On the Half Life Series

PSA - me returning

Sorry for the long wait for the time I was absent. Anyways, I am back and I have been re-reading books, and today I decided to analyze a favorite game series of mine, Half Life. Of course I should recommend you to play it all if you can since my summaries are just there to help to develop the dialectic I will expound upon in the next post. That or watch a let's play, either will work. With that being said, let's get into the post now.

Abstract

The Dialectic of Power: This dialectic is what explains how and why authority are in such places. This dialectic considers the material conditions that allows the power structure to be there and how humans responded to these conditions to either:

A. Help nurture and reproduce the superstructure by maintaining the base which itself structures society.
B. Help destroy it, not in its fullest, but in the way that it allows a power vacuum as a result. Further, it allows new ideologies to be formed in its vacancies.
C. Help a reactionary group to reestablish a point back in society that is past its prime and will not survive with modern material conditions.

Purpose: The Dialectic of Power, as I called it, merely is a tool to further bring my audience to dialectics and help me, as previously stated in another post, understand dialectics as a whole. For this reason, I decided to go with the Half Life series as an analogy for this.

Preface

Now I like to preface that this being the first part, I am laying down to what will be Dialectic of Power right now. However, in looking over everything and making this, I am only going to cover the Half-Life/Portal universe right now and so I can work on the Dialectic of Power without having to explain everything fifty times. Within this post, there will be assumptions and spoilers that may or may not be canon in the vanilla Half Life universe. My post is based upon these assumptions:

That games are an art form and that art in general can be interpreted to have meanings embedded in it. This is to avoid the discussion of the philosophy of Æsthetics.
This one is a half assumption. Point being that the Half-Life universe and The Portal universe are the same thing BUT I assume they happen at directly different times. That being that the Half Life series directly came before Portal itself. So in effect, everything like Easter eggs to character dialouge does display that they are in the same universe.
That somethings in the Half Life 2 beta, other than what was explicitly shown in the main game, is still in the main game: means of productions*, industrial workers that haven't been turned to stalkers** for the citadel's use and other synthetics*** that didn't see action or weren't in use.
That Half-Life 2's rebellion is an actual rebel/revolutionary/anti-imperialist group that is more than what we are shown. That is that they have supply runs, supply chains, more outposts than talked off, spies and undercover agents in local civilian sects and have been attempting a protracted war in the background before Gordon comes along to start the City 17 revolt/revolution.
Lorerunner's**** rumination videos can be trustworthy source as to help further discussion in the Half Life community and this post.
Dialectical and Historical materialism is a trustworthy way to not only have a viewpoint of history, but can prove how things came to be. For time's sake, this philosophy is amoral, not immoral, and looks at how contradictions, not the classical logical one, directly creates struggle between the primary classes (the propertied and the non-propertied, and the deviations that are created thanks to the primary classes' contradictions) and indirectly creates progress in history. Nonetheless, it claims history is not linear but helical*****.

Nonetheless, I would like to state that this post will serve as a means to facilitate my object-oriented (i.e. being whatever is explicitly said the half-life series and what was implicitly implied throughout) view while accounting for the subjective forces (i.e. for now think the abstract idea of authority) in the game that help Gordon Freeman, the protagonist, move throughout the game. (I say object-oriented and not objective due to how many meanings the word objective had, and later deciding to be as specific as possible, I would just go with object-oriented.) Anyways, if you have a question, I would refer you to check the sources provided and ask me if they can't provide an answer to the question. Regardless, I would like to have talks on this subject within the game realm, meaning no mentioning of "real world countries" without their political system and other power dynamics in different games (e.g. the fallout series with its factions and how they permeate throughout the game world to help/harm player decisions in the Role Playing Game system).

Summary of the Games

The start: The Half Life series starts evidently with Half-Life itself and it's located in the Black Mesa Research Facility (Black Mesa in short) in the state of New Mexico at the late-'70s/early-'80s. Gordon Freeman on that particular day is tasked to push a Xen crystal* which causes a Resonance Cascade**, which causes random physical enter and exit portal points to be spewed out throughout the facility and allows enemies, the alien faction in this case, to have random and nonrandom teleportation passage. All factions, except the Black Mesa personal faction, are hostile towards Freeman for their own reasons.

The military faction is the only human faction that seeks to kill all Black Mesa personal and cover up what happened here as swiftly as possible; yet a sub-faction called the Black Ops is sent in to kill off the non-Black Ops sub-faction, this becomes important when describing the Dialectic of Power to the game Half Life at first.

The other faction is an alien faction which comprises of the inhabitants of Xen which sought to escape it thanks to the Nihilanth's orders, the only presumed head of the Alien faction. Throughout the game, Gordon seeks to work and fight his way throughout Black Mesa as to reach the teleporter which will bring him to Xen so he can kill off Nihilanth to end this conflict once-and-for-all.

