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Half-Life (series): Difference between revisions
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** ''Half-Life: Opposing Force''
** ''Half-Life: Blue Shift''
** ''Half-Life: Decay''
* ''[[Half-Life 2]]''
** ''Half-Life 2: Episode 1''
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* [[Abandoned Mine]]: Towards the end of Ravenholm and much of the early setting in Episode 2.
* [[Abandoned Hospital]]: One of the settings in Episode One, which appears to have been taken over by the Combine and, from the looks of things, is in the process of being abandoned ''again''.
* [[Abnormal Ammo]]:
** The Gravity Gun easily invokes this trope, given that you can pick up and launch almost anything with it. When supercharged by dark energy, it can even pick up people, which kills them instantly.
** The Hive Hand, which generates and shoots alien bees.
** Half Life 2's Crossbow fires lengths of glowing hot rebar.
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{{quote|"How could one man have slipped through [[Faceless Goons|your]] forces' fingers time and time again? How is it possible? This is not some agent provocateur or highly trained assassin we are discussing. Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physicist who had hardly earned the distinction of his Ph.D. at the time of the Black Mesa Incident. I have good reason to believe that in the intervening years, he was in a state that precluded further development of covert skills. The man you have consistently failed to slow, let alone capture, is by all standards simply that -- ''an ordinary man''."}}
* [[Badass Preacher]]: Father Grigori.
* [[Bag of Spilling]]:
** More or less justified in every case: The G-Man took away all your weapons at the end of Half-Life<ref>He said most of them were government property.</ref>, and having your HEV suit would make it harder to get through the train station. In Episode One, you had already been stripped of everything but the gravity gun and your HEV suit very late in ''Half-Life 2''. In Episode Two, all of your weapons had been thrown from the train when it derailed, and only the gravity gun was close enough for Alyx to find.
** A variation/inversion of this occurs with the games' chapter systems. You can start a brand new game at the beginning of any chapter you've already reached; the game equips you with every weapon available at that point and a reasonable amount of ammo, plus full health and some HEV Suit Power, regardless of whether you have ever made it that far without running out of something or running low on health.
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* [[Bilingual Dialogue]]
* [[Block Puzzle]]
* [[Body Horror]]: Headcrab zombies. And Stalkers.
* [[Bolivian Army Ending]]:
** If Gordon rejects the G-Man's offer at the end of ''Half-Life,'' he is teleported unarmed into a room full of alien grunts. The game doesn't even show what happens, simply fading to black and showing "Subject: Gordon Freeman. Status: Terminated. Postmortem: Refused offer of employment."
** "No regrets, Mr. Freeman...[[Dummied Out|but there are a few survivors of your personal holocaust, who would like the chance to meet the man responsible for the total annihilation of their race."]]
** ''Half-Life: Uplink'' ends with Gordon trapped by a Gargantua with no real means of defeating it.
* [[Bond Villain Stupidity]]: Two marines, instead of dragging you to your interrogation and execution, toss you into a trash compactor. Filled with crates. And another crowbar sitting at the top.
* [[Book Ends]]:
** The first game began and ended in a tram. Also interesting is that this seems to slightly carry over to the next game, where the player starts off in a train and also ends the game on a train, albeit the G-Man's metaphysical one. Episode One also ends with Gordon on a train, and Episode Two starts with you on a ''crashed'' train.
** Opposing Force keeps the tradition, though the tram in this case is a V-22 Osprey.
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* [[Charles Atlas Superpower]]
* [[The Chessmaster]]: "I do apologize for what must seem to you an arbitrary imposition, Dr. Freeman. I trust it will all make sense to you in the course of... well... I'm really not at liberty to say. In the meantime... this is where I get off."
* [[Classic Cheat Code]]:
** God mode and such.
** Noclip and Impulse 101 are at the top of about 95% of the console code lists. If you have ever used the console, you probably use Noclip and Impulse 101 the most. By extension, sv_cheats 1 is well known, since it is needed to enable those two.
