Now let's be clear - this is not a comment on Half-Life 2's pioneering and industry-shaking gameplay. Valve's second entry in their prolific franchise is easily ranked as one of the greatest games of all time for thousands of reasons, and its physics-toybox approach to level design is just as approachable and replayable today as it's always been. All that out the way though, blank-slate Gordon Freeman is only a 'thing' because of the company he keeps and the weapons he gets to play with, rather than any sweeping motions he's made of his own volition. Like detractors of Tony 'Iron Man' Stark are fond of saying, the man is nothing without his suit. Even if the entire point of his character and his placement in the story as a blank slate was always to be treat as a suit in itself i.e. to be slipped into whenever needed, a handful of lines at key points would've at least been something to match the incredibly detailed and immersive world he's surrounded by.
