Is Half-Life a Metroidvania?

This is a different post compared to my usual updates about game development and my misadventures with technology. This post is an essay on why I consider Half-Life (specifically, Half-Life 1) to be a Metroidvania game.

Firstly, what is a Metroidvania? Well, if we consult the Wikipedia page for the subgenre, we can see that it's a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania. When the page lists the characteristics of this kind of game, the first aspect mentioned is its 2D sidescrolling gameplay. This rules out the possibility of Half-Life being a Metroidvania, right? Well, Metroid does have the Prime trilogy which brings the franchise and its iconic gameplay to the third dimension. Castlevania, while it doesn't have any official 3D games, does have a fanmade Doom mod that throws the franchise into 3D, adhering of course to the limitations of id tech 1.

The conversion of Metroid and Castlevania into 3D retains their iconic gameplay mechanics and thus, I believe 3D games shouldn't be excluded from being categorised within the Metroidvania subgenre. But what are these aforementioned gameplay mechanics that makes games like Metroid and Castlevania stand out? Let's go back to the Wikipedia page and take a look at some of the defining aspects of a Metroidvania:

• large interconnected world
• access to parts of the world blocked by doors or other obstacles
• parts of the map are unlocked by getting items, completing sequences, etc.
• acquiring items/upgrades that aid in defeating more powerful enemies
• tight integration of story and level design
• encouragement of exploration and experimentation

Let's go over these aspects one by one and determine whether or not they apply to Half-Life 1.

The game world of Half-Life 1 is designed to be claustrophobic. Gordon Freeman is confined to the walls of Black Mesa and its winding corridors and dank, poorly maintained sectors. Yet it is all connected almost seamlessly with only short loading screens interrupting Gordon's adventures. The more areas the player discovers within the facility, the more they begin to realise how enormous Black Mesa really is. I'd say that Half-Life 1 does in fact have a large and interconnected world.

Gordon's path being blocked by a variety of things seems to be a recurring theme for Half-Life 1. In Unforeseen Consequences, Gordon can't simply return to the surface on the tram he used to get to Sector C, as the tram system has been devastated by the Resonance Cascade. So he must crawl through vents and navigate the office complex to find another way. We get our first glimpse of glorious sunlight in We've Got Hostiles, but unfortunately the exit is fenced off and the area is infested with HECU marines who are here to clean up the alien mess. In Blast Pit, there are huge tentacle monsters blocking off a cave-like tunnel which is for some reason at the bottom of a missile silo, so Gordon must turn on the generator and send oxygen and gas flow to the control room to blast the tentacles to the kingdom come. In Power Up, an enormous alien and a lack of power on the rails prevents Gordon from taking the old rail system, so the physicist must once again turn on the power and electrocute the big guy. After this, Gordon's adventure does become a bit more open-ended, but there are more sections like this in Forget about Freeman and Lambda Core. With all these examples, it's safe to say that Half-Life does adhere to the second and third principles of Metroidvanias.

Throughout Half-Life, Gordon gains access to a number of weapons, starting out with a measly crowbar. While extremely iconic, this weapon won't do much damage against a powerful beast such as the Nihilanth. Throughout the game there is a steady weapon progression from crowbar to pistol all the way to such wacky weapons as the Tau Cannon and Hive Hand. This checks the box for the fourth principle.

Half-Life is very well known for its environmental storytelling. The lore and narrative of Half-Life is tightly intertwined with the level design, which fits perfectly with the fifth principle of Metroidvanias. From the introduction to the HECU soldiers to the twisted experiments of the Advanced Biological Research Lab, the story is all in the level designed, and rarely explained directly to the player.

Finally we have encouragement of exploration. While very claustrophobic at times, Black Mesa is, as previously mentioned, a huge place. The game often rewards the player for exploration with little secret areas containing resources like health, ammo, and armour. In the Xen chapters, Gordon can find a handful of dead HEV explorers and their supply cans by taking alternate routes, and if you check under staircases and up high above the tracks in On a Rail, you can often find hidden stashes of supplies... and maybe a headcrab or two.

Even if we've established that Half-Life does have a lot of the characteristics of a Metroidvania, people still think of Half-Life as fundamentally a first-person shooter, which it absolutely is. But how is it different from other first-person shooters? Well, at the time it was very different. It was the most cinematic and story-driven FPS of its time. Its predecessors, Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, etc. were all mainly action-driven, with little to no story involved. They were almost like Super Mario levels, but in first-person 3D with guns. Start at the beginning, go through the level, find the flagpole, or in the case of most FPS games at the time, the exit, which would bring you to a menu. In Half-Life, there isn't really an exit. There's just the next part of the adventure, and there's always a fairly specific reason why you're going there. Go to the surface to get help for the scientists, go to the rocket launch site to, well, launch the rocket. Go to Xen to defeat the Nihilanth. This is a pattern seen in games like Metroid and Hollow Knight. In games like Super Mario or Doom, you go to the end of the level because it's closer to the end of the game, which isn't a bad thing by any means, it's just different from games like Half-Life.

Of course, there have been other FPS games since Half-Life, and many of them could also be considered Metroidvanias. But Half-Life is the FPS series I know most about and I love talking about it so that's really why I chose it.

Let me know what you think of this essay post, it's honestly a bit stupid in my opinion and I reminded myself of a game journalist at times, but it was fun to write nonetheless.