Anxiety mention
I think the reason I was so into the original Half-Life is because by including his commute, it makes it clear that Gordon's existence is cranked from 0 to 100 in the span of an instant. It puts the player in increasingly dire positions and lets you find ways out of them, often in methods that don't involve combat at all. I like the notion of being able to do that, especially considering how in any of those situations IRL I'd probably just curl up in a ball and wait for death
Anxiety mention
Huh. Yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
By contrast, in this light, Half Life 2 starts out walking you through a totalitarian dystopian city, saddled with a messiah complex through the rebels, and strung along in general with no real reason for doing what you're doing.
You're moving forward rather than just reacting and trying to escape a facility, but that makes it feel a bit more drawn out and akward, considering Freeman never speaks.
Anxiety mention
@Lobst Hah, yeah, Gordon's being told nothing, especially about how the world got this way while he was gone. So he's got even less control of anything...where in the beginning of the first, he's a /scientist/.
I love how both of the Portal games start out, yeah. Giving agency but also a really good sense of what's happened outaide the testing (or teasing at what isn't said.)
Anxiety mention
@emanate Since the world state is firmly established when Gordon comes in, there's also this bizarre feeling of "everyone is withholding information from me" -- turning you from the one with the most agency in a chaotic situation into the one with the least. (Portal 1 and 2, by being about a single person seeking escape through puzzle-solving, are better about it than HL2 or the Episodes, weirdly enough.)