With a new Half-Life game right around the
corner- wait… *shuffling papers* this can’t be right… Hmm, I guess it is. With Half-Life: Alyx right around the corner,
we here at Suggestive Gaming figured now would be a good time to take a look back at the
currently known timeline of the events in the Half-Life Universe. This includes the Half-Life games, their various
expansions and episodes, as well as the Portal games and their various surrounding media. Do note that for the events covered in the
original Half-Life game, we will be illustrating them using the recently completed fan-remake
by the Crowbar Collective: “Black Mesa”, simply because, well… selfishly, I just
wanted to play that one. Now, without further ado, this is what you
need to know about Half-Life. Our story begins in the 1950s with the establishment
of the Black Mesa research corporation, as well as their rivalry with the unorthodox
corporation and former shower curtain manufacturer Aperture Science over various government contracts. Decades later, in the 1980s, the companies
remain neck-and-neck in competition, with the two developing similar, but separate “portal”
teleportation technologies. Aperture then begins development on their
“Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System”, or GLaDOS: an artificial intelligence which
they hope will help accelerate research into the portal technology. Sometime in the 2000s, GLaDOS is turned on,
however, she instantly becomes self-aware and takes control of the Aperture Science
Enrichment Center, pumping it full of deadly neurotoxin to kill her creators. Some scientists survive, however, and install
a “Morality Core”, which prevents her from using the gas again. They then start her on a permanent cycle of
“testing” the portal tech with the surviving Aperture Science employees in hopes to perfect
it before Black Mesa can. On the morning of May 16th, the Black Mesa
researchers begin to test their “Anti-Mass Spectrometer”, a machine designed to study
crystals retrieved from the recently discovered borderworld: Xen, which Black Mesa scientists
were able to travel to using their experimental portals. Due to Dr. Gordon Freeman’s tardiness, the
team in the Black Mesa facility’s Sector C decide to use the extra time for further
preparation. This includes increasing the power of the
Anti-Mass Spectrometer past it’s 90% safety buffer. One researcher, Dr. Rosenberg, protests this
decision to his colleague Dr. Richard Keller, but Keller explains that the directive came
directly from Black Mesa Administrator Wallace Breen. Doctors Gina Cross and Colette Green are then
tasked with retrieving the Xen crystal sample to bring to the Anti-Mass Spectrometer’s
chamber just as Gordon Freeman arrives to work. As Gordon rides a tram to Sector C, he is
observed by a mysterious man in a blue suit. This man, known only as the G-Man by others,
continues to monitor Freeman as well as the other Black Mesa employees. Also on his way, Freeman encounters Doctors
Isaac Kleiner and Eli Vance. Vance expresses his own concern about the
experiment, given that the stress of the additional power is already causing havoc and breaking
equipment. Gordon dons a Hazardous Environment, or HEV
suit and enters the chamber to begin the experiment. Around this time, security guard and friend
of Gordon’s, Barney Calhoun, arrives at the facility to begin his work on the “Blue
Shift” in Sector C. Meanwhile, Dr Cross delivers the crystal to
the chamber, and Gordon begins to insert it into the device. At this moment, Eli Vance is contacted by
the G-Man, who tells him to “prepare for unforeseen consequences”. Despite this warning, he allows Gordon to
insert the crystal, and almost immediately, a Resonance Cascade occurs, causing a rift
to open between Xen and Earth, allowing several alien creatures to teleport into the facility. Gordon is then forcefully teleported to various
locations around Xen, before returning back to the test chamber and losing consciousness. Elsewhere, Barney Calhoun is traveling in
an elevator, which crashes due to the power surge in the facility, causing him to lose
consciousness as well. Gordon soon awakens and leaves the chamber
to find Eli Vance, who sends Gordon to head to the surface to find help. He heads off, finding a crowbar on his way
which he uses to fend off the various invading Xen forces. Meanwhile, Doctors Cross, Green, and Rosenberg
head to the surface themselves, and reach a communication room where Rosenberg sends
out a distress signal to the military, who send in the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit,
who are not only instructed to eliminate any alien threat, but also any and all facility
employees to cover up the incident. Among these soldiers sent to the facility
is a Corporal Adrian Shephard and his team, whose heliplane is shot down by a Xen aircraft,
and they also lose consciousness. Dr. Rosenberg is quickly captured by the arriving
HECU forces, but Barney Calhoun awakens and reaches the surface, finding and freeing Rosenberg. He then assists the doctor with finding the
A-17 Prototype Test Labs to hopefully use a prototype teleportation device to escape
the facility. Meanwhile, Gordon discovers the HECU’s presence,
and quickly learns that they are not there to help him and his fellow scientists. He then fights through their forces and reaches
the surface, only to discover that the military has begun airstrikes on Black Mesa, forcing
him to immediately retreat back down into the facility. Doctors Green and Cross then work with Dr.
