Gordon Freeman is canonically 27, and it still terrifies this writer — so he checked all the other FPS heroes' ages

A journalist who first played Half-Life at the tender age of 11, and is now rapidly approaching 40, admits that one detail at the start of the game still frightens him more than any modern horror title. Midway through the introductory tram ride, the screen flashes: "SUBJECT: Gordon Freeman. Male, Age 27." To him, this has always seemed like a typo — the scientist looks like a man in his mid-thirties at the youngest.

The author recalls that as a child, Half-Life terrified him with almost everything: wasps, heights, loud noises, and even football, specifically the fear of everyone finding out how bad he was at it. He was an anxious kid, so playing an interactive disaster movie full of weird aliens and violence was an intense experience. Now, the idea of the game being scary seems ridiculous, especially compared to modern horror games and real-life terrors like tax returns.

But the age of Freeman continues to baffle him. He says he must have seen the caption countless times, but it never really sank in because he was busy watching the scenery and scripted sequences during the tram ride. This realization led him to wonder about the ages of other classic '90s FPS protagonists. He asks whether DoomGuy is actually DoomBoy, whether B.J. Blazkowicz stands for "Baby Junior Blazkowicz," and whether Duke Nukem is even allowed to enter a strip club. The piece is built around this personal obsession with the canonical ages of gaming icons, questioning whether these heroes were ever as old as they looked.