Office Complex

Office Complex

"I'm not so sure I want to go to the surface. What if the world finds out what we're doing down here?"

The elevator shakes and we have no idea what to expect when it reaches its destination. Will it open to the surface? Will we see more canals? The elevator halts and the doors open. Immediately we see a dark office hallway with checkerboard tile flooring, electricity spraying out and killing headcrabs down a hallway. On the right are some scientists behind a locked door, and if approached, we can see one of them get eaten by a barnacle while another one runs away.

Office Complex is an interesting chapter. Its initial section turns a 1950's style administration office into a horror show, complete with zombies, headcrabs, dangerous electricity, and eventually, vortigaunts. There are also plenty of friendlies here as well, so unlike the second half of Unforeseen Consequences, you're frequently in the company of other Black Mesa employees. The beginning of this chapter is largely unified where vent-crawling is essential for bypassing some locked doors. This is also another great, early instance of a side path that can get you a new weapon early, if you're so inclined. If you decide to break some boxes, you can reach a security station with the locked gate and a shotgun nearby. The barney behind the gate gets attacked by a zombie, and if you let him die, you can't get in. Otherwise, aiding him allows him to open the door for you, which is a great opportunity for Valve to show you that your actions can have tangible consequences. It's somewhat baffling that the shotgun can be obtained so early, especially since it's hard to think of a reason for why any security guard at Black Mesa would need a SPAS-12. In their recreation of Half-Life, Crowbar Collective chose to replace the shotgun with a magnum, which is a bit of a shame but at least makes more sense.

Office Complex has been called the proto-Ravenholm level, and it's easy to see why. There is plenty of darkness to this level, zombies literally come out of the walls, and you're almost always in close quarters with enemies. It's also dark tonally, showing the merciless, brutal havoc that the Xenian creatures have wrought on the innocent faculty of Black Mesa. It's not quite as dark as the other horror-themed chapter, Apprehension, but it gets the job done. The mundanity of the setting is something that should naturally draw players in to it, since it features regular office rooms, hallways, and a cafeteria. The metal box-moving "puzzle" to reach a vent is, I suppose, somewhat obligatory to show (rather than tell) the player that boxes are movable and but it's stupid simple and feels artificial. The vent with the headcrabs is yet another possible jump-scare cheap shot of headcrabs in spots for cheap damage. The room with the electricity and the water is interesting and does another good job of showing how the environment can be a hazard, but doesn't really make a whole lot of sense with how the light switch turns off the electricity. This is also the first chapter where vent-crawling really becomes a main source of moving around (the first vents were in Unforeseen Consequences, of course, but it becomes a main staple both in "Office Complex" and "We've Got Hostiles!").

Valve does a good job of showcasing the turret when a scientist, and later a headcrab, enters the room and gets gunned down by it. Again this is classic Valve, showing the obstacle to the player before the player has to encounter it (unless the player is fast or reckless). This is also a good case in which it's possible to eliminate a threat, to completely ignore it, or to use it for your own benefit. The turret can be disabled, ignored (but at a price, since you can't bring the guard with you or access the medical station), or turned off and then on again to kill some headcrabs. It's a great element of the story that automated elements of the facility are being used against you, either intentionally or not. It's especially eye-opening that the Black Mesa facility may be either under military command, or that out of desperation, the higher-ups of Black Mesa may risk killing their own employees to ensure that the aliens are neutralized. However, it feels like a missed opportunity because Black Mesa turrets are really only used twice in this chapter, and since they only ever appear in this chapter, it's only a move that happens twice and then is completely neglected. It does a nice job of foreshadowing the military presence and it creates a nice challenge for the player to figure out how to destroy the turret, either by using weapons directly or by hiding behind boxes and shutting it off. But it also does an absolutely terrible job of integrating the turret into the environment naturally. I can't imagine why any employee would tolerate the two turrets being in their place of work.

The office section with the alien slaves is absolutely iconic, and it's possible to take two security guards up with you. However, I discovered upon replaying it that, at least on Hard, they're actually more trouble than they're worth because they'll actively shoot you in order to try to shoot the alien slaves, which will both damage you and not do anything to the vortigaunts, so it's completely pointless. This was about the time too that I realized how terrible the AI pathing has aged, and in general how both scientists and security guards will often get stuck on something or just not follow you. But I digress...the part with the vortigaunts is fun if you're soloing it and got the shotgun. The presence of headcrabs is the only downside since that may occupy a few seconds of your time switching to the glock or crowbar to kill them. The slaves have an interesting line-of-sight attack that makes peeking out from behind walls the primary strategy, which makes the combat easy unless you don't move. Afterwards, you can get rewarded for reading a sign that points to maintenance access, which can be followed to safely disable a turret and get some more shotgun ammo.

