#ough..so many thoughts I didn't even include in this...feel free to message me about anything to clarify or discuss something I didn't here

[desertedhero]

An analytical look at the story for HDtF

Heads up: I’ll be discussing spoilers for Hunt Down the Freeman as well as some minor details from HL2 and HLA. Also, these are all just my own thoughts based on my experiences as a storyteller and player, so it's okay if you disagree with any of it.

Criticisms aside...I love this game. HDtF has delightful concepts at its core. Why, then, is it regarded as a terrible game? Are my standards simply that low to enjoy a bad story? That's up to interpretation. Instead of focusing on fixing the story, I'm focusing on why it feels like it needs fixing in the first place. This won't be about how I'd want the story to be, or what the creators may have intended. It’s about the story as it exists.

There’s a lot to say about gameplay, sound design, and everything else. That's also for another post, because this one is about story development and writing.

I want to talk about this because a lot of my own ideas use basic storytelling concepts about character and theme as a foundation. So, I’m laying that down to build from later. I hope anyone looking to write those fun fix-it fics and story rewrites gets some ideas from this. If you wonder why the plot might’ve disappointed you and you enjoy story analysis, artist or not, this is for you.

Whether the game sucks or not, it has a fun premise. The execution is where it gets messy. It’s because HDtF is plot-driven, rather than character-driven. Let's start with what that means and why it's important.

When I refer to something as plot-driven, I mean that characters follow beats rather than create them. They become passive by acting in whatever way the writer needs them to so they hit each plot point. In character-driven stories, they act on their own instead of how the writer needs them to. When characters don't act according to a core set of beliefs, they can feel inconsistent. They’re full of conflicting ideas.

A story might favor plot over character development if the creators think the plot is that cool. I can't speak for the HDtF creators, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case for them because their plot is cool. The premise is incredible!! Hunting down Gordon Freeman and playing an antagonistic character? Man, sign me up. It all just..fell flat. Why? One reason is because Mitchell, as a protagonist, is passive for most of the story. The plot requires him to be a vessel for it to occur. If he were an active protagonist, the story would look different even if the ending remained the same. If you feel like Mitchell isn't that relatable, or his behavior doesn't make sense, that's okay. His role in the story is to follow the plot regardless of his own personality, motives, and goals.

What are Mitchell’s goals? According to what we see at the start of the game, he's looking for vengeance on the guy who fucked up his face. Cool! That's a setup for a revenge story, and those can be a lot of fun. When the opportunity arrives in act three, thou, Mitchell is resistant. Why doesn't he want to kill Freeman, when at the beginning it's established that he's sworn to get his revenge? Mitchell does specify that he sees the power, authority, and time he’s been granted as a curse. He doesn’t want part of that. Despite this apparent change of heart, he surrenders to Gman without too much of a fight. The plot demands he hunt down Freeman, after all.

It’s possible the scenes with Captain Roosevelt are meant to alert players to this change. It’s fresh in our minds that he made a deal with the devil and soon Gman will come for him. When he does, Mitchell says “I just want it to end. Freeman can go to hell.” He sees the power, authority, and time he’s been given as a curse. His original desire, a whim, has become a burden. He's now being manipulated into doing something he doesn't want. But something about the build up to this scene still makes it feels like there’s an inconsistency. Do you agree? Throu act two, did we learn enough about Mitchell’s dilemma to make sense of his response to Gman?

Inconsistencies are also referred to as plot holes or continuity errors. These make up a majority of the problems in this story. You’ve surely already identified a lot of them if you’ve played the game or watched a playthrou. (Another example is Mitchell knowing what the Borealis is.) There's a few ways to resolve inconsistencies. The method I use to generate ideas is super simple. Just keep asking questions. Keep asking "why?" Here's a quick example of what it looks like for me:

Why does Mitchell want revenge on Freeman? Well, he believes it's Freeman who not only beat the shit out of him, but also killed his squad.

Why does it matter if he killed his squad? His military training might have taught him the value of teamwork and fellowship. Maybe he has friends in his squad. Or it's that he's alone now, and being alone means facing himself and his past. (This could make him emotionally dependent upon Nick and Adam later on…)

What would make him change his mind about revenge? Like he tells Gman, the life he's been given is cursed. It could also be that after 20 years it seems that Freeman's vanished off the face of the earth, so Mitchell might feel resigned to never finding him. Or, he started healing and doesn't feel the desire for revenge anymore. Or, he has too much to lose if he started hunting Freeman. It'd be a suicide mission that risks everything he's accomplished–even if he's questioning how much his life is worth. (He found something he cares about more than revenge and so he must choose between the two goals…)

These are just starting points. You could answer the same questions differently, then continue through train of thought. In general, I find asking questions and answering them a few layers deep is effective. Conducting a Q&A helps find what works and what doesn't, or what's interesting and what's not. Ask questions even if they seem obvious or silly.