* [[Clothes Make the Superman]]: Gordon's ubiquitous HEV suit. It's the only reason he was able to survive the resonance cascade at ground zero and kill the Nihilanth: he's the only survivor wearing (and trained in using) an HEV suit.
* [[Climax Boss]]: The Gonarch in Half Life 1. The [[Wolfpack Boss]] fight with a group of Striders in Half Life 2.
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* [[Creepy Cockroach]]: Roaches (possibly alien, as their body shape is closer to that of a bug than a roach) appear throughout the original game. Surprisingly absent in the sequels.
* [[Critical Existence Failure]]
** Justified in that the suit has built in medical tech and movement assisting features. Even when the reactive armor is inactive, the suit can absorb damage that should otherwise cripple or even kill the wearer, while the suit's medical systems administer medicine (refilled from health containers or stations) to take care of whatever manages to leak through.
* [[Crowbar Combatant]]
* [[Damage Sponge Boss]]: Most bosses in the Half Life series are either a [[Puzzle Boss]] or can be defeated very quickly with a powerful weapon. The Gonarch, however, has no real other strategy to it than "circle strafe while firing all weapons at testicle, avoid white acid, run after it, repeat". It also has invincibility frames.
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* [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]]: "Keep your PCV fully charged and I guarantee it will save your life! Step onto that square!" <player is blasted with a shotgun> "As you may have noticed, YOU ARE NOT DEAD."
* [[Drop Pod]]: The Combine Headcrab Canisters.
* [[Eldritch Abomination]]:
** In the first game, the aliens (and Xen in particular) sure seem this way.
*** The Nihilanth, a gigantic levitating amputated fetus.
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* [[Energy Ball]]: From what we can tell, a ball of [[Shown Their Work|Dark Energy]] actually ''might'' behave like that.
* [[Escape Sequence]]: A few times in Point Insertion, Route Kanal and Water Hazard.
* [[Escort Mission]]:
** Several times in the first game you need to escort a scientist from a hiding place to a door. Barney must also escort a scientist safely to escape Black Mesa in his expansion pack. However, these escort missions aren't too much of a pain, as you can tell them to stay put while you clear out the area ahead, and they will. That, and most of the "escort missions" in the game are optional.
** Averted in Half-Life 2. Barney and Alyx both carry automatic weapons and have rapidly regenerating health, while Grigori gets a [[BFG|double-barreled rifle]] that can instantly kill most enemies and is almost perfectly accurate.
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* [[Exposition Break]]
* [[Face Full of Alien Wingwong]]: Headcrabs, also frequently known as [[Alien|Facehuggers]]. Or as Barney calls them, "head humpers." Magnusson gives us the more scientific-sounding "cranial-conjugal parasite."
* [[Faceless Goons]]:
** All Combine have their faces hidden behind gas masks of some sort.
** In addition, the Black Ops forces of Half-Life 1 and Opposing Force wore form-fitting balaclavas.
** Most of the HECU wear chemical/biological warfare gear, including gas masks.
* [[Fake Ultimate Mook]]: In the first game: The marine's tanks. There's only two of them in the entire game, they had an insta-kill cannon that fired a hitscan invisible explosive projectile, took up to three rockets to destroy, and well, [[Captain Obvious|they're tanks.]] However, ''they are completely incapable of movement'', and their turret swivels sooooo slow. It couldn't even do a full 360 turn. And remember, Gordon can run at like 40 miles per hour. Meaning it was incredibly easy to just easily avoid the tank's cannon, kill all the marines, run behind it, and shoot it with your rocket launcher while it has ''no'' way of hurting you. The second tank has a machine gun to help remedy this problem if you're at close range and it can't hit you with its cannon, but if you can not get killed by that machine gun, you could easily just waltz past the tank without even having to fight it all. The second APC encountered was actually a significantly bigger threat since unlike the tanks, it had a rapid fire cannon that was unerringly accurate and could kill you instantly and ''could'' turn 360.
