invasion that the first part revolved around was not repelled as successfully as thought after all. An alien empire called "Combine" quickly and violently subjugated the Earth in the so-called "Seven Hour War" and created a dystopia for the remaining humans that would have given even George Orwell the creeps. In Dr. Wallace Breen, the former administrator of the "Black Mesa" research unit, the aliens found a compliant subject for the meek suppression of humanity. And then Dr. Gordon Freeman, the hero of the first game, reappears out of nowhere and has to pull the cart out of the mud again.

"The One Free Man"

When playing "Half-Life 2", you'd better be well acquainted with the events of its predecessor, because although the game throws names and previous events around, it doesn't even bother to explain them. On the contrary: Gordon wakes up in a train compartment, receives an equally mysterious lecture from the mysterious "G-Man" about his role in the world ("The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world"), and a bumpy ride later finds himself in "City 17", one of many mega-cities in which the Combine have placed the people under constant surveillance and oppression.

The game never explicitly states where City 17 actually is, but the whole thing feels very Eastern European. The streets are built in classic communist Depressionist style, there are Cyrillic letters on buildings and posters, some of the cars standing around clearly look like old Trabants and "Father Grigori", one of the characters you meet in the course of the game, speaks with a heavy Russian accent.

Where does Gordon Freeman fit in, the MIT-educated physicist and crowbar-wielding man? His role remains just as mysterious as he himself until the end credits. The only time you get to see him is on the cover of the game. Otherwise, he is a smooth projection screen, he doesn't say a word in the entire game, and the only thing you see of him are his hands and parts of his arms when he is holding a weapon. And yet everyone in the game knows him, everyone worships him, he is the acclaimed "The One Free Man", the liberator from the alien oppressors.

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

City 17 and the surrounding lands are not individual levels, but present themselves as a huge, meaningfully connected world. In "Half-Life 2" there are no wild jumps or stylistic breaks, one section flows logically into the next. However, this freedom came at a high price at the time, as the game reloads very often. Graphics streaming was nowhere near as widespread back then as it is today. And "Half-Life 2" simply loaded entire sections into memory. Today this takes one or two seconds – but back then, with the 256 to 512 MB RAM that was common at the time, you had to wait around a minute for the adventure to continue every time there was a pause in loading.

But even this toad was swallowed, because in terms of variety, there was no shooter at the time that could even begin to keep up with "Half-Life 2": You start in City 17, move through dimly lit canals, race across rivers in a propeller boat and end up in the small town of Ravenholm, which is teeming with the undead. Next up is a tunnel reminiscent of "28 Days Later", followed by a coastal landscape that you explore in a speedy buggy. Finally, you cross a huge bridge into the impressively run-down prison "Nova Prospekt" before Gordon returns to City 17, where he fights wild street battles with rebel troops against the Combine units. The grand finale finally takes place in the Combine's gloomy citadel, whose disturbing icy coldness still sends shivers down the spine today.

All of this flows logically and (apart from very rare transporter jumps) completely seamlessly into one another. However, this huge world is not as open as you might think: "Half-Life 2" is a strictly linear adventure that pulls you through the game by the scruff of the neck without you really noticing.