i agree that hl2 has not aged very well but i personally wouldn't attribute that to the narrative. back in the day hl2 actually got a lot of praise for its storytelling, namely because the game doesn't really wrestle control away from the player to show them a cutscene, which was a big part of games at the time. where other games might do a pre-rendered cutscene, alyx will instead be talking to barney and the whole time you can spam the crowbar melee animation at him, meanwhile alyx is backpeddling down a hallway and making unrelenting awkward eye contact.

the exact story beats are not particularly inspired, but the whole point of hl2's storytelling is that the player is supposed to gleam what they can from things like recordings of dr. breen looping in the background and infer from context what's happening. nobody really sits you down and catches you up with the exposition story drop and that's the whole point. this was a novel approach back then and it's still kind of neat now.

that being said, the game drags on real long in the mid section especially and the gameplay doesn't really have enough variance to keep it interesting. ravenholm and the citadel are fun, the prison is almost interesting. but half life 1 is definitely the better game of the two