Gordon Freeman

Doctor Gordon Freeman, Ph.D., is the silent protagonist of the Half-Life series of first-person shooter computer games. He is a theoretical physicist who has been forced to defend himself against hostile aliens and other enemies following an experiment gone wrong.

Character

Facts known about Freeman include that he is 27 years old at the time of Half-Life, has no dependents, and is a graduate of MIT, having earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. His thesis was titled Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement on Supraquantum Structures by Induction Through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array (or how to teleport large objects by shooting radio pulses through crystals of very heavy elements). A native of Seattle, Washington, Freeman harbored an early interest in theoretical physics, such as quantum mechanics and relativity. After observing a series of teleportation experiments conducted by the Institute of Experimental Physics in Innsbruck, Austria, applications of teleportation became Freeman's obsession.

Eventually, he became disappointed with the slow pace of teleportation research in academia and began to search for a job outside the education sector. By coincidence, Freeman's MIT mentor Dr. Isaac Kleiner had taken charge of a top-secret research project at a top secret, integrated research facility known as Black Mesa Research Facility and was looking for some associates. Freeman was an obvious choice. He accepted the job offer, hoping that at least part of the immense funding would go towards civilian applications of astrophysics and quantum computing.

At the start of the first game, Freeman is employed at, and lives in, the Black Mesa Research Facility, located somewhere in New Mexico. He is assigned to the Anomalous Materials department, located deep inside the facility, doing nuclear and subatomic research. Quite humorously, while having obtained a Ph.D from the prestigious MIT, the work that the player actually does as Freeman (pressing a button and pushing a cart) does not require any intellectual expertise at all. Barney Calhoun pokes fun at this in the beginning portion of Half-Life 2, when Freeman performs similarly "technical" assistance (pushing a switch and attaching a fallen plug back into a socket). In Half-Life, a picture of a baby could be found in Freeman's locker, suggesting that he had a child (although this would conflict with his acceptance letter stating that he's unmarried and has no dependents) or another infant relative of some sort. Others suggest that it depicts a young Alyx Vance since it is similar to a picture of her found in Half-Life 2. However, this was never detailed or referenced anywhere else in the series.

According to dialog by Alyx in Episode One, Dr. Freeman and Calhoun would compete with each other to be the first to retrieve Dr. Kleiner's keys whenever he locked them in his office in Black Mesa (apparently a fairly regular occurrence) without resorting to conventional means. This is reputedly where Freeman learned to make use of ventilation shafts to infiltrate buildings.

Freeman is bespectacled, wears a goatee, and is quite athletic. Although seeming to be an expert with weapons and explosives, Freeman had actually not handled any weapons until some cursory training at the Black Mesa Research Facility's Hazard Course (aside from the butane-powered tennis ball cannon he constructed at age 6). What separates Gordon Freeman from other games heroes is that he is a scientist – a rather unlikely kind of hero when compared to more traditional video-game characters such as Duke Nukem, or soldier types in many other games, such as Doomguy or Master Chief. Chaos Theory poked fun at this fact when a character in game remarks to protagonist Sam Fisher that "crowbars are for geeky video-game characters."

According to Valve's documentary book on the game, Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar, the name Gordon Freeman is a homage to Freeman Dyson.

Appearances and role

Half-Life

On May 15, 200-, Freeman and his team perform an experiment that goes horribly wrong (possibly intentionally). As a result, the space-time continuum is ruptured, allowing alien lifeforms to enter the facility and begin killing any humans they can find. Freeman finds himself hunted by two groups: the invading aliens and a military cleanup team that has been sent to contain the situation, silencing aliens and surviving personnel alike. Against all odds, the untrained theoretical physicist somehow manages to survive the chaos, impressing the few surviving scientists and security guards with his heroic acts while quickly becoming the military's top priority target.

After numerous challenges, and after eliminating countless aliens and soldiers, Freeman is eventually transported by a few surviving Lambda Team scientists to the alien home world of Xen, where he manages to eliminate the alien "leader," Nihilanth. Upon recovering from his final encounter, Freeman is finally confronted by the mysterious G-Man, who has been observing Freeman from a distance throughout the entire game and perhaps even manipulating his fate. The G-Man shows Freeman several locations throughout Earth and Xen, before finally offering Freeman a choice: either agree to work for the G-Man and his mysterious "employers," or be left to die on Xen without any weapons and surrounded by hostile lifeforms. Half-Life 2 assumes that Gordon chooses to accept G-Man's offer of employment.

Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 begins with the G-Man speaking to Gordon. Like the ending of the original game, the scene is somewhat inexplicable and psychedelic, with the G-Man's face in extreme close-up fading in and out of visibility over backgrounds representing scenes from the original Half-Life as well as scenes he will visit in the course of Half-Life 2. The G-Man delivers a typically cryptic speech, and concludes by telling Freeman he must "wake up and smell the ashes;" according to the Episode One story page, the G-Man kept Freeman "in stasis far from Earth, thought, and time itself" for "nearly two decades." Freeman then wakes up on a train with two citizens being "relocated" to City 17. Freeman quickly learns that Earth has been conquered and occupied by the trans-dimensional Combine empire. He soon meets up with Barney Calhoun and Alyx Vance, and joins the resistance against the Combine.

During the course of the second game, Freeman battles the forces of the Combine in order to free humanity from its grasp. Already famous for his role in the Black Mesa Incident, Gordon quickly develops a legendary reputation among Earth's surviving human populace, who begin to look up to him and refer to him by such messianic titles as "The One Free Man." After slaying hundreds of Combine soldiers and leading an assault against the Combine stronghold of Nova Prospekt, Gordon eventually sparks a full-scale uprising against the Combine in City 17, in which he becomes a combatant. Gordon infiltrates the Combine's foothold on Earth, the Citadel, and destroys it by detonating its Dark Energy Reactor. Although caught in the reactor's explosion along with Alyx Vance, Gordon is rescued by the G-Man, who tells Freeman that he is impressed with his work and has received several tempting offers for his "services." The G-Man finally informs Freeman that, rather than offering him "the illusion of free choice," the G-Man has taken the liberty of choosing for him, and deposits Freeman back in stasis until he is needed once again. Thus, Half-Life 2 "concludes" just as cryptically as its predecessor did, with perhaps even more questions unanswered.

Episode One

Episode One rejoins Freeman as Alyx Vance and he embark on the flight from City 17, doomed by the destruction of the Citadel's dark fusion reactor at the end of Half-Life 2.

At the beginning of the game, the G-Man appears once more to Gordon. This time, he is interupted by the appearance of a group of chanting glowing purple vortigaunts, who take Gordon away while blocking the G-Man's path. This annoys the G-Man, who then says: "We'll see... about that!" Gordon ends up under a pile of rubble and is found by Alyx and D0g. It is later revealed that the only way to flee the Citadel's explosion, which would level much of City 17, is to contain the Citadel's core, stalling the structure's destruction enough for an escape. Gordon and Alyx succeed in doing so, but learn that a message by the local Combine will only be delivered to off-world Combine forces when the Citadel is destroyed. With a copy of this message, Gordon and Alyx escape the Citadel and meet up with Barney and other survivors.

The pair escape City 17 via an evacuation train as the Citadel goes critical. Evidently, the Combine message is successfully transmitted while several unknown Combine aircraft fly away from the Citadel at great speed. The train carrying Freeman and Alyx is still close by and is hit by a shockwave as the Citadel is seemingly destroyed. Their subsequent fate would only be revealed in Episode Two.

Other appearances

Half-Life: Opposing Force

Adrian Shephard only encounters Gordon once in Opposing Force when he witnesses Gordon teleport to Xen in the Lambda Complex. Trying to follow him through the same portal will result in the player's death.

Half-Life: Blue Shift

Gordon is seen three times by Barney Calhoun during the course of Blue Shift. Barney first sees Gordon passing by in a tram at the beginning of the game, later heading towards the HEV storage area through a surveillance camera, and lastly being dragged to a trash compactor by a pair of HECU marines.

H.E.V. suit

In much of the Half-Life series, Freeman wears a special full-body hazard suit, known as the H.E.V. suit, H.E.V. standing for Hazardous EnVironment. The HEV suit was designed by Doctor Gina Cross, one of the main protagonists in Decay. Freeman wears the Mark IV suit in Half-Life, then donning the upgraded Mark V suit in Half-Life 2. Cross was said to have tested a Mark V prototype before the events of the resonance cascade, but it is unknown if this is related to the Mark V suit in Half-Life 2. Designed to protect the user from radiation, energy discharges, and blunt trauma during the handling of hazardous materials, the HEV suit is what allows Gordon, an ordinary human being, to survive the dangers and injuries he faces over the course of his struggles.

