Half Life 2 Question

[Quad08]

So I've had the orange box for awhile now and the only games I've played on it have been TF2 and Portal. I've wanted to play Half Life 2 for awhile now, but I'm a guy who loves a good story and having a decent understanding of whats going on. So my question is...

Do I need to play Half Life 1 to understand whats going on?

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

No, just enjoy the ride.

 

[Woodsey]

No.

You'll be able to gather what happened in the first, and if you struggle you can just search a brief plot outline.

The two plots aren't related, although the over-arching plot (if that makes sense) is continued although still evades a proper explanation.

Damn Valve and their love of mystery.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

No, you don't, even if you played Half-Life 1, it would seem like you missed quite a few years of what was in between.

 

[WrongSprite]

Nah, I got it and I never played the first one. There's a couple of old faces, but you'll learn it all quickly enough.

 

[Trivun]

No. Although it does help a lot, and I haven't played HL2 but love HL, I know enough about the HL2 story to know that there isn't an actual need to play the first to understand the second. The stories are pretty well seperated. I'd advise playing the first game anyway, but it's not essential.

 

[Adfest]

You don't have to, but it would be a damn shame not to.

 

[Jonny49]

Not really, but I'd recommend getting HL1 anyway,. It's awesome.

 

[Cherry Cola]

You play that game and you do it now or you are not allowed to be here. Nobody is allowed to pass up on a chance to play Half-Life 2 for the first time. It's against the law.

 

[Banana Phone Man]

No. I just read up on the story on wikipedia and then put the characters faces with the story. Even if you don't learn what happens in HL you don't feel you missed out on much.

 

[Ryuk2]

It wouldn't harm to play the first one. But you don't HAVE to do it.

 

[Distorted Stu]

No it fills in the story plot as you play. I mean i played only half of HL1 and i still understood what was going on during the series.

 

[vorlon010]

Really the only things you need to play the first game for are specific references (a couple of characters who you meet in the first game recur).

Hell, the story of what happened in the interim is pretty well left out of most of the dialogue. It's only through reading the artbook they released that I got a clear idea of the timeskip.

 

[CRAVE CASE 55]

Ya I thought that when I bought the Orange Box but I found out pretty quick that you don't need to.

 

[Dimbo_Sama]

No, you don't need to have played the first one.

Although I would still recommend playing the first one as it's still one of the better games around, 12 years later.

 

[Alfador_VII]

While it's handy to have played HL1, and indeed highly recommended, you don't need to from a story point of view.

There has been several years since the end of the first game which is never fully explained in the games. Gordon's been out of touch for a while... somewhere.

 

[arcstone]

It'll help, but it's not required.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Do I need to play Half Life 1 to understand whats going on?

No, in fact, you will probably get more of Half Life 1's plot from 2 than 1 itself. It's sort of an elephant in the room, but none of the characters beside Gordon and Barney are mentioned by name at all in Half Life 1. So aside from those two every character in 2 is essentially new beyond a brief flash of 'hey it's that guy who...' when you first meet them.

 

[orangebandguy]

If you want to know about Black Mesa, but you soon get the jist of what happened there anyway.

 

[Bediz]

Half-Life is a classic pillar of gaming. You don't have to have played it to gather what's happening in HL2, but the original Half-Life is still a game to be played if you haven't done so. I view not playing the original Half-Life as on par to not knowing the Konami code. You're not bad or evil or anything if you're missing that particular piece on your gamer resume, but you really should have it and you won't regret it once you do.