my name is mwd

Here’s a lovely retrospective on Half-Life 2 by Eurogamer, that if you like your video games on the story telling side, is worth a read. Covering why it’s long remembered and still borrowed from today, down to the smallest tricks:

One of the best uses of physics in the game is a minor but brilliant narrative trick – a Combine soldier hits a can to the floor and orders Freeman to pick it up. At once a powerful piece of world-building and an opportunity for the player to ‘take control’ of Freeman’s response, the sequence echoes throughout the genre to this day.

I generally found the linearity of HL2 very constraining compared to games like Halo, but as a mix of gameplay and immersive story telling, it definitely still holds its own ten years on.