Up until the original Half-Life, shooters were an entirely different kind of animal. Linear endeavours, requiring skills but not much thinking, apart from the odd puzzle here and
there. Characters? What characters? The ones which tried to introduce characters failed to bring forth a properly fleshed-out narrative so much that speaking of "characters" was, in
fact, a joke. They relied on level design, weapons, enemies, gimmicks. And, don't get me wrong, for the time, it worked.
Then Half-Life came out, with its mute protagonist and their lonely, immense yet claustrophobic environments. With the narrative slowly unfolding, so subtly you might not even notice if you didn't want to. With its plot twists, with its fiendish puzzles. Half-Life was a gem. No shooter after it was not influenced by it. And then, Half-Life 2.
It introduced a narrative much more involving than any shooter before it. It was every inch the shooter we dreamed of, and then some. Stellar level design, actual characters, a great story, adrenaline-packed segments, horrific segments, humour, devilishly clever enemy AI, some of the most satisfying weapons and the gravity gun. All scripted, of course: there was no flexible approach to its gameplay or, in lieu of a better term, cutscenes. It was probably one of the most on-rails, linear shooters of the last decade, but, by god, it was also the best.
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