I would imagine that most of you have played Half-Life. If you have, then you'd know that Gordon Freeman, our favorite theoretical physicist, is portrayed as a veritable messiah, a man who can do no wrong. But is that really the case? Is he the next Jesus Christ, the Earth's Doom-bringer, or just another Gary Stu? Let's find out.

Half-Life (1998)

In the original Half-Life, the plot kicks into high gear when you push the Xen crystal into the Anti-Mass Spectrometer, causing a Resonance Cascade that unleashes various aliens upon the Black Mesa Research Facility, killing who knows how many people. Adding to that, the game allows you to freely kill every scientist, security guard, and soldier you see. And since I mentioned the soldiers, lets talk about them. In the first game, its established that the military has dispatched HECU Marines to silence the black Mesa personnel and cover-up the incident. However, in Opposing Force, its revealed that a good number of the soldiers sent in had second thoughts about what they were doing. However, by th time that Adrian Shepherd reunites with his team, everyone wants a piece of Freeman, and its understandable, given that Freeman has slaughtered every single soldier unfortunate enough to cross his path. They most likely lost friends to that bespectacled monster in the orange HEV suit. And lets not forget the worst thing Gordon ever did: (in)directly causing the Combine to invade Earth. I don't think I need to explain what happened after that. That's quite a bit of incriminating evidence against the so-called "One Free Man", wouldn't you agree? However, there are two more sides to this story. First off, is Freeman a Gary Stu? Let's take a look at Half-Life 2 for this argument.

Half-Life 2 + Episode 1 and 2 (2004 - 07)

In Half-Life 2, Gordon Freeman is treated as a hero by the Resistance. A man who cold do no wrong, hated by the Combine. In fact, the only person who dislikes Gordon who isn't part of the Combine is Magnussen, who is still angry about Freeman blowing up his casserole in the first game. While it sounds silly, when you really think about it, its justified. Why? Magnussen's wife probably made him that casserole, and since its likely she died, Gordon essentially took the last thing Magnussen received from his wife and destroyed it. Other than him, no anger or skepticism is directed at Gordon, and everyone seems to forget that Gordon is the one responsible for everything that happened in the last 10 or 20 years.

Or maybe Freeman is a genuinely good man trying to make up for his mistakes in Black Mesa, and wants to make everything right again, as impossible as that is. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is your interpretation of the character. What do you think?

4398434
I think the reason the resistance considers him a hero is that Gordon manages to kill the alien in Xen which is keeping the portal open. And since some of the scientists who were in the lambda labs survived, and went on to tell people after the combine invaded of Gordon's exploits against the aliens. In the case of killing scientists and things, I think that is rather non-canon. Though he did fail to rescue a lot of people in that game. Thought the whole thing with Gordon basically being the new Jesus was kind of confusing for me. Maybe that ever confusing G-Man guy had something to do with it.

4398434 To be honest it's hard to call a character a Gary-Stu if he has next to no character to begin with. However, Breen has a good reason to not like him. He knows what Gordon did at Black Mesa, and that makes him afraid of what he can do to "his" power.