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I didn’t really care about Swanson at all, in fact, I didn’t even remember what her name was. What really made me upset was when I had to kill Red in the end of Penumbra: Overture. Hearing him scream and seeing the flames rise, after waiting the entire game just to see him. :(

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Swansons death really hit me hard too. I physically stopped the game and tried to go back and undo what i had done. Once i realised i couldnt, i felt genuine remorse. No other game has ever done that to me. And fleeing from the diseased? Awww hell yeah. I was scared shitless. Helped by the fact it was 1am, the room was dark with the exception of my monitor, and i had the headphones turned up the whole way, i almost had a heart attack when a diseased burst through the door and started chasing me round the room. it takes real craftsmanship to do that.

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In response to Tom’s comment about Eli I will agree that I felt barely a tinge of emotional involvement at Eli’s death but I disagree with your reasons for why it didn’t work.

I think I was expecting more out of Alyx when she’s watching her father having his brain sucked out. That should be an horrific experience, but to me it came across as if someone had taken a tickling game a bit too far, nothing more. I was expecting violent screams as if she too were being tortured, I expected her to be going out of her mind, and what I actually got was a fairly limp response, what I’d describe as being a bit Disney. I put this down to the immaturity of games; if this had been the reaction of a main character in a radio drama or a scene in a film it would be a clear indication of weak (voice) acting skills and poor direction. The bloog and gore in Half-Life 2, while not the worst ever seen in games, more than justifies a more graphic and chilling response from Alyx in my opinion, and for me it jst wasn’t there.

But on the choice of character, Eli was surely the better choice in terms of emotional involvement (other than Alyx, but she is too key to the plot as far as the G-man goes to be offed at this stage). Objectively speaking, a far stronger statement is made about the Combine if they kill the resilient Eli than the impotent Kleiner. Eli does have a replacement leg, but that shows his strength and constitution, in the final stages he is even suggesting to go himself to rescue Mossman. Eli is the tower of strength for the Resistance, and to have the ‘leader of good’ killed is much more powerful than to kill a wimpy scientist. Valve did well to build up a connection between this character and the player with a lot of Eli-Gordon dialogue (or monologue, to be precise) in the final act, so all that was really left to do was for Alyx to play her part in the very final scene. Sadly it is Alyx’s performance that let the game down in terms of eliciting a more marked emotional response.

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“3: Penumbra BP – Dr Swanson’s demise – made me feel genuine shock/remorse/sadness/anger”

Agreed; that moment is one of the few times in a game I’ve felt genuine rage towards another character for reasons that aren’t related to them killing me twenty times in a row. I wasn’t sure what to think of Clarence in terms of implementation up until that point, but that moment completely justified his whole existance in the game for me. I’m not even fully sure why it got me so much considering I didn’t really care about Swanson too much up until that point, and her voice acting was pretty dodgy (and I usually don’t even notice), yet that moment still somehow hit me perfectly.

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There are only 3 games that have ever elicited an emotional response out of me.
1: SS2 – when you realise what’s-her-face has been dead all along – made me feel used
2: Thief 2 – when Victoria (was that her? Plant woman) sacrifices herself – made me REALLY want to kill Karas
3: Penumbra BP – Dr Swanson’s demise – made me feel genuine shock/remorse/sadness/anger (finest of them all, and a far more mature response. I was obviously much younger when I played SS2 and Thief)

I’m going to use Ep2 as an example here. Did anyone really care when Eli died? I mean it was rather predictable. He was the lovely old dude who was clearly going to die simply because of his character. I think a far better person to kill off tragically would have been Kliener, surely? Weak, a geek, easily scared and pretty much incapable of defending himself. Seeing him die in some horrible way would have been a real sucker punch. Instead Valve chose the father figure. I was quite disappointed tbh. For gods sake, than man even had a fake leg!

And that’s the thing. You were emotionally invested in Dr Swanson because she was kooky, female, friendly and sounded like a genuinely likeable character (emphasis on “character”). Eli was too much of a classic, aka stereotype.

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I’m slightly worried that after reading this interview that I’m none the wiser about Penumbra: Requiem. It sounds like it’s going to be an expansion of the trippy end sequence rather than the chilly Lovecraftiness of the earlier parts. I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

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You shouldn’t feel the need to bend the truth to get us to read an interview with the Penumbra guys because they’re the Penumbra guys, so just tell it how it is next time.

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