honestly with how time has passed for Gordon, its possible he hasn't even processed what his ordinary morning in the lab has become
Epic_
Gordon doesn't need to hear this, he's a deeply traumatized professional.
gordonwiley
I love how this differentiates him from other silent/mostly silent protagonists. The Doomslayer is too angry, Master Chief is too focused, Gordon is too traumatized
mistertwister
What's amazing is that for everyone except Gordon, it's been years.
For Gordon, the events of HL and sequels happened in a week or two.
Meanwhile shepard is still in the freezer.
midorifox
I always really like it when people depict Gordon not as an emotionless husk, but a man that is barely holding back all the trauma of what he has been through.
slavicgerman
I love HL:A's model of Gordon simply because he looks exactly like a 90s nerd forced into saving humanity from total annihilation. That exudes so much character from him regardless of his lack of speech.
pumpkindreams
I like how the lyrics "theyre talking about you boy, but youre still the same" fit pretty well with gordon, hes know across as the one free man, the one who managed to achieve so much and free so many in such little time, but "youre still the same" kinda reflects how even though hes seen as a hero, what happened in 20 years or so for him this all happened in a blink of an eye, for him it was just 1 week ago that life was normal, he got up went to work greeted his fellow scientists, and in the blink of an eye it all vanished, so "youre still the same" feels like its saying he hasnt had the time to adapt to his surroundings like others who have been fighting for 20 years
sleepy
They call Gordon silent, but after witnessing everything he did, what could he possibly say?
defusion
I always imagine that when Alyx jokes about Gordon being a man of few words he looks at her with a face of complete seriousness as he thinks about the horrors he has seen. If you were to go through all the shit he has been through I think you would be silent too...
PhoenixFox
Half Life players in 2004: Damn, Gordon Freeman is a ruthless badass!
Half life players in 2022: Dear god what has this poor soul been through?
FlynnBTerrens
I absolutely love how Gordon Freeman is portrayed nowadays. He's not just this "cool ass killing machine", but also just a normal but intelligent man that has been in the wrong place at the right time, and had to endure his entire world changing around him in a single moment's notice
His silence speaks a million words better than any other character that I could think of
dr.rubbertail
Friendly reminder that Gordon has been pumped with morphine since ever since he put the H.E.V. suit on back in Black Mesa. In hl2, his modified suit supposedly contained antidote injectors for neurotoxins. Gordon has been pumped with drugs for a week straight, not to mention the fact he hasn’t gotten a wink of sleep (not counting stasis). This sounds like actual hell.
Edit: Reading the other comments gives me the headcanon of Gordon being just... far, far too broken to have a mental breakdown fully. If not, once the events of the games are over, he'll likely never be that same individual that arrived late on the tram, all those years ago. Maybe he'll laugh, maybe he'll cry. Maybe he'll stay silent. The right man, always in the wrong place.
jchristHeckYeah
When a simple animation makes you rethink the entire game's lore, you start playing it back and see it differently understanding how depressing the game's story is.
pintinhoangolano
When they release a new half life, I’m expecting Gordon to just collapse in the end with his suit saying: “WARNING: Severe fatigue detected”
LCOfficerUNIT
I just now realized the brilliance of including the G-Man bit.
You wouldn't need all of that to imprison Gordon, his circumstances have already imprisoned him within his own mind.
BierBart
"Freeman is thrust into the unenviable role of rescuing the world from the wrong he unleashed at Black Mesa. And a lot of people he cares about are counting on him." -Half-Life 2 Steam store page description
mannhouse
I'm honestly glad the fandom decided to change Gordon from "Psychopath Killing Machine" to "Deeply traumatized man who wanted nothing to do with this", it changes the narrative in such a way that it ultimately makes the story of Half-Life even more interesting than it already was.
DamianDan
The moments we see Gordon as just a member of the science team really sell this. He looks so content, he's in his dream position in an exciting field, he's practically beaming. And then nearly everyone he knows is killed by gibbering monsters or government death squads, he gets hurled into another dimension to fight giant insects and murders a cosmic horror as it pleads directly into his mind. Only to come back to an earth that is being exterminated and brutalized by an unfathomably vast multidimensional empire, his surviving friends are now old men, and aliens he was gunning down minutes before now think he's some kind of messiah - in the span of just a few days.
If he was permitted, even for a moment, to slow down enough to process everything he'd seen, he'd probably have a total breakdown.
jarvy
You know, when you take a step back and actually think about it, it's hard not to feel sorry for Gordon. At the very start of Half Life, he was just one of the many employees working at Black Mesa, going about his day to day job. He had a life, home, and from what we can tell, a family. Then out of nowhere, everything comes crashing down. Overnight, he becomes the military's most wanted man, fights an alien army controlled by a giant interdimensional demi-god, get's frozen in time for 20 years, wakes up to an otherworldly army from across the Multiverse, and is basically forced to spearhead a resistance in order to save humanity. For everyone else, it's been years. But from Gordon's perspective, it's been a week at most. Gordon has quite literally lost everything he had. He's lost his family, has been thrown out of time, and is forced to fight for the ruins of a planet that's been sucked dry by The Combine. His story is so tragic, and the worst part is that most players will likely play the Half Life games never considering what it must be like for him
michaelbk
Gordon is such an interesting character in a way that, you can basically do whatever you want with him, he can either be a stoic badass, a timid scientist, or just a guy who was caught up in all this “chosen hero” crap... for comedic purposes.
But *this* has got to be my favorite interpretation of Freeman, a humanist, a guy who tries his best to be strong for others who have lost hope, but is still a man under all of that, it really captures his entire ‘non-existent’ personality.
