A thought process runs wild, an angry Welsh geek returns to town to rant at those who'll listen, for he has been thinking in the desert.

Half-Life. Adored to this day, described by Valve (big surprise) on their Steam service as follows...

"1998. HALF-LIFE sends a shock through the game industry with its combination of pounding action and continuous, immersive storytelling. Valve's debut title wins more than 50 game-of-the-year awards on its way to being named "Best PC Game Ever" by PC Gamer, and launches a franchise with more than..."

"... pounding action and continuous, immersive storytelling."

Mmm. About that.

I was always of another camp, another denomination of the Faith, for as a young man one of my first computer games was - rather than Half-Life, as began PC gaming for so many in my mid-twenties age-bracket - the original Unreal, released around the same time.

Two very different approaches to design are evidenced, and there's absolutely no surprise that firstly; Half-Life won, and defined the mechanism of linear, scripted gameplay with impressive set-piece non-interactive events. Or that secondly, the creators of Unreal went on to alter their technique first to the extreme of producing exclusively competitive multiplayer arena combat titles, and then generic hyper-masculine scripted third person action games for the later mainstream consoles in order to succeed in a market that failed to greet Unreal as warmly as might have been hoped.

Let's look at the core distinction between the two games...

Half-Life: A linear first person shooter in which you, an inexplicably martially talented young scientist travel through an environment that frequently explodes or collapses as you pass 'trigger' points in an unending succession of grey corridors and air vents, a large number of sewer levels, and with graded frequency introduces you to new weapons and new enemy types to use them on. Some creative weapon designs balance out the very bland ones, while uninspired visuals trapped between a low-fi realism and a retrofuturistic 'EINSTEIN HAIR!' egg-head scientist vibe - with some of the silliest alien designs this side of 1965 abound alongside an 'adequate' audio experience. A nice engine for mobility and exploration is only occasionally used to good effect, as the basis of gameplay remains 'travel between dramatic and violent scripted events behind windows/grilles/across chasms, shoot aliens and angry men with guns while balancing ammunition expenditure between said events'.

Meanwhile...

Unreal: Linear first-person shooter in which you crash land upon an unknown alien world as a prisoner of unknown crimes, escape the wreckage of your ship and - using your translator device - follow a breadcrumb trail of computer readouts, ancient heiroglyphs, last wills and journals of the dead through the wildernesses, villages and ruins of a world with an ancient alien culture in decline, exploring large open environments. Piecing together a story from tiny, personalised fragments, learning as much or as little as you please and finding equipment depending more upon your willingness to explore dangerous areas and negotiate traps and ambushes than by necessity and guidance. Beautiful, quiet, minimalistic, while meanwhile possessing an incomparably superior combat AI capable of offering an intense and unpredictable challenge even to my jaded tastes as a veteran of multiplayer FPS games, speaking in 2013 based upon a recent replay.

In retrospect, it makes so much sense, the way the industry turned following the release of this pair in 1998. Offered two paths; guided, exciting interactive movie-play, walk down the corridor and observe how the world explodes in a surviveable manner just in time for your arrival, but don't you dare try to stop the execution, don't try to save the scientist, don't *interact* with this, heavens no.

... or exploration of a world rich in what might be termed 'archaeological detail', to be discovered or ignored as you please, filled with an unpredictable living AI. Highly challenging, and not a lot of hand-holding. Quite possible to get 'stuck', to get lost. Very difficult to find all of the secrets and special equipment.

While Half-Life introduced a new form of gaming in terms of scripted sequences, the first step toward 'interactive movies' in the guise of games, Unreal was the 'true 3d' evolution of Doom. Quake 2 had segued off into a more simplified shooter as compared to the rich level designs of Doom and its sequels, but Unreal took us right back, but chose to give us combat and horror coupled with exploration of a beautiful and mysterious world, rather than a blood-soaked science fiction b-movie, and took it to the vibrantly colourful/grimly atmospheric limits of the technology of the time.

Fifteen years on we laud each creative release, we thrill for the true sandboxes, we desperately mod greater detail and immersion into our worlds and cheer for each indie release that defies the 'Call of Duty' standard - yet our pink-tinted nostalgiagoggles insist that Half-Life remains 'teh best gaem evar'. Veteran PC gamers and journalists alongside them seem to possess an almost universal faith in the notion that Half-Life was The Beginning, and The End. That it is the insurpassable gold-standard for game design.

Yet everything that frustrates the self-consciously 'aware' old guard of games journalism (from the PC gamer teams on both sides of the pond to RPS, and you, my dear tappers) about the loss of player-agency and freedom in modern first-person games began, in my opinion, with Half-Life. It took the first step on that downward slope toward giving the player shiny treats for walking through the door in a dead, static world that only springs to life to amuse the Master.

Unreal was the first 'true 3d' mainstream game to write the story into the world itself, to let the player discover the secrets, to challenge the player with an AI simulation, rather than a sequence of pop-up targets. I don't think it was supremely influential. I don't think it led to any major developments except for the spinoff Tournament titles. The Elder Scrolls grew up to provide Morrowind, STALKER and Pathologic emerged from the deep darkness of the post-Soviet psyche regardless of what came before.

That's the tragedy. Unreal was the last of its kind, followed only by occasional brief hauntings of the Old School (from Painkiller to Shadow Warrior), more focused on the frenetic pace and the tawdry aesthetics of the nineties than the freedom.

Unreal lost, and was lost. Just trying to find information on it today can be difficult, as the search results crowd with the rich communities that grew up surrounding the far better known multiplayer sequels.

... It's all rather sad.

I wonder what that other world looks like, today - the parallel path in which Unreal was crowned, instead?