* [[Fan Remake]]: The much anticipated ''[http://blackmesasource.com/ Black Mesa]'' mod, which is meant to recreate ''Half-Life'' in the Source engine, and is made with Valve's blessing. The development has been a ''[[Vaporware|long]]'' process, but according the development team, they are currently ironing out the last bugs and polishing minor stuff like character choreography.
* [[Fashionable Asymmetry]]: Pretty much all Combine architecture and technology uses this to some degree.
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** The Stalkers -- they're what happens when the Combine capture you and don't turn you into one of their transhuman soldiers. [[Body Horror]] only begins to cover it.
* [[First-Person Shooter]]: Duh. What made the first game stand out to begin with was its emphasis on the "first-person" part: the entire game is viewed through Gordon's eyes.
* [[Floorboard Failure]]: Happens quite often. Also happens in ducts as well (once into a room full of laser tripwire explosives).
* [[Fluffy Tamer]]: Dr. Isaac Kleiner and his pet Headcrab, Lamarr. [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001443/ Get it? Hedy?]
* [[Flunky Boss]]: A few
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* [[Head Bob]]: An early aversion.
* [[Heal Thyself]]: the insta-heal medkits and medical stations.
* [[Heel Race Turn]]: All that's known about the Vortigants in the first is that they're invading aliens. In the second game it's revealed that they were confused and enthralled, and are now grateful for the destruction of their puppet leader. By the third, they gather en mass to support Gordon specifically.
* [[Heroic Mime]]
** A fanfic suggests that Gordon Freeman suffers from an illness that makes him close up when he is stressed. [[Fridge Brilliance|Given that most of the series he is in a stressful situation, it makes sense.]]
* [[His Name Is--]]: In the original ''Half-Life'', in the level immediately after when the Marines first appear, a nameless scientist proclaims that he must be protected and knows everything about what's going on before charging straight into Marine gunfire and being mowed down. Of course, if you actually manage to save him, he has nothing special to say. There's also a security guard who is midway through telling you something important before being gunned down by Assassins.
** {{spoiler|In Episode Two, Eli Vance, as it is written somewhere on this page, is about to divulge critical information on the true nature of the Combine and the G-Man, before a pair of advisers literally break into the place and suck his brains out.}}
* [[Hold the Line]]: Several examples, usually with easily-knocked over turrets.
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* [[Idle Animation]]: For each weapon and NPC - for example, Adrian pets his living rocket launcher, and Barneys pull up their pants every so often.
* [[Implacable Man]]
* [[Improvised Weapon]]:
** The crowbar and pipe wrench.
** Half-Life 2 has the Gravity Gun, which turns virtually anything into a weapon: Chairs, crates, tables, barrels (exploding and non-exploding varieties), benches, radiators, armories, TVs, tires, bicycles, cars, [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower|people]]...
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* [[Living Legend]]: The Free Man, who starts a revolution just by showing up. The Combine are well aware of the threat he represents and unleash their everything when they find out about him.
* [[Living Motion Detector]]: The blind tentacles in the first game, and the canceled hydra for the second, somewhat brought back via scripts.
* [[Locked Door]]:
** You must find alternate routes due to these, whether it be a massive pipe falling through several stories, or exploding walls. Or one of many, many actual locked doors.
** Mildly subverted in ''Half-Life 2'' when you come across a door locked with a padlock and simply shoot or pry off the lock.
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* [[Made of Indestructium]]: As with most video games, almost all of the scenery is invulnerable to your weapons in the first game. Some odd exceptions include the metal grates (which can be broken with a single crowbar swing, less than it takes to break most wooden crates) and the concrete barriers which instantly shatter when you run the tram car through them.
* [[Mascot Mook]]: It is not uncommon to see people at standard nerd gatherings running around in cute little Headcrab hats.
* [[Meaningful Name]]:
** Father Grigori's name could have [[wikipedia:Rasputin|two]] [[wikipedia:Watcher (angel)|meanings]], both appropriate. His name also means 'watchful', which describes him pretty well.
