Half-Life’s iconic ‘monorail’ opening: a lecture

destructoid.com:

Hello. Good day. Welcome. Yes, do come in. Sit down. Anywhere. No, just find a seat anywhere. Yes, there’s fine. Yes, I know it’s cold today, but the heating will come on soon.

Right. Did everyone read the required text for this lecture? Good. There wasn’t any.

Today, we’ll be discussing Valve’s influential 1998 first-person shooter Half-Life. And by “discuss,” I mean I’ll be talking while you sit there and look intrigued — maybe stroke your chins or excitedly scribble notes or something.

Yes, this is indeed a flimsy pre-text to stroke my ego. Why yes, I have lost a bit of weight. Thank you for noticing.

Now, I’ve never been an academic, but it was something of a dream of mine. So, in honor of the 25th anniversary of Half-Life, I want to talk to you today about its opening moments. I want this to be a learning exercise, partly for those who weren’t around when the game was released, but also for those who want a bit of a refresh.

To say that the opening of Half-Life is iconic might seem a bit passé these days. You might even argue that it’s something of a cliché. As gamers, most of us are aware of the legendary status of the late-90s FPS, but it’s worth a revisit for this special milestone. And if that means me replaying the game once more, all the better.

So, what makes it so noteworthy?

Now, there’s a way to turn potential players off a classic video game. Telling someone that they won’t experience any sort of gameplay^* in the beginning section is like telling someone to slog through a TV series because it “gets better after episode 965 when you’ve lost the will to live.”

But saying nothing happens at the start of Half-Life is very misleading. In fact, there’s a lot going on in both the monorail sequence and the