The following section leads you down some dark hallways and encountering some more vortigaunts and slaves. It's generally fairly easy if you're accurate with the shotgun and can prep a grenade in time. Another barney tells you to get topside because he hears troops are coming in to rescue everyone. This is the second time we heard about soldiers coming in to save everyone, which to nobody's surprise, is precisely the opposite of what they're about to do. There's yet another vent nearby that leads to a very involved secret, taking you around several hidden places in the area, and eventually dropping you in a locked door. The only real detraction about it is that there are an absurd number of hidden headcrabs as you walk along some narrow paths, even more than in the segment coming up, where you're supposed to fight headcrabs. In any case, if you gather the resources in the locked room, you can get some nice goodies like grenades, shotgun shells, and health, and I suppose now is as good a time as any to bring up the age-old question of why ammo is just littered around normal office rooms? No matter, it's the gameplay that's important here. Anyway, continuing on there's the cafeteria with an oddly boarded up door. This is another memorable part of the game that was actually included on the inside cover of the Half-Life box. There are several headcrabs and zombies in this room, and it makes for a nice shooting gallery, especially with the security guard assisting.

It's after this area that you can choose to take a major skip, allowing you to bypass pretty much the rest of the chapter, about a third of the chapter in total (explained below). Nowadays I tend to take this skip since I'm not crazy about the last third of this chapter. If you go the regular way past the wooden boards you have to smash open, there are some zombies doing weird shit to dead scientists, which I admit looks cool and are very easy to kill, in front of a meat locker. While it's kind of fun and somewhat creepy at the same time, especially since there are a couple of bullsquids and several headcrabs, the meat locker just makes no sense. What is a meat locker doing in Black Mesa? Do they have their own slaughterhouse? If not, then shouldn't there be an exit to the outside somewhere around? Anyway, there's a simple puzzle that may be easy to miss the first time around, and this leads to some unfortunately monotonous vent-crawling. I like the room with the barnacles, actually a fair bit more than the meat locker itself, mostly because it looks pretty dark tonally, but again it just leads to more vents and feels somewhat arbitrary and tacked on. It was a nice idea but it could've either been larger and more involved, or better integrated with an existing section. As it stands, it kind of serves to highlighted how disparate and segmented the actual areas are, and how little connected they can be. Once you deal with some more headcrabs, you're out of the vent and back into another stairwell on the other side of the door you couldn't previously open. The end section is again brightly lit with a couple of scripted events of NPCs jumping or falling through walls. Then you're off to take a leap of faith onto a ladder into an elevator shaft that leads to the end of the level. In all honesty, this is probably the weakest part of the level, and that leap of faith jump is kind of hit or miss. The rest of it is fairly easy, and I do find it somewhat compelling how the breakable grate on the top of the stuck elevator must be broken but doesn't look like an obvious "hit me" spot.

Office Complex has some of the most iconic and definitively Half-Life parts in the entire game. With one exception, the combat tends toward simple, albeit full of jump-scares and close quarters combat, giving it some intensity. The dark tone and atmosphere of zombies coming out of walls and attacking mindlessly and mercilessly is a great horror setting that puts the player on edge. The familiar setting of office rooms, hallways, and common areas connected via short ventilation ducts and stairwells grounds much of the chapter in reality, since the setting is relatable. It also shows that a lot of innocent office workers have suffered casualties, employees who may not have had anything directly to do with the experiment. A lot of dialogue here points toward the arrival of the military and much of it is foreshadowing their arrival and getting us prepared. There is some trepidation among some scientists versus the more optimistic (or gullible) security guard, so it conveys those differing viewpoints convincingly.

The chapter isn't perfect, though. It does have some unnecessary or not completely fleshed out ideas. Built-in sentry turrets could have been a good idea but remain completely under-developed and get abandoned almost as soon as they're brought up. Only the first one is kind of done well, while the second one will just chip away at unsuspecting players' health their first times through. The meat locker has some decent combat and it's fun to hack away at meat, but the shelf-crawling is a bit tedious, and that whole section isn't convincingly integrated into the rest of the map. A lot of brief vent-crawling in the beginning is used to train the player to see vents as a mode of transport, and they serve the purpose of being loading screens well enough, but the player doesn't move quickly through them so the longer vents can feel like slow-mode. We will really see the full extent of vent abuse in the next chapter. It can be fun to take scientists or barneys along, as there's plenty of company here, but they tend to die quickly, get stuck on level geometry, or refuse to follow for one reason or another. You're also not really rewarded much for taking anyone along, save for the fairly large level skip. All in all, the level design is spot on and it nails its atmosphere but starts to meander for a bit toward the end. It blows its load a bit early with the alien slave fight at the middle of the chapter, which is the most difficult fight in the game thus far, possibly catching players off-guard. However, combat for the rest of the chapter isn't anywhere near as intense and aside from the very end of Interloper, vortigaunts aren't sent to fight players in that great a number anywhere else in Half-Life except for the end of the penultimate level. It's got a great setting but is somewhat awkward and unbalanced. It's still one of the best levels with a decent amount of variety.

Glitches/Bugs

If you take the security guard to the locked door on the left side of the cafeteria and you push him next to the door, the door will open and allow you to proceed on up some stairs and essentially to the end of the level. There's some glitchiness that happens with this, such as some invisible NPCs (an invisible zombie and barney) and floating polygons that are part of the door, but in my opinion it can be worth it if you don't want to play through the meat locker part, which kind of just wastes time and doesn't give many additional resources.

- Olde