The HEV Mark IV suit worn by Freeman in Half-Life has a built-in flashlight, Geiger counter, morphine administrator (which allows Gordon to function normally even after serious injury), anti-toxin delivery system, an optional long-jumping module which allows jumps over large distances, a radio, and a head-up display (HUD) which tracks health status and weapon ammunition usage, as well as including a weapons management system. The suit contains an on-board computer system that constantly monitors the user's health and vital signs, and reacts to any changes in the user's condition. Additionally, the suit has an electrically hardened armor system that can be charged by power modules throughout Black Mesa. While charged, the suit provides greater protection from injury as the charge absorbs more than two-thirds of any damage or trauma experienced by the wearer. With a fully charged suit, Freeman can survive several dozen bullets of small arms fire or even a direct hit from a rocket propelled grenade. The suit also features an optional helmet, as seen on various HEV-enclosed corpses dotted around Xen, mainly at the ruined research camp seen in Blue Shift. Freeman dons the suit at the beginning of the first game, and is allowed to keep it at the end of the game by the G-Man.

The HEV suit is not exclusive to Freeman. Many can be seen worn by slain Black Mesa research members on Xen. Two additional (empty) HEV storage units are seen near the start of the game in Sector C, which are said to have been used by the main protagonists of Decay, Gina Cross and Colette Green. The suits also evidently come in different colors. Although many, including Gordon's and ones belonging to the corpses seen on Xen, are orange, Gina wears a tan suit, while Colette wears a maroon suit.

In Half-Life 2, despite being allowed to keep it in the previous game, Freeman nevertheless starts without the suit. After a visit to Dr. Isaac Kleiner, his former professor, Freeman receives a new HEV suit, Mark V (Kleiner, as well as other characters occasionally refer to this suit as Gordon's "old suit," indicating that it may simply have been upgraded). New features include a visual zooming capability, limited enhanced running (sprint) capability, an injector to administer antidote for poison headcrab venom, an optional ammo and health counter on the crosshair (enabled by the player in options under 'Mouse'), and the capability to use Combine power nodes to charge the suit. Unlike the Mark IV however, the Mark V uses only one auxiliary power source for flashlights, sprinting and oxygen supply. In addition, the long-jumping module is no longer a feature. This design feature would have an unexpected effect later on in the game, when the suit appears to be infused with "Dark Energy" from a Combine weapon destroyer allowing the suit to store twice as much energy as normal. This powered version of his suit remains intact for the start of Half-life 2 Episode One but the suit returns to its natural state when the player leaves the Citadel. It seems, like the Dark Energy gravity gun, the effects wear off in time.

It should be noted, that HEV energy chargers in Half-Life have the trademark (tm) symbol added after the HEV letters, which suggests that the chargers, HEV suit, or both, are produced by a non-government company. An Easter egg in Half-Life 2, however, reveals an old cover of an HEV charger lacking the trademark logo ^*.

It has been speculated that the HEV suit, despite its name, was not intended simply for protection in hazardous environments and was in fact designed with combat in mind - perhaps intended as a combat exoskeleton for defense contractors. Black Mesa may have been, after all, a military installation and the PCV worn by the player in Opposing Force apparently uses the same technology (it's able to replenish its power from Black Mesa chargers). Furthermore, the HEV's capacity to resist munitions damage would seem more than a little excessive if it was designed simply to keep scientists safe during dangerous experiments, in toxic areas or in otherwise harmful situations. The suit also possesses the capability to track weapons in hand, along with their ammunition. These features may be explained by the visits many Black Mesa personnel made to the border world of Xen which contains many dangerous and hostile forms of life.

The symbol on Gordon's HEV suit is the lower case Greek letter Lambda, λ. This symbol is used by scientists to denote the decay constant of radioactive elements (related to the half-life of an element). As well as appearing on Gordon's suit, the symbol replaces the letter "a" in the game title, Hλlf-Life, and is the name of the complex in the Black Mesa Research Facility where teleportation experiments are conducted. The Lambda symbol is also seen in Half-Life 2 as a marking of the human resistance, seen close to hidden supplies and on the arm bands of better equipped resistance fighters.

Spoof

In the second half of the Half-Life 2 parody webcomic, Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman, Freeman appears in City 17 shortly after he disembarks an inbound train, several weeks after the start of the comic's storyline, and marks the start of Half-Life 2 itself. His facial appearance has not been revealed, possibly because there is no Gordon Freeman character model (as the comic is created with Garry's Mod), and possibly (as there are unofficial Freeman models available) to maintain the mystery and presence he has in the game.

References

Unknown. Half-Life instruction manual. Valve Software, 1998.
Hodgson, David. Half-Life 2: Prima Official Game Guide. Prima Games, 2004. ISBN 0761543627.
Hodgson, David. Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar. Prima Games, 2004. ISBN 0761543643.

External link

Story overview of Half-Life

Computer and video game protagonists | Fictional scientists | Half-Life characters | Silent protagonists

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