Storytelling principles like cause-and-effect and Chekhov’s gun remind us that everything matters. One thing causes another. Things shown to the audience must have a payoff later. However, there is at least one big thing that might not meet these principles. The first sequence of the game is a montage of key moments in Mitchell's life. It's how we're intended to connect with him. Is there any point in the game that he references any of these events? If you can't think of anything, don't worry–I can't either. As it stands the backstory montage does nothing to let us know who Mitchell is as a person. Logically, it should, and it does tell us about him. It's an issue because it doesn't seem like these experiences are motivating his actions. The montage could be cut from the game and it wouldn't impact our understanding of who Mitchell is based on what he does any time after it.

How could it become important, then? Well, Mitchell is the brother of Adrian Shephard, and they're shown in the montage. The game brings Adrian in for a cameo at the end, but they're never referenced in any other way. Hell, no one even refers to Mitchell as Shephard, which would make sense to do. The most obvious answer is to make Adrian mean something to Mitchell. Whatever your interpretation of the montage is, ask how it affected Mitchell. What happened, and how did that shape who he is at the start of the game? Whether or not Adrian shows up in the story, there ought to be an emotional relevance on Mitchell's end. He could mention that he understands what it's like having a sibling. Maybe he relates to someone else because of his experiences as a soldier. Any relevant subtext acknowledging that those key backstory moments matter to him would make him more relatable. That would confirm that those moments should matter to us as the players. Everything serves a purpose.

Another concept the plot brings up that has no payoff is the Cremators (I believe that’s what Boris calls the entities that are tended to in the factory). It's another violation of the idea that everything in a story is meant to set something up to or resolve a setup. If the Cremators meant anything, they would have been brought back to perhaps make good on their purpose that Boris claims is to kill humans that the Combine view as trash. Instead the importance of the factory is introducing Boris and giving Mitchell the opportunity to rescue the kids. Mitchell sees this in a negative light, that he's only using them for his own benefit. If this is the only thing the factory scene was meant to accomplish, why do we even know about the Cremators? 

Like Mitchell, other characters also suffer from being puppets of the plot. Adam and Nick serve a purpose of delivering Mitchell to where he needs to be. Adam can even be interpreted as a scapegoat for the writers to get out of actually having Mitchell kill Freeman. I personally don't, but I could see an argument made for it. Meanwhile, Nick is introduced to give exposition, get Mitchell going on his first mission, and to bail him out at the end so he can accomplish his goal of revenge. I’ll discuss that last point more when we get to theme.

I've heard professional writers say that every character in a story needs a reason to be there. I like that idea a lot! The plot needs Adam, Nick, and the others to support Mitchell. A character-driven approach, thou, would ask why they need to be part of the plot. How do they benefit from being part of the story? For example, why does Nick help Mitchell out in the hospital? Why does Adam negotiate to join him? We learn in game that he’s also looking to get out of the city and that he knows something no one else seems to know about the Combine, but that’s the extent of our knowledge. (I’m still curious why exactly he didn’t follow up on his plan to go separate ways once they left the city. That’s an inconsistency created by the plot’s need to have him stick around for the end.) Support characters either help or hinder Mitchell along the way. They all have a reason to collide with his goals. Or, they should.

In some cases, support characters may only exist for one sequence, like say Boston Joe. Boston Joe should be important to Mitchell regardless of how long he’s on screen. Right? Theoretically, his contribution pushes Mitchell forward or changes him somehow. (What was the significance of the powerplant sequence, actually? I’ve watched three different playthrous and none of them have a conclusion to that subplot. Why was it important for Mitchell to do that? I’m assuming there's a missing sequence or cutscene that transitions us to the docks. If this is the case, that’s another inconsistency, another source of confusion or frustration. It’s a missed opportunity to tell us something about Mitchell depending on how it's resolved. It would, ideally, give us insight to how he's changing as a result of his experiences. He sees himself as a bad guy in act three, so the conclusion to the powerplant might be a step towards informing that mindset. Anyway...)

If you compare how engaged support characters are with Mitchell to how engaged they are with Gordon in HL2–or with Alyx in HLA–there’s a big difference. What did those games do right that HDtF did not?

