FREEMAN'S MIND 2: EPISODE 3

[Steve the Pocket]

Something else I realized: In the first game things really were hectic and liable to catch people by surprise: The experiment going haywire, aliens teleporting out of nowhere, the army showing up to kill everybody... Freeman's response to his circumstances was pretty realistic, all things considered, and made him look like the only sane person around. Here, the circumstances are more straightforward—some kind of oppressive police state overseen by the guy on the giant screens, the former Black Mesa people aiding a resistance movement—and if it wasn't clear enough, NPCs are only to eager to spout exposition at the drop of a hat. So in order to keep Freeman reacting like he did at Black Mesa, he's having to be turned into the dumbest one in the room, willfully ignoring everything around him until the cops start firing.

[Guest]

Something else I realized: In the first game things really were hectic and liable to catch people by surprise: The experiment going haywire, aliens teleporting out of nowhere, the army showing up to kill everybody... Freeman's response to his circumstances was pretty realistic, all things considered, and made him look like the only sane person around. Here, the circumstances are more straightforward—some kind of oppressive police state overseen by the guy on the giant screens, the former Black Mesa people aiding a resistance movement—and if it wasn't clear enough, NPCs are only to eager to spout exposition at the drop of a hat. So in order to keep Freeman reacting like he did at Black Mesa, he's having to be turned into the dumbest one in the room, willfully ignoring everything around him until the cops start firing.

 

I wouldn't say Freeman is so much the "dumbest" as he is the "most utterly conceited" one in the room, having become completely convinced by the events of the first Half-Life that nobody around him, other than Kleiner, has even the slightest clue about what they're doing or saying. Kinda like how by the end of Gulliver's Travels, the title character has turned into a complete and total misanthropic asshole after living for a while on an island ruled by civilized talking horses, with the only other humans present being the crude, primitive yahoos, which he has since come to equate in his utter disdain with all of humanity.