The first hour of Half-Life is, like the lunar surface, planted with several flags: one for each Iconic Video Game Moment. He goes to work in a research facility modelled on Area 51, and, as would only be right, conducts the sort of experiments those in tin foil hats have both feared and lusted for. In theory – which is where most of his life lies – he’s a physicist in the employ of Black Mesa, an organisation whose name describes the shape of its moral conscience. Much is made of Metal Gear Solid’s parlour tricks, but where Kojima cracked the fourth wall with the subtlety of a crowbar, Half-Life hid Freeman under a box.Ģ0 years down the line, in a week of wistful reflection, Freeman still eludes me. To see his face, you have to look outside his world, to the same place you found Meryl’s codec frequency: the game case.
Like his adversary, Freeman exists in different dimensions. Everyone knows what he looks like – the goatee, the papery complexion, and the black-rimmed glasses – which is impressive, considering he never once appeared in Half-Life.
Then there’s the other G-Man, Gordon Freeman, whose secrets squirm free of our grasp. He also carries a briefcase – a prop traditionally reserved for bureaucrats and assassins. Not quite of this world, he slithers between the folds of space and time, like an adder through the undergrowth. A spook with eyes like ice, dressed in a sober suit, and with a crew cut issued by a Marine barber. In similar fashion, the G-Man is a walking collection of clues. Who’s more mysterious? There’s the G-Man, who’s cut from the same pop-culture cloth as the Smoking Man, in The X-Files – a character whose menace was marked by the Morley dangling from his lips. At the heart of Half-Life, there is a battle of credentials.
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