Valve’s Gabe Newell, in an interview with Edge Magazine, said that he wants the next game in the Half-Life series to scare people. “I feel like we’ve gotten away from genuinely scaring the player more than I’d like, and it’s something we need to think about, in addition to broadening the emotional palette we can draw on.”
The Half-Life series has always featured it’s heavy share of terrifying areas and sequences. In Half-Life 2, Gordon Freeman had to venture into the abandoned town of Ravenholm. Set in the deepest of night, the level echoed with the noise of Headcrab Zombies moaning in terror, and the place was infested with them. The Combine had shelled the town with missiles loaded with Headcrabs in order to destroy a refugee colony that had settled in the village, and the resulting horror-filled landscape offered gamers a tense, terrifying journey where ammo seemed to be increasingly rare and the zombies became more and more frightening the deeper into the village that Freeman explored.
Half-Life also featured a horde of dark moments from seeing scientists getting pulled into vents by an unknown creature to suddenly encountering a group of Headcrab Zombies around a corner. But the Half-Life series’ true scares aren’t the visceral thrills and chills that accompany Headcrab Zombies and dark places. The creatures are terrifying not because they are a form of a zombie but because the noise they make isn’t a braindead moan, it is the scream of a person trapped under that Headcrab’s influence. It is a plea for help, as though the person is conscious that they have been taken over by an alien life form and that’s it painful and terrifying – a prisoner in their own body. This is only exacerbated by the open-mouthed scream that’s revealed on a victim’s face when a Headcrab is shot off.
There is an oppressive reality to City 17 that recalls 1984 and the Soviet Union and North Korea and the Warsaw Ghetto. The citizens carry their lives on their shoulders. They are hunched over and defeated and Gordon Freeman’s arrival sparks defiance in them where previously it was muted at best.
All of this makes the battle to reclaim earth desperately important. The people rise up and thousands die in the ensuing fight and eventual explosion of the Citadel Tower because you have arrived and inspired them to resist once more. They are free to fight, but the battle will be long and difficult. Throughout the world are reminders that humanity was herded into cities as you drive through empty villages and pass old mines and railyards. This once vibrant world has been eviscerated of human settlement and as Striders crash through the forests and over bridges there is still an overwhelming realization that the world is not even close to being free from oppression.
Gordon must fight against a force armed with superior weaponry and terrifying size. Half-Life manages to scare gamers through its atmosphere and the depressed world in which the characters drift through their lives. Half-Life is filled with visceral scares, but the true frights in the game come from the player’s connection to the world, to the characters and to the pursuit of freedom.
When Newell talks about what scares the series’ fans most, he said this to Edge: “The death of their children. The fading of their own abilities.” While one could take Newell’s statement literally and anticipate that perhaps Gordon will be older and less talented in the next installment of Half-Life it can also be viewed as an indication that he realizes the true scares in Half-Life come from a recognition of our own world in peril and a terrifying force that threatens family and friends. We fear for Alyx’s, Isaac’s, Barney’s and even Dog’s lives. We fear for our own lives.
The forces you fight against are malevolent, vicious, dedicated to slaughter and horror. They remind us simultaneously of fascist regimes and genocidal atrocities. An enemy who would drop headcrabs into a village in order to kill the populace can only be seen as calculating and brutal and are even more so frightening because they are a reflection of historical circumstances.
Their towering Striders and the absolute destruction of City 17 and Black Mesa are reminders of just how powerful they are, and how vulnerable our world is. Everyone is at risk, and the greatest fear in Half-Life isn’t of Headcrab Zombies or Striders or the Combine, but rather it is that those closest to us will perish and leave us desperately alone against a tide of enemies.
Half-Life, frankly, is already a terrifying series that tugs at our emotional core. As it winds towards a conclusion, fans can almost be certain that we will see the death of more characters who matter to us and that humanity will pay a massive price for freedom. If Newell wants to scare everyone with the next chapter in the series all he has to do is continue to expand upon the oppressive atmosphere of a world nearly devoid of friends and hope.
