Freeman's Mind

While the character profile behind the character Gordon Freeman remains mostly the same, he takes on a vastly different personality from the "blank slate" silent protagonist of the original plot. In Freeman's Mind, Gordon is portrayed as an extremely neurotic, selfish, egocentric individual with a history of drug abuse and racketeering, among other juvenile offenses. Gordon's thoughts often consist of his superiority to his colleagues, critiques of the Black Mesa complex, and a fascination with guns.

Most of the characters in the series are the same as in the game—vaguely helpful but more often than not telling Gordon what they need him to do. Since Gordon is still perceived as a silent protagonist by the game's non-player characters, virtually every one of them that he interacts with do not react to his inner dialogue. He has a tendency to berate the NPCs for perceived offenses against him, as well as verbally assaulting the intelligence of the soldiers and aliens he meets along the way.

Ross Scott describes Gordon's personality as having "shifting paranoia, egomania, mild schizophrenia, over-aggressiveness, petty motivations, and immaturity in general", and that "the only hint I thought they gave to his personality was how proficient he immediately was in weaponry for being a physicist."[2]

From the start, Gordon is shown to have a questionable moral compass that impacts his responses to his environment. For example, in the first episode after a security guard mentions that he is running late, Gordon comments that if he's fired, he "could probably jack some office supplies or computer equipment on the way out." Later on in the series, Gordon attempts to rationalize his increasing body count of HECU marines, but eventually drops the pursuit, because "no one's going to believe a few dozen counts of self-defense with a submachine gun."

Structurally, Freeman's Mind is filmed from the first person perspective of Gordon Freeman. All of the visuals and most of the animations come from the original game, however, many scenes of the series are manipulated through the use of cheats or modifications to the game's engine.

Often in the series, Gordon avoids places where the player is usually forced to go. For example, Gordon performs pull-ups throughout the series to navigate to otherwise inaccessible areas. A typical way to film this is through the use of the noclip mode.[2]

The success and popularity of Freemans Mind led to many other creators adopting a similar format to make Mind series of their own, in other games that feature a silent protagonist in the first-person view. Some of the more notable examples of Mind spinoffs include Shephard's Mind, created by YouTuber Krim, featuring the character Adrian Shephard from the game Half-Life: Opposing Force; Barney's Mind, created by YouTuber IRAMightyPirate, with the character Barney Calhoun from the game Half-Life: Blue Shift; Felix's Mind, created by YouTuber corky064 (since deleted), featuring Gordon Freeman's fictional brother Felix, in the game Half-Life 2: Episode One; Chell's Mind, created by YouTuber CyhAnide, starring as Chell from the game Portal; Kane's Mind, by YouTuber ChunkBoi (formerly CptCool2), featuring the character Matthew Kane from the game Quake 4; and Parker's Mind, by YouTuber LordPsymon, featuring the character Parker from the game Red Faction. These creators all appeared alongside Scott in an interview dubbed "Meeting of the Minds", hosted by Ian Riley, the creator of Barney's Mind, which was posted on Riley's YouTube channel on May 28, 2011.[5]

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