A Surprising Degree of Realism

“Realism” probably feels like an odd word to use when talking about Half-Life. At a time when some shooters force us to stay hydrated and take our vitamins, that’s probably not the way modern gamers would choose to describe an FPS that ends with a trip through an alien dimension.

Yet, so many of Half-Life’s best touches are grounded in realism. The most infamous example of this is humorously highlighted in the game’s manual, which boasts that in-game weapons are found in practical locations rather than just floating in the air. Titles like GoldenEye 007 played with similar ideas, but there really is an internal logic to the location of nearly every gun and item in Half-Life that goes beyond whether a gun is floating magically or laying in wait.

On top of that, you’ve got impressive details like the fact that crossing into a body of water that is touching an exposed electrical source will electrocute the player or enemies. It all sounds simple, but at a time when shooter the genre was still trying to escape the “Doom clone” label, this is one of the ways that Half-Life showed that even more action-oriented FPS titles could still benefit from a dose of realistic design.

The Logic of the HEV Suit

Prior to Half-Life, the concept of health and armor in most first-person shooters (and many other games for that matter) was pretty simple. You would just pick up health packs, armor, and power-ups as you went along, and you didn’t ask any questions. Half-Life changed all that by introducing Gordon Freeman’s HEV suit during the game’s infamous opening sequence.

Not only did the HEV suit serve a practical purpose in the game’s story (it’s used to protect Freeman during the experiment that sets the story in motion), but it assigned a logic to in-game items, which at the time were usually treated as if they were magic mushrooms in Super Mario. Health was what kept Freeman’s body alive, while the suit, which functioned as additional armor, needed to be charged in order to continue protecting Freeman from harm. Health and recharge stations were also found in locations that generally made sense to the environment and narrative. It also featured a toggleable flashlight, which was either the first appearance of that mechanic in an FPS or a very early example of it.