In HL2 and HLA, other characters support the main plot while having their own goals. Alyx has her own agenda throughout the games because she has other priorities. She has a life outside being a companion for Gordon. She’s also given time to express what those goals are and pursue them. We know her goals involve saving Eli, and this runs alongside Gordon’s goals. This makes her feel more like a real person, right? In HLA we have Russell with his own thoughts and ideas. The Vortigaunt cut off from the Vortessence stood out to me, too. They had personality and a goal that clashed with Alyx’s. That goal connected to hers later on despite not seeming relevant to her at first. On the other hand, we don’t know what Nick wants, outside of helping Mitchell. We don’t know why Adam sticks around, after he initially planned to go separate ways when they left Albuquerque. We don't know what Adam's deal with Gman was about. They don’t have a life outside the main plot.

If you feel frustrated that we have these cool characters that we don't get to learn about, that’s understandable. One of the great delights of HL2 and HLA is interacting with the support characters, and HDtF doesn’t allow us to do that.

I will say thou, the way that Boris and Sasha connect to the story is interesting. This says nothing about the quality of the subplot, but Mitchell meeting Boris in act two did matter later on. The deaths of the support characters in act one also matter. Why? Gman promised Mitchell power and authority, so any events that lead to him obtaining those things fulfill that promise. Mitchell even expresses some disdain that they died for him like that. Support characters should always matter to a protagonist in some way, and most of them do matter to Mitchell’s journey.

The next big idea I want to delve into is about theme. Let’s transition from how characters and plot interact to what messages those interactions deliver.

Mitchell serves as a vessel for the plot and is passive, but there is one moment where he makes a choice for himself. When he refuses to die to the Combine, and in doing so gives Gman the biggest "fuck you," what he's doing is actively participating in creating story. This was the most compelling moment for me. It felt like Mitchell, at last, chose to do something the plot didn't force him to. Makes me wonder what consequences could have occurred if he made different decisions. Even if he ends up in the same situation at the end, how could the journey be more engaging?

HDtF establishes a premise for a revenge story, but thematically it appears to be more than that. Which is fine because many stories do explore more than one theme! It also reads as a story about someone who's manipulated into abandoning their own goals and self destructing. What message does it leave us with, then? When Adam is revealed to be a traitor and Mitchell responds to this betrayal, what is that meant to tell us?

Mitchell killing Adam is a cathartic scene (for me, anyway) because a promise has been fulfilled. He achieved the goal he set out for at the beginning. There's more happening in the story that leaves ambiguity about how we're meant to feel about it, thou. How are we meant to take it when Mitchell kills the man he's been on a ship with for 20 years in a moment of reckless rage? The fact is we don’t have any details about Adam to let us understand his own goals and motives, other than he had a deal with Gman. That deal implies he had no choice, much like how it was for both Mitchell and Boris. Is that enough of an explanation?

Typically, revenge stories make it clear who we're supposed to hate and who to support. We know the antagonist's death is justified because we usually see a) what they did and b) why they did it. The reasoning plays into why we’re meant to root for the protagonist instead of the antagonist, right? In some cases they might want the same thing but one is willing to cross lines the other won’t. We even see hints of this in the first time Mitchell and Adam meet. They have similar yet differing ideas about loyalty. HDtF, however, does not give us the full picture by the end. It doesn't tell us if Mitchell is justified or if Adam deserved to be killed based on both what he did and why he did it. It's completely up to interpretation.

Why is it important that there's no clear message? Is it not enough to hand players these ideas and end it by asking “hey how fucked up was that, right?” Based on general responses from players that I've seen so far, what makes this story laughable is likely because it feels like it takes itself seriously without having anything serious to say. It doesn’t carry an emotional truth but acts like it does. Whatever the creators wanted to say seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the way, because clearly at least most of us missed the message.

HDtF has fun and thought provoking concepts, but they haven’t been explored enough to create a story as compelling as the creators likely envisioned. Each character has the potential to be incredible. There is a lot of flexibility in the themes that the story presents. We're given many concepts in an almost frustratingly open-ended way, but the ambiguity leaves room for different yet equally interesting interpretations. Is it a story about getting justified revenge? Maybe it’s unjustified and becomes a tragedy. Is it about escaping the cycle of abuse? Exploring the similarities between heroes and villains? Perhaps it’s about forgiveness and the consequences of betrayal?

The story of Hunt Down the Freeman might look like a first draft, but the opportunities for interpretation and engagement are endless. It’s a fantastic sort of mystery story! There’s even more to say about the writing in terms of plot, pacing, dialogue and character voice, use of exposition..but I’m leaving it here. I hope this sparks some new thoughts! And if you love the story like I do, maybe even some creative connections. Or, maybe you hate the story and this validates your reasoning for it, and that’d be okay, too.

(Thank you so much for reading this far, hot damn!! I had so much fun writing it and it gave me a lot I want to expand upon later.)