Ravenholm

Ravenholm is a fictional Eastern European themed town (the actual geographic location is never revealed) in the 2004 computer game Half-Life 2.

Description

File:RavenholmHL2.jpg

A portion of Ravenholm, with several zombies in sight

Ravenholm is a former mining community inhabited by escapees from the Combine-controlled City 17. Due to recent bombardment with Combine artillery containing headcrabs, however, Ravenholm is now swarming with several varieties of headcrabs and the zombie-like creatures the headcrabs create with the use of a human host. Gordon Freeman, the game's main character, must travel through Ravenholm when the Combine attack nearby Resistance base Black Mesa East, during the chapter called "'We don't go to Ravenholm ...'". The level has also been given the nickname "Resident Half-Life", a reference to the Resident Evil series, due to the massive number of zombies in the town.

While fighting off hordes of zombies, Gordon meets the lone (human) occupant of Ravenholm, the old pastor, Father Grigori. Although Ravenholm may have other "survivors" since a woman's scream can be heard as well as Grigori telling Freeman "another life to save?" (although he may have been referring to killing the zombies and freeing their souls. More likely, he was referring to Freeman himself.) The zombie-hunter priest provides assistance and advice to Gordon, such as arming him with a pump action shotgun, and eventually leading Gordon to an abandoned mine, which becomes his route out of the town. Many areas of Ravenholm are littered with large sawblades, propane cylinders, barrels of flammable material, and booby traps which have been contrived by Father Grigori. Due to the severe scarcity of ammunition in the area, Gordon must rely on the traps and Gravity Gun (with which he can fling blades and other projectiles) to destroy the zombies. The entire town is also littered with people and headcrab zombies that have been hanged, burned, sliced and suffered other horrific fates by Grigori's traps, though less horrible than that of being a headcrab zombie.

Just before escaping from the aerial bombardment of Black Mesa East where Alyx, Judith and Eli reside, there is a large door which is the entrance to a tunnel completely closed off from the main base. The door simply looks sealed, but a quick glance through the glass indicates that the tunnel may also have been blocked off artificially with junk. This is further confirmed when Alyx mentions that 'through there is Ravenholm'. Alyx also mentions how everyone used to be able to travel to and from Ravenholm at will until the bombardment from the Combine.

Other information

Ravenholm was initially named Quarrytown, and featured both Combine soldiers and zombies, as seen in the E³ 2003 demo, "Traptown".The way the player was introduced into Ravenholm was also different, as seen in the "Docks" demo, where the player is walking on some docks, which lead to Ravenholm.

The town of Ravenholm has small to medium sized houses which are mostly made up of concrete and wood. The streets and houses vaguely look eastern European or maybe Russian. Several high-rise apartment buildings that bear resemblance to Soviet-era apartment buildings can also been seen in some sections of the town, implying it housed more people than initially believed.

Possible influences

There are two possible influences for Ravenholm. One being They Hunger, which is one of the most popular singleplayer mods for the original Half-Life, featuring a zombie invasion in a small rural town. The other is the Closed Area/Old Quarter section of the original Thief (computer game). A portion of the Old Quarter was walled off several decades prior to the series due to an outbreak of the undead, which spilled from a cathedral graveyard and began to infest the city until they were safely contained behind thick, high stone walls. Throughout the first game people seem reluctant to speak about it, and some don't even believe the stories anymore. When Garrett, the protagonist, visits this place it is a desolate, lonely place, covered with decades of dead leaves, and populated by zombies and other undead. Backing this theory up is the fact that Marc Laidlaw, the primary writer for the Half-Life series, has named Thief: The Dark Project as his favourite PC game of all time.