** Meek Dr. Kleiner ("small" in German) and forceful, verbose Dr. Magnusson ("magnus" meaning "great" in Latin).
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** The Striders' autocannons might not look all that [[Buffy-Speak|dakkalicious]] alone, but when you encounter more than one... Same goes for Gunships, which are using a similar autocannon model.
* [[Mouth Flaps]]
* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: Hey, dude, remember that big baby that you slayed in the first game? Alright, you had to kill him because he kept the hole between Xen and the Earth open, but it turns that he was also the only thing keeping the Combine at bay, and his death gave them the opportunity they needed to invade Earth.
** The Black Mesa incident.
** At the end of Half Life 2 in the citadel in one of his breencasts, which is replayed once in Episode 1: " Tell me, Dr. Freeman, if you can. You have destroyed so much. What is it, exactly, that you have created? Can you name even one thing? I thought not".
** Two instances from when Gordon first wakes up after the resonance cascade. The first allows you to hit an elevator button...that sends an elevator with three people on it plummeting to the bottom of the shaft. A later incident has you stepping on a flimsy catwalk, causing it to collapse under the scientist on it. He even yells "GORDON!" in a [[What the Hell, Hero?]] tone before falling to his death.
* [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain]]:
** In ''Half-Life 2'', toward the end of the game, Gordon goes through a weapon confiscator. It vaporizes all his weapons except for the Gravity Gun, which the confiscator is unable to destroy. Instead, the confiscator malfunctions and actually ends up making it more powerful.
** In ''Half-Life: Opposing Force'', Shephard manages to deactivate the nuclear weapon that Black Ops had wired to destroy Black Mesa. Shephard is forced to watch G-Man reactivate it, and there's no way to deactivate it again.
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* [[No Bikes in the Apocalypse]]: Inverted. There are bikes in HL2, but nobody can use them.
** The inversion is subverted in ''[[Concerned]]''; Gordon Frohman rides the bikes.
* [[No Fair Cheating]]:
** Sort of. You just can't get achievements in Episode Two with cheat mode on.
** Half-Life 2 Deathmatch - "This server is VAC-secured. Cheating will result in a permanent ban."
* [[No OSHA Compliance]]:
** One of the chapters in the original ''Half-Life'' forces Gordon to go through a waste processing factory. Yes, it's flesh-burning acid, but fortunately Gordon's wearing the partially acid-proof HEV suit. Similarly, Adrian Shephard in the expansion has to go through some sort of experimental blast furnace, which has no rails or catwalks to shield workers...
** Then there's the ''massive toxic spill'' you can see on the opening tram ride... In fact, the whole facility is a disaster waiting to happen: there are no emergency exits directly leading to the surface in case of fire or extradimensional incursions, ceilings and catwalks collapse without warning, and an alarmingly large amount of objects, namely computers, are [[Made of Explodium]].
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*** There is also the ladder in the elevator shaft, which is assumed to be there to fix the elevator in case it's broken. However, the only way to access said ladder [[Mind Screw|is if the elevator is working]].
** There's also the fact that literally everything is apparently structurally comprised, from solid concrete ceilings and walls to steel catwalks. Even most of the elevators don't work. Pretty much the only things in the entire Black Mesa facility that are actually able to withstand any sort of damage whatsoever are the exit doors, ''and they're all locked''.
** In an interesting subversion, in ''Half Life 2: Lost Coast'', the Headcrab cannon actually has OSHA standard signs on it. Naturally, you have to do exactly what they tell you ''not'' to do.
** There's an achievement in ''Half Life 2'' called 'No OSHA Compliance' for killing some Combine soldiers with a crane. It's the [[Trope Namer]].
* [[Nonstandard Game Over]]: In ''Opposing Force'', leaping through a portal Gordon leapt through in the main game send you plummeting into space (instead of where Gordon landed) and accuses you of attempting to create a [[Time Paradox]].
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:Turning and shooting [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]] during ''Opposing Force's'' tutorial gets you court-martialed.
* [[No Sense of Personal Space]]: Freeman's squad habitually crowd around him so closely that it can be impossible to move without bumping into one or take a shot without dinging one by accident. One imagines Gordon got to know who used which toothpaste, they're that close -- as noted [http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-06-04 here].
