6. Dystopian Future
Set some years after the Black Mesa incident, Half Life 2 pits Freeman against an alien race called the Combine. A complex, almost human like race who enslaved us petty humans in a matter of hours. We begin the game walking the lonely streets of the Eastern European looking 'City 17'. With flying cameras who flash in your face to check your identity, Combine bullies with batons slapping us around as we watch on helplessly; the hope for humanity looks grim. All the while television sets and giant video billboards force us to listen and watch a man called Dr Breen; a self appointed former Black Mesa employee who is at the top of the tree as some sort of human conduit for the Combine, brainwashing us that we are all benefiting from enslavement. The anger and willingness to stop this as a player is built up slowly, with the tension cranking up step by step with all the narrative finesse of a fine Orwellian novel. The one thing that is missing from the beginning is a sense of hope, but with the help of a small faction of familiar faces from Black Mesa, slowly as an uprising begins, an uprising that is long and hard, but one where you the player are the catalyst. Like 1984, it seems as though every move is being watched, nothing is sacred and we are all controlled. The story is intelligent in its build up for when we finally reach the spark, its is one you want to grab with both hands and its big enough to get the game and its revolution rolling. It is such a satisfying feeling, so much so that when you grip your first weapon - the old faithful Crowbar, a Half Life classic - smashing the skull of a combine who is harming your fellow man or cracking a flying camera before it takes a photo of you, sending it into a dizzying spiral, it is all the sweeter than you expected. And with that, you are hooked. Valve know they have you, the rest of the games' truly fantastic storytelling and involvement is just them reeling you further and further in. Story telling in gaming has never been so patient and in turn, so intelligent.