Why Valve's Half-Life universe makes you feel like a badass

While replaying the Half-Life Universe games earlier this year—with a more critical eye—I noticed that these games not only share a canon but are all bound by theme. The Half-Life Universe is integrally an expression of our struggle for autonomy. Through their utilization of gaming as a storytelling medium, Valve celebrates and provokes our most subversive tendencies in the pursuit of this wisdom. At the heart of its success as a transformative work of human achievement, The Half-Life Universe encourages and reveres the confident badass that we all naturally admire—the protagonist, the hero, you.

So I felt compelled to write this essay: Valve's Half-Life Universe: The Humanity of Subversion.

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All music comes from their respective games, composed by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky. These soundtracks are fantastic, liberated by their eclectic and industrial blend of rock and electronic. Through purposeful manipulation of timbre, tenor, and texture these tracks are designed to complement the exact emotions I describe as core to the narrative, on a spectrum from intense emancipation to despondent burial. There, now this video’s use of the music qualifies as fair-use, bite me.

Written, recorded, and edited by moi, Hazen Ellwood p.k.a. Bismvth

CHAPTERS
00:00 — Introduction
01:57 — Half-Life: It's time to choose
06:30 — Half-Life 2: Man of few words, aren't you?
11:48 — Portal: That wasn't supposed to happen
16:28 — Portal 2: Make life rue the day
20:29 — Conclusion and B-roll

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