City 17: A Breakdown of Gaming’s Most Iconic Prologue
How Half-Life 2 perfected environmental storytelling years earlier than any other video game
The original 1998 shooter Half-Life begins with the infamous tram ride. For the first five minutes of the game, you’re restricted to the inside of a tram carriage, given a guided tour of the expansive Black Mesa research complex. The ride gives you a peek at the enemies, hazards, and landscapes that await you.
This tram ride gives players a sense of place within Black Mesa’s cavernous tunnels and corridors, but it’s also been a sore point for fans. Why? Because during that long tram ride, there is little to do.
The Power of Interactive Storytelling
Half-Life stood apart from other games, thanks to the strength of its interactive storytelling. The gameplay never pauses for the story. The player is an active part of every cutscene and is free to move around the world as events unfold.
This creates an unprecedented connection with the game world in iconic moments. For example, there is the scene where the Resonance Cascade (a cataclysmic quantum event) tears through Black Mesa and kills everyone except you. You could stare unblinkingly at the beautiful, but terrifying light-show before you. But in most first playthroughs, you’re trying to find the exit before this rip in the time-space takes you for a ride. That’s great because that is your reaction to the world manifesting itself in the game thanks to the openness of the mechanics.
This is why the tram ride doesn’t align with Half-Life’s philosophy. The first five minutes of the game doesn’t give players the freedom that Half-Life provides throughout the rest of the game. Thankfully, the next five minutes of the game make up for this. You can ruin microwave meals, rummage through colleague’s lockers, eavesdrop on conversations, and leave workplace destruction in your wake.
The criticism of this introductory sequence reached Valve, and they changed their approach in the next installment. In the opening segment of Half-Life 2, interactive storytelling is present from the very start. Players get a guided tour through City 17, except this time with your feet firmly planted on the streets where you can freely move around.
If City 17’s Streets Could Talk
Valve takes storytelling even further in Half-Life 2. Not only can you interact with the world they have tossed you in if you take a step back and take in its cold, concrete sights, the world tells its own story. From the Breencasts echoing throughout the streets, the rotting buildings, and the empty playgrounds, City 17 refuses to let you get comfortable. That’s what makes Half-Life 2 an environmental storytelling wonder.
Here are some of the landmarks and locations that bring you deeper into the gangrenous heart of City 17.
Train
Half-Life 2 begins on a train, an homage to the original game. This time it’s a quick trip, Valve providing players with the chance to interact with other characters instead of staring aimlessly out the window. As the elusive G-Man’s words rattle in our head — wake up and smell the ashes — the sound of a train sounds off. We’re not alone. There are two men in the carriage with you.
The first man gives you a quizzical look, “I didn’t see you get on…” It is becoming clear to us we’ve just been plopped onto this train by G-Man. Before we can truly explore City 17, it’s established that we’re in a world completely alien to us. It’s a simple move, but putting everyone into the same boat of being clueless to the new surroundings is a friendly way of bringing new players unfamiliar with Half-Life into the series. For veterans of the first game, this piques our curiosity. What mysteries lay before us in City 17?
There is another man on the train with a simple purpose: to let you know that something is very wrong with this world. Nervously clutching a briefcase, he’ll only interact with you when prompted. “No matter how many times I get relocated, I never get used to this,” he despairs. As the train jostles you about, it’s hard to miss the graffiti, the filthy floors, the litter…
Throughout Half-Life 2 it becomes apparent that City 17’s design found inspiration from the concrete jungles of Soviet bloc countries. The Eastern European architecture, the barbed wires — a world forever grey. That inspiration becomes more visible as the train pulls into a concrete station.
Welcome to City 17.
Station
With just enough time to speak to the passengers and recoil at the urine-stained train benches, you arrive at the train platform. From a giant TV screen, you’re greeted with a 1984-inspired supreme leader. If there were any doubts the game tossed you into a dystopian world, it ends the moment the man on the screen begins his iconic speech:
“Welcome. Welcome to City 17. You have chosen, or been chosen, to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centers. I thought so much of City 17 that I elected to establish my Administration here in the Citadel, so thoughtfully provided by Our Benefactors. I have been proud to call City 17 my home. And so, whether you are here to stay, or passing through on your way to parts unknown, welcome to City 17. It’s safer here.”
The Breencasts are no doubt iconic, but the delivery of Dr. Breen’s speeches dragged on. They are likely to be ignored by players. If you decide to sit a spell and listen, the exposition comes across as clunky. Even the line about Breen establishing City 17 as the capital feels out of place in his welcome speech. It felt like a half-hearted excuse to wedge in “our benefactors” line into the player’s first glimpse of the city.
