Cole Luke - Blog
The Hidden: Source Was the Pinnacle of Asymmetric Gameplay
Yoou’ree neext!
Modding is intrinsically PC-centric and no better platform for this is Valve’s Source engine. Innumerable mods have been made and continue to be published in the 19 years (oh my goodness) since the engine debuted with the release of Half-Life: Source in 2004.
These mods played a huge part in my childhood and my memories of them are some of my nearest and dearest.
One standout mod was The Hidden: Source, an asymmetric multiplayer game where a team of I.R.I.S (Infinitum Research Interception Squad) agents would attempt to hunt down Subject 617, a near-invisible human experiment with superhuman agility and an axe – or in this case, a rusty knife – to grind, all in a five-minute match.
The premise was so simple but oh-so effective. Team I.R.I.S were slower, but armoured and bristling with gadgets and weaponry.
Subject 617 could see enemies through walls, leap huge distances, cling to walls, throw pipe bombs and would appear as a nigh-invisible shimmer but was extremely vulnerable.
To recoup losses, Subject 617 could feast on corpses and string them up to strike fear in the survivors. And trust me, it was genuinely scary.
A burst of gunfire rings out, you rush to the source only to find a grisly scene and you just knew you were being watched. It didn’t help that the Subject had a number of haunting voice taunts. One by one your teammates would go down and be dragged away to be feasted on. Were you next? If you were the last person standing, you truly felt alone and vulnerable. Honestly, as an I.R.I.S agent, it was almost a relief when you perished.
This all changed when you got to play as 617. You felt vulnerable, but it was acutely focused. There was a fear, but it was vengeful. You desperately wanted to survive.
Skulking around the maps that were excellently designed for verticality was a real treat, but you couldn’t dilly-dally. The onus was on you to make moves. If you had a good handle on movement and physics in the Source engine, you could really make some extraordinary plays.
I fondly remember bunny-hopping my way around maps and landing glancing blows sending the other team into a frenzy. Revenge was all the sweeter when someone would accidentally discharge a shotgun shell into their teammate's face in the confusion.
It was death by a thousand cuts. Sometimes it was death by a brutal ‘pigstick’ – a charged attack that insta-gibbed agents into an unfeastable pile of gore. 617 had extreme strength too, you could utilise props in the maps and fling them into enemies.
Amusingly, a model of an original Xbox existed on some maps and it felt quite meta to kill someone with that behemoth. Methodically picking off your would-be killers felt just, and screwing with them was extremely cathartic after being petrified yourself. Victory was hard-earned and you truly felt like you deserved it – there was no cheesing here.
That’s not to say 617 had all the glory. As I.R.I.S, you had to work as a team. Good communication and tactics were especially vital in this game. Wandering off could either be extremely stupid or a cunning ploy of using bait to catch and kill, the line was extremely thin. With all your bases covered and nifty gadgets such as motion alarms, you stood a good chance of surviving, and when you did, boy was it satisfying.
Ah, it was such, good, simple fun. Or was it? I was but a young lad when I played The Hidden and my noggin was still growing. I was so used to either being the good guy saving the day or being blatantly evil and malicious. The Hidden presented my developing consciousness with a philosophical conundrum on morality.
Subject 617 was unwittingly experimented on, he lives in constant agony and clearly has a desire to live. Yet, he is dangerous and many of the environments take place in built-up areas. Would he feast and inflict damage and terror on innocents?
I.R.I.S agents wanted to survive just as dearly. 617 could be a malevolent force, but, Infinium Research only has itself to blame. It conducted decades of inhumane experiments all in the name of weapons research and it has tremendously backfired. Blood is on its hands.
The setting is beautifully ambiguously morally grey and it really struck me in my younger years. Playing both sides really opened up my eyes to the subjectivity of morals in a way I don’t think I ever could have anticipated from a Half-Life 2 mod in the mid-noughties.
The memories and lessons The Hidden: Source gave me have stuck with me all these years. It reminds me of the importance of modding and how wonderfully open and endless PC gaming is. It is something we must cherish.
The heyday of source-modding might be behind us, but with Garry Newman’s upcoming Source 2 powered S&box, a new generation might be upon us. And with an early prototype of a Hidden: Source spiritual successorin the works, the future is certainly bright.
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