You need about one sentence to set up the world. Here, the website even does it for us: „Set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2, Alyx Vance and her father Eli mount an early resistance to the Combine’s brutal occupation of Earth.“
I would tack on “aliens” to describe the Combine and then I’m done. Half Life is not exactly complex or subtle in its storytelling. Heck, the main character in the other games never says a word …
Sure, people won’t get all references, but since this is a HL2 prequel (so between 1 and 2) and happens in a completely different part of the world HL1 happens in there isn’t much you have to know.
If this were HL3 proper then you would have more of an argument, but this seems to just play in that alien-oppressed world and that’s just very simple.
I don’t think you have to know anything at all about the Half Life story to understand this game and I think that’s on purpose.
Agreed, but I wasn't arguing it was. It's neither complex nor subtle. It is "story heavy" or rather story-driven, or rather "cinematic". This is a game where the story propels the gameplay. Not saying it's particularly good fiction, just that the fiction matters in the game. Notice how much of what I'm saying applies to Star Wars too, where -- also -- skipping a movie can be done but is not recommended ;)
World building (to create tension and a creepy atmosphere) are much more important and also compact things, much more easily transportable and play a much larger role.
Since there will be hardly any plot-connections you are just not missing much …
They could just as easily take a similar route. And they should, because it's on a different medium.
I mean, I know people who watched the Phantom Menace without having watched the Original Trilogy, but they lost the significance of who was that little boy or why he mattered...
