Slouching Toward Black Mesa

The Escapist this week is themed around stories and storytelling. The article that resonates the most with me is a Tom Rhodes piece called Slouching Toward Black Mesa. It explores the connection between the journey of Gordon Freeman and literary explorations of similar end-of-the-world themes. "Freeman isn't slouching toward Black Mesa, he's converging on the great citadel in the middle of City 17, the Bethlehem of our story. Bethlehem is a holy place in Christian theology, which makes it the perfect location for the beast of Yeats' poem to encroach upon. In City 17, that ideal is flipped on its head, replaced with a center of darkness and powe ... In an even more direct rejection of Yeats, however, the forces in Half-Life 2 are non-supernatural. It continues the series' theme, man as a force in this world; whether for good or ill is his choice. It is this choice, this need to carve out our own destiny and define ourselves based on our own hopes, dreams and fears that makes us human. So what is slouching toward Bethlehem? We are." The issue also features an article entitled The Ending Has Not Yet Been Written, about the never-ending story of Massively Multiplayer Online Games.

Thank you

[caitsith01]

You have expressed what I've always thought about Half Life 2. I played through it with all of those "greatest game of all time" reviews in the back of my mind, and as with you it left me strangely cold. The scripted sequences were a little too scripted, the characters seemed to be relying on a whole range of history and interaction which happened 'off camera' so to speak, and the most interesting aspects of it (such as the mysterious gentleman who gives you your initial mission, and the excellent house-to-house fighting sequence towards the end) were not developed anywhere near as much as they could have been.

On top of which, the 'puzzles' were extraordinarily artificial - what, all those boxes and blanks and levers just *happened* to be perfectly balanced in such a way as to create one exact path through to the place where you really want to be?

To the parent poster, and anyone else who felt the same - if you haven't played Deus Ex, get it immediately. It looks a little dated graphics wise, but the gameplay and immersion will blow you away when you compare it to HL2 or the supposedly brilliant Bioshock. (Stay away from DX2, however, a turkey made for console gamers).