[account42]

Absolutely agreed overall, Half-Life's dedication to maintinging the player perspective is something many modern games could learn from. So many games are too focused on providing a cinematic experience of their story that they end up taking freedom away from the player with cutscenes where the character acts exactly like the designers want rather than how the player would. In a sense, cutscenes are a crutch that is too often used to force (or skip over) story developments that make no sense.

> You load up the game, watch an intro (for games after HL1)

HL1's train is also an intro that you more or less watch even if you can move around a bit and choose what to look at. Same for Opposing Force's helicopter flight but you are even more restricted: no more movement, only limited camera rotation. Kinda sad that they stripped away even that in the later games but I guess HL1 had the benefit of not having to show what happened previously.

> It makes the games feel grounded and more cinematic, IMO.

I don't think cinematic is the right word here - rather the opposite: HL feels much less like watching a movie.