Anomalous Materials
"They're waiting for you, Gordon, in the test chamber."
The automated doors close behind us and we step into a brightly lit reception desk, or perhaps a front kiosk, where a security officer and a scientist are bent over a computer. The barney tells you that some things haven't been going right with the computers this morning, and that they were having some problems in the test chamber but that he thinks it's all straightened out. He tells you that you'll need to get into your hazard suit before going into the test chamber. This is where the game properly begins, as you're freely able to move around the facility at your own pace, exploring to your heart's content. Half-Life stood out from the crowd by adding a new layer of environmental interactivity and by withholding weapons entirely until a fair into the game. Already in the kiosk area, there are a couple of easily discovered "secrets" you can find by interacting with certain objects. A button behind the front desk will sound an alarm if you press it, and a scientist will ask you to get away from a computer if you open it up, saying that he's waiting for an important message. On the primary floor level, there are two other rooms you can enter (one of which has a functioning lightswitch), as well as a locked room where you can see the G-man having a discussion with a scientist.
The banter between the scientists is notorious in this chapter, and it's by far the most light-hearted one. Endless amounts of fun can be had just by seeing how the scientists will react to different things. Obviously there's the lightswitch pandemonium, the microwave that you can use to explode a casserole, the vending machines you can use, and you can even get a reaction by approaching locked bathroom stalls. This was a level of interactivity that just wasn't done in games before. This is again a showcase of Valve's setup of atmosphere and tone; there's a sense of urgency but you're subtly rewarded for exploring. The fact that the scientists often have very cartoonish lines (e.g., "My God, what are you doing?" and "Why do we all have to wear these ridiculous ties?") adds to the levity and is a major aspect of the game's lasting charm.
The rooms here are somewhat advanced (sliding doors everywhere, for one thing), but still in the realm of reality. That is, there's still a break room, a bathroom with a sink, toilet paper, and dryer, lab rooms, etc. Valve wears their sci-fi influences on their sleeve, and it's fairly clear that this is some kind of mesh between a retro sci-fi style and modern sensibilities. The reel-to-reel and analog machines everywhere, along with giant arrays of flashing lights and buttons hearkens back to a 70's or 80's aesthetic of science fiction, and has comparatively little to do with the kinds of laboratories of the late 90's or today.
Anomalous Materials does a great job of setting up the way Black Mesa looks before the disaster. There are cold, white, artificial lights flatly lighting the walls evenly. People walk about there day calmly, since it's just business as usual. There's nothing particularly out of the ordinary here and it's a great idea to show the extent of the damage to Black Mesa by having you walk through it when everything is normal. It has a great effect when There's obviously some great foreshadowing here. A path is completely blocked off by a barney, who says "You got the wrong airlock, Mr. Freeman. You know I can't let you through here." That kind of curiosity that such a line sparks is obviously rewarded later on. Nevertheless, you are guided well through the straightforward directionality here. There are a couple of dead ends down some hallways, otherwise you naturally end up in the locker room where you find the hazard suit. Two other hazard suits are missing, and still to this day I wonder why Valve decided to make a set of three with only one remaining for you, instead of simply one. Regardless, with your hazard suit on, you're able to proceed through a corridor that a barney was guarding before. This obviously helps instill in players that some areas are sealed off until you've accomplished some kind of task, and that scientists and security guards may be imperative for your progress.
The doors open up to a room with Black Mesa various posters on various walls. It should be pointed out that one of them shows an image of the hydroelectric dam that you'll be reaching far later in the game, and it's very interesting that such a subtle hint was used to tie the facility together. After an elevator ride, you reach a room where you learn about the experiment you'll be participating in. The following room has an exploding computer with a concerned scientist (later revealed to be Eli Vance) who says "It wasn't meant to do this in the first place." This should tip off players pretty clearly that something is bound to go wrong here, and also points out that some scientists knew, or had a feeling, that they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing. After a cool elevator that spins around for some reason and a room with lasers in the ceiling, you finally reach the last bit of exposition before the experiment, where once again a scientist voices concerns about something going wrong, but the other one comes off rather strongly that the player doesn't need to know about this.
There is so much variety in this chapter that it's easy to forget that the last part, the experiment, is still in the same chapter. The room in which the experiment takes place is iconic, with its large, imposing walls and huge anti-mass spectrometer in the center. The choice of color for this room, a very strong orange hue, isn't arbitrary. The box cover of Half-Life had a very strong orange color, the hazard suit was orange, and later Lambda signs will be orange as well. The overwhelming orange hue is one such way that Valve connects various ideas, locations, and events under the same or similar umbrella. The overall darker atmosphere here also has an imposing effect on the player.