* [[Not the Fall That Kills You]]:
** Take enough damage from falling, and you WILL gib.
** More true to the trope, grabbing a ladder within inches of the terminal surface prevents any damage.
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* [[Outrun the Fireball]]: A grunt throws in a satchel charge in a tunnel you're crawling through in the first game. Better run. <ref>In either direction, since the hatch is only a few feet away and [[Good Bad Bugs|the explosion doesn't damage you if you're right where the satchel charge is]].</ref>
** Practically your objective throughout Episode One. {{spoiler|You pretty much succeed, but not entirely.}}
* [[Path of Greatest Resistance]]: In Freeman's Mind he often says that when he gets lost, the best bet seems to be to follow the trail of corpses and bloodstains, and that the more dangerous the situation, the more he seems to be on the right track.
* [[Personal Space Invader]]:
** Headcrabs.
** Snarks in the first game, even worse than the Headcrabs.
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* [[Redemption Promotion]]: In the first game, when they're your enemies, the Vortigaunts are fairly low-level, easily disposed Mooks. In the second game, when they're your allies, they're incredibly powerful fighters whose beam attacks can kill an enemy in one hit and send them flying a few dozen feet. They're even powerful enough to [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|counter-act the power of the then-seemingly unstoppable G-Man]]. He is not amused by this.
** Possibly justified. See those shiny green things they wear in the first game? Those are slave collars similar to the ones the Combine put on them. They can't use their full power until the collars are removed.
* [[Reflecting Laser]]: The Tau Cannon / "Gauss". Technically a "hypervelocity projectile" weapon, but works like an insta-hit laser that reflects off any solid map surface at 45 degrees angle or less to the horizontal.
* [[Remember the New Guy?]]: Barney Calhoun, who was technically around and named before ''Half-Life 2'', but never interacted with Gordon (although many characters who looked and sounded exactly like him did). A more blatant example of this is Dr. Magnusson in ''Episode Two'', who ''definitely'' wasn't around before then, at all.
** Amusingly, the [[Brick Joke]] about {{spoiler|the microwave casserole}} only works because he didn't actually appear in the original ''Half-Life'' (at least, not with the same voice or model -- see [[You All Look Familiar]] below).
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** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHU8tU2DbGI&feature=related And at the end of this segment, you see doors that look like they were from the trash compactor room] in ''[[A New Hope]]''.
** Not really a positive shoutout, but during the Antlion defense portion early in Episode 2, Griggs mentions that he [[George W. Bush|"misunderestimated"]] the size of the Antlion force.
** In ''Opposing Force'', drill instructor T. Barnes asks a recruit where he is from, and gets the answer "Texas".
{{quote|T. Barnes: "Holy cow! [[Full Metal Jacket|You know what comes from Texas, don't you]]?!"}}
** In Opposing Force, during the pit worm chapter, there is a panel with buttons on it. The buttons are labeled "Valve" and "Gearbox."
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* [[Slave Mooks]]: The Stalkers and all Synths are this.
** Vortigaunts used to be this for the Nihilanth. Now that they're [[Heel Race Turn|freed and]] [[Redemption Promotion|joined the good guys]]... see [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]].
* [[Sniping Mission]]:
** You must dodge Black Ops snipers and trip wire mines in ''Opposing Force''... and snipe them back.
** You also have to save Barney from Combine Snipers later in the game. This was supposed to happen multiple times in the beta.
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** A fair number of Black Mesa staff also succeed in getting themselves killed under blatantly stupid circumstances, such as running directly into obvious traps, while HECU and Black Ops soldiers can sometimes blow themselves up with their own grenades. While some of it is scripted, many instances can also be attributed to [[Artificial Stupidity]].
* [[Tortured Abomination]]: The zombies are humans who have been turned into [[People Puppets]] and mutated by the parasitoid Headcrabs attached to their heads. In the second game they can be heard screaming for help as they attack you.
