@eukara @grainloom Their approach is both expected and intriguing at the same time.
The original HL wasn't supposed to be as grand as it cropped up in the end. Just from the tone, you are not supposed to take it very seriously - like, ha-ha, you are working in some ridiculously large and complex secret research facility who-knows-where, with freaking laser beams, egghead scientists looking at exposed spectrometer rays and donut cop type security guards. Ha-ha, you set a spectrometer wrong and suddenly the monsters start hopping on scientists egg-shaped heads turning them into zombies.
But then Valve team looked at it and thought "wow, we actually have a really deep and intricate and serious 'verse on offer. Let's do something with it", and made HL2 - which was far more serious in tone.
And then Crowbar Collective comes in and makes the original game into a very mature and veritable science horror film type story, retroactively baking in the pieces of canon introduced in the sequel.