Gordon Freeman: Strongest personality in gaming
How Valve created the most complex and best-realised character in videogames without a line of dialogue.
Right, now brace yourselves but… To properly understand the significance of the story elements in Half-Life 2, we must look at the work of Russian structuralist Vladimir Propp, who in his academic work on narrative in traditional folk tales identified a recurring series of archetypal story elements – or narratemes – which always appear in order to construct the flow of a hero’s developmental journey. Seriously, come back. We promise this bit’s good. While not all of these narratemes appear in every story ever written, every story does include a few of them in some form, and Half-Life 2 uses a great deal of them in absolute textbook sequence in order to create a journey of character progression. In Half-Life 2 though, the archetypal hero developing through this journey is the player/Gordon hybrid, who gets to directly experience the whole process themselves rather than just witnessing it.
Sign up to the 12DOVE Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
![Death Stranding 2](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/wBdyHFkxHQuCBoxLmhvguB-840-80.jpg)
Hideo Kojima quietly reveals 10 seconds of new Death Stranding 2 footage as what looks like the next trailer goes to "main sound mixing"
![A brightened screenshot from the reveal trailer for the Monolith Productions Wonder Woman game.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/oPrkWD6QUXhigL7VsHNscH-840-80.jpg)
3 years since reveal, open-world Wonder Woman game from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor devs reportedly $100 million in the hole and struggling with tech and leadership