zombine with a shotgun

I've been replaying Half-Life 2 and the episodes with commentary nodes available and 20% of the nodes are just like "As developers of Half-Life one of our key priorities was to ensure that the player likes Alyx Vance as much as possible. Almost every area was set up to generate maximum attachment to her as a character, and the player's investment in the plot hinges on them identifying and empathising with Alyx at all times. If a playtester finished a session feeling anything less than complete adoration for her, we considered it our own failure as developers and spent the next six months fine-tuning the segment until we could statistically guarantee that they would like her again."

Not only was the writing dedicated to making Alyx the most fleshed-out and empathisable character in the game, but the level designers found that if playtesters ever found her annoying then they'd tweak the progression of the level to prevent that, if her combat felt too flat then they used specially choreographed animations to make her feel more dynamic even if it didn't make her more effective as a fighter, they put up gates everywhere that stopped the player from progressing until they listened to all of Alyx's dialogue. The entire dev team were really harnessing their full power to ensure that you, personally, like Alyx Vance.