A Response to a Post-Mortem of Half-Life: Episode One
I've just read Game Post-Mortom - Half-Life:Episode One [blogspot.com]. It's certainly an interesting read with some interesting ideas. However, I feel that it perhaps isn't as coherent a set of ideas as the author would like.
Their evaluation of episodic content - that it perhaps only encourages formulaic and minimal advances - is certainly quite true. It's a much better formulated version of the view that Valve have become rather gimicky.
His ideas about creating some romantic tension by making Gordon jealous is interesting. To my mind to go as far as he proposes would slightly cheapen it, but I certainly think introducing other elements of jealousy could work well.
A large number of his problems seem to stem from a lack of involvement and immersion into the world itself. However, I think this is a misinterpretation of what the developments are about. One of the main points within the storyline at this point is that Gordon has come back into consciousness after a period of time and doesn't know what is going on. He is forced to fight for a city that he doesn't know for people he doesn't know. All around City17 are small communities of rebels banding together and fighting for their survival, yet Gordon doesn't get to become a part of this. He meerly presses through on his own mission, whilst all these people hail him as the one.
Gordon does not, and should not, get the opportunity to build up any sort of real relationship with the citizens. The story, in reality, is not about them or his relationship with them. He already has a community which he is fighting for - his relationship with Alyx, her father and the related associates. The others are just a side line.
This creates an odd relationship with the citizens. You don't really care about them that much. You help them, sure. But all you as the player really care about is your own mission with your own friends. Yet all over the place all these citizens need your help, and seem to know you and hold you in high esteem. I found it an awkward relationship, but it actually immersed me even more.
He suggests there should have been the option to keep people alive throughout the entire story arc, which I do not think is really sustainable. You either make it optional, and thus create a lot of work for an experience few will ever see, or you make the character self-sustainable and actually helpful (if you've ever played CS or tried to keep barneys alive in HL1 you will realised how much of a leech they are, which would annoy too many people) which, to his admission, ruins the experience.