In retrospect, though, I'm disappointed that the player only has to climb a ladder to push a button to start the rotors, and then push the specimen into the anti-mass spectrometer. I understand that Valve may have felt they couldn't expect players to do more complicated tasks, but even using one iota of thought could disprove Gordon's role in the entire experiment. We've already been exposed to many automated machines that can seem to operate just fine, or at least can be operated remotely. Obviously, Valve wanted to involve the player in the experiment, and they did so, but it makes no sense that the scientists wouldn't be able to start the rotors from the other room or that they couldn't have put the specimen in an automated machine. It's just one of those touches that could have involved the player differently and more intelligently. As it stands, Valve wanted the player to contribute to the disaster, and in fact be the actual cause of it, so I suppose the player's meager participation is better than nothing. Valve would recycle this idea again in Half-Life 2, rather aggravatingly disappointingly, by having the player pick up a large dongle cable and plug it back in to where it popped out during the game's initial teleportation sequence. So I suppose Half-Life's experiment isn't so bad by comparison.
The experiment is absolutely iconic to the Half-Life series, so much so that it's one of the first things you see in the cinematic introduction of Half-Life 2. As soon as you hit the button on the rafter, the anti-mass spectrometer slowly whirls to life in stages, and you're free to get a glimpse of it from any angle you want. The spinning machinery looks cool, especially with bright flashes of electricity connecting the various parts, brightening the otherwise somewhat dark and lifeless room. It's yet another example of a kind of retro-sci-fi technology, since it seems more analog than digital. The scientists communicating over the loudspeaker also contribute a lot to understanding the experiment. In truth there really isn't much to understand aside from learning that it's powering up in stages. When the power level is boosted to 105%, the scientist shows an inkling of possible regret and the power to stop the experiment, but he still pushes on. Is it his hubris, fear of the administrator, or something else that convinces him to keep going? In any case, this is our very obvious clue that something isn't right. Regardless, the specimen arrives, "one of the purest samples we've seen yet," and for some reason we have to push it into the anti-mass spectrometer even though we've seen robots doing much more complex tasks. Anyway, we do this and immediately things go wrong. Electricity and portals and other flashes of light surround the machinery and then things go black and all we can hear is the sound of Gordon breathing. Upon coming to in just a moment, we then get warped to an alien world. The first thing we see there is a very striking scene in its radically different color (greens and blues as opposed to yellows and oranges) as we see something that look like alien animals drinking some kind of water while a floating bacteria-looking thing floats in the air. After getting warped back into the chamber, we get teleported once more to a pitch black scene where we're confronted by four aliens that simply stare at us. Things go black and the chapter ends.
Anomalous Materials is a great opening chapter as it's entirely a setup for the narrative. You can take it at your own pace, for the most part, either rushing through it or taking your time to absorb everything that the maps have to offer. In retrospect, it's a stroke of brilliance that Valve has you going through the motions in an otherwise normal setting, to follow it up with the chaos that ensues after the disaster. More specifically, the next chapter has you backtracking all the way back to the beginning of Anomalous Materials while Black Mesa is dealing with the initial throes of the catastrophe. This is brilliant because you already know the layout, but are seeing it in a completely different state. Valve's decision to make the player the direct cause of the resonance cascade is no accident, as it makes the player feel responsible for the events that follow, since the player quite literally caused everything to happen. As with Black Mesa Inbound, this chapter has no weapons or enemies and so is entirely setup for the narrative. The involvement of the player with the plot, even having a plot that's told to the player through the eyes of Gordon is what distinguishes it from Doom clones of the same era.
Post-game, Anomalous Materials remains a fantastic chapter to just screw around with the AI. As other people have put it, it seems almost obligatory to start up the chapter, enable god mode and give yourself all weapons to create as much havoc as you can. This is another stroke of brilliance of Valve, that the game works on both the level that it was intended and it's also tongue-in-cheek enough to work as a playground for mayhem.
Glitches/Bugs:
After putting the crystal into the anti-mass spectromet, if the delivery cart is pulled out as far as it can, a vortigaunt that teleports in won't hit the ground and hit a trigger that causes it to disappear, and will instead stay on the cart for the next chapter, causing it to attack you. With no weapons to defend yourself, this is a pretty risky move. I also know that it's possible to boost yourself out of the normal area and cause the next chapter to load the player in the room where the scientists were.
- Olde