I see your Freeman and raise you a Link.
I actually think Gordan Freeman is the silent protagonist done correctly. This is largely due to the setting of the game and the characters he interacts with. Barney, Alex, hell even DOG. When you play Gordan you feel like someone whose caught up in something bigger than himself, he's trying to survive and help people along the way if he can. The emotion of the supporting cast drive the players feelings towards the story. When you play Link you feel like the villagers are just using you kinda like a pitchfork with legs and they don't interact very well with you either, with the exception of your "partner" for that game...Midna etc.
Half Life for me was a huge deal at the time, it was big leap forward for the FPS genre and showed you that a decent story could be told without sacrificing the intense action of an FPS. It was driven and your goals were clear, it also had some great set pieces. The cage with crossbow dangling over the water comes to mind as well as the helicopter you fight while scaling a cliff. So it is kind of hard to believe that HL didn't resonate with you Strife.
Half Life 2 I can maybe accept since times changed quite quickly and there were some decent competitors out at the time.
I loved all hl games. Except ep1 found lacking.
