Monday, November 9, 2015

Video Game Hero Character info file 7: Gordon Freeman

Dr. Gordon Freeman is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Half-Life video game series, created by Marc Laidlaw and Gabe Newell of Valve Corporation. His first appearance is in Half-Life.
Gordon Freeman is a white American man from Seattle, who graduated from MIT with a PhD in Theoretical Physics. He was an employee at Black Mesa Research Facility. Controlled by the player, Gordon is often tasked with using a wide range of weapons and tools to fight alien creatures such as headcrabs, as well as Combine machines and soldiers.
Gordon Freeman's character has been well received by critics, and various gaming websites often consider him to be one of the greatest video game characters of all time, including UGO[1] and GameSpot.[2]

BackGround:

Seattle native, Gordon exhibited an early interest in theoretical physics, especially quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. His childhood heroes were Albert EinsteinStephen Hawking, and Richard Feynman.[5] After observing a series of teleportation experiments conducted by the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck, the transmission of matter became Gordon's obsession. Gordon has no known dependents.[6] He graduated from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. degree in Theoretical Physics. His doctoral thesis on the teleportation of matter through extremely dense elements was titled Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement on Supraquantum Structures by Induction Through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array.[7] Gordon's research into science eventually led him to accept a job offer by theBlack Mesa Research Facility,[6] and begin working on a top-secret research project headed by his mentor at MIT, Dr. Isaac Kleiner. He takes up residence at Black Mesa, conducting nuclear and subatomic research in its Anomalous Materials department. Despite his education as a theoretical physicist, the work Freeman is involved with at Black Mesa is of a more experimental nature.
The games often make light of the fact that the tasks Gordon performs amount to little more than manual labor, despite his qualifications. Gordon's assigned job at the start of Half-Life consists of little more than pressing a button and pushing a cart. Barney Calhoun wryly notes this irony at the beginning of Half-Life 2, when Freeman performs similar "technical" assistance by flipping a switch and returning a plug to its socket.[8]
silent protagonist, Gordon does not say a single word during the entire Half-Life saga. Although as proficient as the player with weapons and explosives, Freeman had not actually handled any weapons until some cursory training at the Black Mesa Research Facility's Hazard Course.[9]

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