* [[The Unintelligible]]:
** Originally, Vortigaunts, who would gibber and only knew one English phrase: '''''DIE!!'''''
** Headcrab zombies count, until you play their speech files [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxbd-Cg50Nk backwards]. Then you wish they were unintelligible.
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* [[Unwitting Pawn]]: Gordon Freeman, and how! Adrian Shephard is a close second.
* [[Use Item]]: The same key is used to open doors, push buttons, talk to people, pick up things...
* [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]]:
** You travel to an alien factory. Of ''course'' the [[Big Bad]]'s near.
** In the sequel, once you enter the Citadel, you ''know'' there's going to be a boss at the top.
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** Climb into a hanging metal coffin that completely restricts your movements to make it into the enemy base? Sure. Do it again, even though the last one resulted in your weapons being confiscated and only dumb luck keeping you alive? Of course.
** Locked in a room with a pit that has giant whirling fan blades the size of a bus and a ceiling that's boarded over. What to do? Jump out over the fan blades <s>and turn into chunky salsa</s> to get blown upwards, naturally!
* [[The Walls Are Closing In]]:
** In the original game, a pair of [[Mooks]] capture the player character and, rather than [[Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him|just shooting him]], toss him in a trash compactor. Which he then escapes via conveniently stacked up garbage.
** The [[Expansion Pack]] ''Opposing Force'' has a trash compactor that looks even ''more'' like the ''[[Star Wars]]'' one.
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* [[We Have Been Researching Phlebotinum for Years]]: It's revealed in Opposing Force that {{spoiler|the scientists have been experimenting with Xen life for long enough to have a terrarium and have modified a Barnacle to use as a weapon.}}
* [[Weapon of Choice]]: Gordon is always depicted carrying the red crowbar.
* [[What Happened to the Mouse?]]:
** Remember Adrian Shephard? The protagonist in Half Life: Opposing Force? What happened to that guy? If we believe Gabe Newell, Valve is actually itching to get him into the main storyline.
** In [[Portal (series)|Portal]], there's an [[Easter Egg]] in which all keyboards have the letters A,S,H,P, and D lit up, referencing the [[Fun with Acronyms|Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device]]. When someone inside Valve realized that it looked like 'Adrian Shephard', they decided [[Throw It In|it'd be funny to have every letter that makes up 'Adrian Shephard' light up.]]
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** Used again in Episode 2 by Kleiner when observing a 6 pound (or so) weight difference in the rocket they're planning to launch. {{spoiler|It's Kleiner's pet Headcrab, Lamarr. And a garden gnome, if you did the achievement.}}
* [[Xanatos Gambit]]: The G-Man is clearly a master of this. He will save people and provide them with information, but also interfere with their plan to move them into situations where everything they will do for their own gain will also advance his own plan. He isn't even trying to hide it.
* [[You All Look Familiar]]:
** HECU grunts aren't that diverse. Neither are the citizens of City 17.
** Headcrabs only seem to latch on to people wearing white shirts and blue jeans.
*** Continuing the tradition, they only latch to standard Overwatch Soldiers once they're out of Combine control. Metrocops and Combine Elites are perfectly safe.
* [[Zombie Apocalypse]]: [[Reconstruction|Reconstructed]]. In ''Half-Life'', zombies are created by alien crabs latching onto peoples' heads and taking control of the persons nervous system. The person effectively dies in the process, but remains animate because all the vitals that are necessary to live are in the crab, not the corpse. They're also still self-aware, just not in control.
** Practically, this is what happened to nearly every single place after the Black Mesa Incident allowed Headcrabs onto Earth and Combine started to use Headcrab shells. There is no area in Half-Life 2 and its episodes where there would be no Headcrab zombies or Headcrabs wandering in search for a victim. The most direct example of this trope is Ravenholm, a town which was housing the refugees from City 17 before it was subjected to massive bombardment of Headcrab shells and turned into Hell on Earth [[Badass Preacher|with a single survivor doing the work of saving the lost souls]] by the time Gordon shows up.
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