It ends with a mysterious character we see throughout the game that has no official name and in the gaming community he is called the Gman. His basic gameplay function is to remark what the player has done and provide us the choice to end the game being his agent or die while fighting an invasion force that was previously fought before. Regardless, the former was the correct option for the narrative as that leads us to have what is essentially Half-Life 2.

The sequel: It, in the simplest of terms, was the worthy successor of Half-Life. We start the game in a new environment in which it takes place in the post-combine*** global invasion era. In this we see what is the remains Bulgarian when it was under the Communist Party of Bulgaria. When taken into effect that it was twenty-ish years later with Combine Æsthetics.

In likeness to what the main character and us knows in the game in terms of story of time before in Half-Life 2, and after Half-Life, is that "the fact remains while you're playing that game you know nothing" to quote Lorerunner. And this is true, we only see from the end-result what has become and not why it is what it is.

Of course I did state that I was running with the assumption that somethings in the Half-Life beta are going to be present in the background and not the front. Unfortunately we don't experience that background as much as we do with our immediate surroundings. That's why I assume this to be true due to the implications of the background details and nothing else. And this does comeback to haunt this post particularly with Dialectic of Power and how power can morph into different states.

Regardless of what has happened in between, the present is still chalk full details to build up the new world. Let's start to discuss the state of the Alien faction earlier from Half-Life. They were forced to split, not only because of Gordon's actions, but also with the appearance and imperialist actions of the Combine conquering Xen for its use. They split into the factions we encounter throughout the game and the existing episodes.

These being first, the enemy militant faction called the Combine. These poor section of aliens are forced into becoming synths, slave labor or biological terrorism against its civilians. The combine itself is full of advanced technology and many new sub-types of the same old horrors (i.e. oppression/implicit, repression/explicit and consequential/resultant horror that was caused by the combine). But in the end of the day they remain as essentially space imperialists that seeks to divide and conquer as it goes. Much in the vain of Ancient Rome's ancient imperialism which served to keep an empire alive and acted essential as expansionism for expansionists' sake. They serve as the focal point to top and essential annihilate from Earth as the City 17 folk wants it to be.

Which leads to the enemy biological faction, with two sub-factions: zombie and antlions. The zombie sub-faction is one part of the remains that was directly from Half-Life and it comes in the form of headcrabs, which are creatures that parasitic but effectively utilizes them to spread the infection. The headcrabs in particular are weaponized to soften and infect rebellion outposts. Otherwise the headcrabs come in three flavors that come with their own zombie host equivalent: normal, fast and poisonous.

The other sub-faction is the Antlions, which are set of dangerous human-sized bugs to a story high guardian, and contains the only non-Half-Life enemy type to be brought into Half-Life 2. The bug cycle begins with a baby antlions that later becomes a working antlion (the poison antlion, protects baby antlions and works on the nest) or the soldier antlion (similar to soldier ants just bigger, it can fly and has deadlier attacks) which that becomes the antlion guardian (a big antlion) that finally evolves to the ancient antlion guardian (ruler of the local nest, poisonous in nature). They act more like invasive species in this game, that the combine had to install resistors to keep these blind bugs away from ravaging City 17 and Nova Prospect. And would probably explain why the game lacks any real animal other than the birds, probably the only free species to exist without trouble and yet dependent with the Urban environments at the same time meaning they are interdependent to truly survive and not die off. In fact, the vortigaunts**** in the rebel faction, which will be explained shortly, did remark they used to farm these creatures like we would of our animals. Just imagine horses for making knights, spiders' web for Kevlar components and any meat-only sub-types of farm animal for all meat commodities.

Finally, there's the friendly militant faction, otherwise the rebel faction. This remaining faction contains, as aforementioned, the vortigaunt and the human populace which works together for a free future and not under the repression of the combine, yet the yoke still suffers from oppression. They serve to help Gordon to get to the Citadel and depose the de-facto dictator of the Combine controlled Earth, Wallace Breen. It also composes of military-like hierarchy (as we see in the game) with commoners and the officers, people who hold more knowledge in terms of theory and military experience. But in the end of the day, it is out of necessity for what is happening in the world, not because they abstractly want it. Nonetheless they serve also as comedic relief and tension builders as well for many parts of the game.

Other small sub-factions are just out of material conditions that forces them to act as either as a sub-faction that either is an ally to their primary faction or an enemy to primary faction. These include the Nova Prospect combine which serves as the prisoner guards in the Combine society, and the Metrocop faction which at first are loyal to the Combine then turns their back on them when they know everyone is against them when all hope is lost.

Otherwise, post-Half-Life 2, the series progresses to the result of deposing Wallace Breen with the immediacy of the day after and the result of the day after which serves to flesh out the environment of the earth, the factions previously mentioned and how horror permeates throughout in this revolution. All-in-all the episodes and base game are truly masterpieces when you take them all into just one game in terms of the narrative.

