Half-Life
More info
- Creator
- Valve
- Released
- 1998
- Type
- Computer game
- Engine
- GoldSrc (built on the Quake engine)
The game that told its story without ever taking control away from the player — and became the seedbed for the industry's most important mods.
Valve built Half-Life in 1998 on a heavily rebuilt Quake engine. What was new was the storytelling: instead of cutscenes between levels, everything happened in first person through scripted events in the environment, so the player never left Gordon Freeman's viewpoint. The device became standard for the whole genre.
Valve also shipped the tools. Out of them came Team Fortress Classic, Day of Defeat and above all Counter-Strike, which grew larger than its host game. The 2004 sequel Half-Life 2 introduced the Source engine with physics-based puzzles — and forced the entire PC gaming world onto Steam.