Yet the mystery grows thanks to the dichotomy in Breen’s speech. “One of our finest remaining urban centers” suggests that most of the world is a dangerous wilderness. “It’s safer here.” He never claims that City 17 is safe, but it’s safer than the other sorry options out there.
As Breen’s words fill the space, underneath the watchful eye of the TV screen, a man begs to keep a hold of his luggage — “it’s all I have left!” We watch a guard shove him into his own suitcases before being roughly directed to move elsewhere. It’s a small moment, but it’s a moment that contrasts against the propaganda coming from the screen.
Plaza
As you step outside of the train station, a chilling sight greets you. Jutting out from the ground, disappearing into the clouds, is an imposing monolith — The Citadel. The plaza gives players their first glimpse of this structure that towers over the relatively tiny city square. It is at the plaza that we see the influence of the Combine’s architecture. Hi-tech, sci-fi equipment covers the tops of City 17’s rotting buildings. But it’s hard to be impressed by these glimpses of equipment and wiring. Why? Because even the technology looks like they bought it on a budget.
This can be clearly seen on the Breencast screen attached to the obelisk in the middle of the plaza. Rubber-coated wires droop down from a nearby building and into the square. It brought to mind cost-cutting solutions for urban electric wiring that’s often seen in slums.
Every time I play this opening, I obsess over this obelisk. Once, it would have been the eye-catching centrepiece of this plaza, a beautiful monument to greet you as you exit the train station. Now, with the Citadel looming behind it, the obelisk shrinks underneath it. It has no hope of achieving its former glory. To add insult to injury, it now acts as a stand to hoist up screens to push out propaganda to the public.
One can’t help wonder what was City 17 before all of this. We build monuments to remember the past, but there are no plaques on this obelisk. The human history that once sat in this obelisk has been chipped away by the Combine, a fitting description of the state of the people who live in this city.
Hotel
The hotel is likely to be the next building to catch the player’s attention — if only because it has an enormous sign that says “HOTEL”. I appreciate the developers for drawing attention to this building. At first it seems just as nondescript as the other buildings in the plaza. It is just as quiet and abandoned as every other commercial building around this train station. There is no use for a hotel in a world where no one travels unless they have been “relocated”. There is no tourism in City 17, so this huge building stands empty and rotting — or, at least, that’s how it seems.
Exploring further down the road past the hotel will show a small side door standing ajar. The door shut by a Combine officer as you approach, but there is just enough time to see a civilian being brutally beaten. This hotel, once the home to travel and freedom, now stands in the centre of town as a constant reminder of what the citizens have lost. But, even worse than that, it has become a rat’s nest, hiding the worst attributes of the very regime that stole their freedom from them.
So much of City 17’s history and the loss of it can be found by walking around the plaza and its surrounding landmarks. Once upon a time it served as a hub for travellers and citizens — a place of movement and freedom. Now it sits quietly, save for when the screen pushes out another message from the regime.
Playground
There is so much to explore and dissect in your first moments in City 17. However, I’ll wrap it up with one final, iconic image: the empty playground.
Pay attention to Breen’s droning monologues as you explore the city and you may have heard him defending his use of a “suppression field” which inhibits breeding. It’s easy to think nothing of it until you come across a rusted playground roundabout and a slide. There is a distinct lack of children in City 17. The simple image of playground equipment turning brown and red from rust leaves players with an unsettled feeling.
With Valve taking inspiration from Eastern European architecture, I suspect the playground may have been a nod to the abandoned leisure parks in Chernobyl. Valve shows mastery in drawing influence of liminal space: the unsettling effect of seeing a building or room ripped from its context and presented as deserted. This empty playground surrounded by square, blocky apartments, followed by the eerie silence sends an uncomfortable chill down my spine.
Valve shows mastery in creating a story through its different landmarks and the small interactions you glimpse as you move closer. These simple techniques paint a clear image of what City 17 is truly like and what to expect in your time here.
Final thoughts
City 17 oozes with unspoken stories and horrors. There is more to share, this piece only analyzing the first ten minutes of gameplay. But City 17 is a world that is best experienced yourself. Each cold street, each concrete building sagging under its own weight, every dark corner, all deserve a visit if only to see the oppressive environment Valve put together.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of playing Half-Life 2, grab it now. The first chapter alone is an incredible display of environmental storytelling and the small ways developers can world build without dialogue. Half-Life 2’s strength is, also, in its game design and writing. So if you’re ready to step into City 17, don’t forget to look over your shoulder once in a while. This is a city where you need to be on your toes at all times.