The triquel/sequel-sequel: Due to Half-Life 3 not being released yet and I deciding to not count any leaks as truly canonical*****/semi-canonical, I will say it doesn't matter that much in the discussion.

Portal: Though the Portal series only will serve as a point of contention between the Half Series with the companies of Aperture Science and Black Mesa, respectively, in this post, I think it is worth mentioning. Portal has the company Aperture Science that started off selling anything that was hot in the marketplace to later evolve and have the funds/backing to create the first ever portal system and portal gun. Unlike Black Mesa, they didn't suffer a Resonance Cascade and never pursued to go after Xen, and decided to study on gels and turret-technology that would later assist with tests figuring out the wonders/uses of Portal technology and its limits.

In the first game, Chell, protagonist, does experiments to progress throughout the Aperture Science facility. Of course Glados continues to throw her to more and more deadlier experiments until the end game where the entire facility explodes on Glados' death when Chell incinerated all of the personality cores.

Portal 2 continues with the antagonist of Glados with a new one called Wheatly that serves to do what Glados failed and followed exactly that but with new environments, and I mean exactly that because he fails just like Glados did in the original. Nonetheless, new turrets can be seen and has been used in the story for either comedic effect or bring out new and interesting gameplay options, and the co-op and singleplayer brings out more of what lies hidden in the facility and its origins. All-in-all Portal 2 is a worthy successor of the original Portal.

Post-Scriptum

As aforementioned, this post serves to give as a reference to my Dialectic of Power as expounded in the game while talking on the Half Life series in these summaries. As for its service, I am glad that it has done this job. The next post will be what the other half of the title is.

Footnotes - PSA and Preface

*Means of productions: an area, machinery or tools that were used to produce commodities for consumption or furthered use in the industry (exampli gratia, grain that was harvested in the farm with a harvester tractor is turned into rye that can be used in a mill or a bakery to make bread that can be later sold in a store for whatever it has been priced at. There through two/three areas the crop was harvested and turned into a commodity that was sold).

**stalkers: a group of synths that mainly serve as slave labor for the overwatch combine's administration, menial tasks, gunship creation and anything that hasn't been covered by human labor.

***Synthetics: In Half Life 2, there exists a category of enemies that are loyal to the combine faction. For now I am just saying that these enemies should be called synths, but, however for OFFICIAL purposes, the overwatch soldiers aren't technically synths because they are humanoids. Anyways, these enemies used to be biological creatures that were later augmented and changed with machinery to make them combat effective and deadly. The ones in the game are hunters, stalkers**, Overwatch combine troops (soldier and elite), advisors, combine gunship and striders. A group of Easter egg enemies that were close to being used in the main game were the mortar synths and the crab synth. And so and so on, so I will leave an enemy list link for you to see the rest. All these enemies listed can be found in Half Life 2, and everything that was to be in and was actually in the base game can be found in the book called Half Life 2: Raising the Bar.

****Lorerunner: A YouTuber that does ruminations of all types, reviews of games (mostly short and sweet), livestreams and has a D&D series.

*****Helical: History in the progress of contradictions that lead up to the next stage of history with new means of productions, relationship to production and new contradictions that are created in this. Nonetheless, reactionary/counter-revolutionary forces can force history back if they succeed.

Footnotes - Summary of the games

*Xen crystal: A crystal that originated from Xen, otherwise a universal mid-point of the H-L/Portal universe that serves to guide teleported matter like a slingshot. It is thus barren and can be used as a refuge spot, like how the alien faction is resided before and after the Resonance Cascade. Though upon after inspection of this work I should've fleshed out what Xen was, I decided it was better here.

**Resonance Cascade: Though this term doesn't exactly exist, like how Heidegger was making up new terms to help him prove his points, it serves to classify the event in the game that caused the chain reaction of the game.

***Combine: Combine, Universal Union and Overwatch are the same thing in this game, just different names. Serves as the enemy militant faction throughout Half-Life 2.

****Vortigaunts: A friendly alien that can shoot bolts from its hands and provide armor to the player's suit. They serve, as a non-playable character (npc), just a long-range sniper with shock bolts with short-range melee attacks. As a narrative figure, they are seen to be wise and have a diverse past that proves their wisdom and how advanced their were as a species. They serve to cover what the rebel npcs can't and to diversify the friendly playing field.

*****Canonical: Held up to be the truth in any work of fiction. So if X details are in game Y and there's no contradictory Z detail for any X detail, then all X details are hold up to be the truth. But if there's one Z detail to an X detail, then that X detail becomes a ~X detail when it has brought together the truth of both the abstract X detail and the negative that is the Z detail together to this concrete synthesis.

Sources (will be brought up in the next post as well, so don't worry)

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On the Half Life series, and the Dialectic of Power introduction