Half-Life is one of the most successful and influential games ever made, but not every aspect of its design was far-reaching. Writer and designer Marc Laidlaw was surprised Valve's narrative tricks weren't more widely applied across the FPS genre, despite heavy hitters like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty taking some sporadic cues from Gordon Freeman's adventure.
Valve's FPS puts you into the shoes of Gordon Freeman, and you never leave them – every aspect of the game's story is delivered from a first-person perspective, and you experience every aspect of the story through Gordon's eyes. You never have control wrested away to force your gaze onto some event in the distance, or to look at a cutscene. You won't find many FPS games with the same commitment, even today.
"I must say," Laidlaw said in an interview for the holiday 2009 issue of GamesTM, "it was a lot fewer than I expected. I suppose it's a risky endeavour, and the narrative rules we implemented should only be done so if you know you're going to get something good out of it. That said, I've seen a lot of examples where Half-Life's influence is applied in a piecemeal fashion – Medal Of Honor, for instance, and Call Of Duty both followed those principles, but it was inconsistent. There were moments of non-interactive exposition interspersed with the dynamic parts."
You do see flashes of Half-Life's immersive brilliance in some of Call of Duty's best missions. I still remember the slow boat ride to Stalingrad in the original game, where you find yourself among a company of horrified Soviet soldiers facing certain doom barely able to hear your commander's bombastic speech over the sound of German gunfire. And, of course, there's the sequence in the first Modern Warfare where you see the effects of a nuclear detonation firsthand.
Both those examples would've been a lot fresher in Laidlaw's mind in 2009, and admittedly Call of Duty campaigns no longer make the same impression they once did. To his point, even at the time COD never committed to Half-Life's singular perspective, instead offering non-interactive mission briefings and globe-trotting stories with a variety of characters and faction perspectives.
Maybe that's part of why Half-Life continues to loom so large among the best FPS games even now. There are plenty of games offering bullet-laden thrills, but far fewer that try to make the most of the perspective. I guess what I'm saying is… Half-Life 3 when?
Admittedly, the campaigns are only a small part of what makes the best Call of Duty games great.