Keller once again, who instructs them to prepare a satellite delivery rocket for launch, which
along with a prototype displacement beacon, can reduce the effects of the Resonance Cascade
and partially close the rift. They are able to disable the rocket’s lockdown,
allowing it to be launched, but are unable to trigger it themselves, as the HECU arrives
and takes over the control room. Meanwhile, Barney and Rosenberg are able to
escape the facility by using the teleporter, but not before Barney is trapped in a temporal
harmonic reflux, causing him to travel between Xen and Black Mesa, much like Gordon did earlier. However, he luckily ends up outside the facility,
finding Rosenberg along with fellow scientists Walter Bennet and Simmons, and they all escape
safely in a Black Mesa SUV. Afterwards, Gordon spends the rest of the
day fighting through the various forces of Xen and the HECU to restore power to the Black
Mesa facility and reach the control room of the rocket prepared by Green and Cross. He clears out the HECU forces and launches
the rocket, allowing Green, Cross, and Weller to activate the displacement beacon, successfully
lowering the effects of the resonance cascade. Green and Cross are caught in their own harmonic
reflux, but end up back at Black Mesa with Weller, where they rest and wait out the aftermath. Elsewhere, the US Government realize the HECU’s
cleanup operation is failing, and decide to deploy a Black Ops strike team to detonate
a Mark IV Thermonuclear Device to destroy the entire facility and any evidence. After the Black Ops’ arrival, two Vortigaunts
(one of the invading species from Xen) teleport to Black Mesa and fight their way through
the government forces to retrieve and recover a collection of Xen crystals. Soon after, Gordon is ambushed and captured
by the HECU, stripped of his weapons and equipment, and thrown into a trash compactor to die. He escapes this fate, however, and reaches
Black Mesa’s secret Advanced Biological Research Lab, where he finds the various Xen
species contained for study and experiments, revealing that Black Mesa was aware of Xen
and it’s creatures far before the resonance cascade. Meanwhile, Corporal Adrian Shephard awakens
in a Black Mesa medical facility, where he was taken by friendly Black Mesa employees
unaware of the HECU’s actual mission. He makes his way to the surface, where he
learns of the HECU’s new command to extract from the facility in order to escape before
the nuclear blast. As he makes his way to an evac helicopter,
however, he is stopped by the G-Man, who closes a door in front of him, causing the nearby
oblivious soldiers to leave without him. Shepard then makes his way back to the facility
to search for another way out and finds his fellow squadmates who help him proceed through
the facility, where he eventually reaches the Lambda Complex around the same time Gordon
Freeman does. Freeman learns that the Lambda Complex was
where the Black Mesa staff was initially studying the teleportation technology that first took
them to Xen. Scientists holding themselves up in the complex
inform Gordon that the displacement beacon couldn’t fully close the rift between the
two worlds because of a powerful being on the other side keeping it open. Shepard then enters the complex just as Gordon
jumps into the teleporter to destroy the being controlling the portal. As he does, Alien Controllers teleport in
from Xen, which Shepard is forced to deal with. He then enters a temporary portal and teleports
to Xen himself, where he finds a Displacer Cannon which he uses to teleport around Xen
and Black Mesa, fighting a new invading species called Race X. On Xen, Freeman fights his way through the
powerful creatures there, coming across the remains of the HEV suit clad scientists who
had teleported there to study the world before him. He eventually comes upon an Alien Grunt cloning
facility operated by enslaved, and seemingly friendly Vortigaunts. Gordon fights his way through the Alien Controllers
in the facility, and finds a giant portal which he enters to find the creature responsible
for the rift’s control, as well as the leader of the Xen forces and enslavor of the Vortigaunts:
the Nihilanth. Upon noticing Freeman’s arrival, the powerful
figure begins to attack, and the two engage in battle. Meanwhile at Black Mesa, Shepard learns of
the thermonuclear device and fights his way through the Black Ops forces to find and disable
the bomb. However, his efforts are for naught, as he
soon sees the G-Man reactivating the bomb as he goes to leave. Unable to return to stop him, Shepard is forced
to leave and finds a giant Race X Gene Worm attempting to enter a portal into Black Mesa. Shephard is able to destroy the creature to
prevent it’s invasion, causing it’s portal to explode and knock him out. When he awakens, Shephard finds himself on
a heliplane, much like the one he arrived at Black Mesa in. The G-Man greets him just as the nuclear bomb
destroys Black Mesa in the distance. The G-Man then teleports them to an unknown
location, claiming that he has to keep Shephard imprisoned in an isolated location at his
“employer’s” request, due to his knowledge of the events that transpired. The G-Man then escapes through a portal, and
Shephard is left alone in the void. Meanwhile, Gordon battles and kills the Nihilanth. In its Death, Gordon is teleported out of
its lair and is overwhelmed by an explosion which freezes time. Emerging from the frozen blast is the G-Man
once again, who finally speaks to Freeman. He reveals that thanks to Freeman, he and
his “employers” now control the Xen borderworld. He then extends a job offer from his employers,
teleporting Gordon to a tramcar in the void. Gordon then accepts the job, and enters a
portal, after which the G-Man praises his decision, stating that he will see him up
ahead before putting him into a statis sleep. After the events at Black Mesa, Portal Storms
begin to rage across Earth, causing small interdimensional rifts to open across the
planet, bringing forth a large number of life forms from Xen. While the various Governments on Earth are
distracted with fighting off these forces, The Combine, an extremely powerful inter-dimensional
empire that had initially chased the Nihilanth and it’s creatures to Xen, arrive in droves
to invade Earth. The United Nations declare war on the Combine,
but it only lasts seven hours, as the Combine proves too powerful of a foe. Former Black Mesa administrator Wallace Breen
then negotiates Earth’s surrender with the Combine, allowing humanity’s survival at
the cost of a lifetime of enslavement. Breen is then appointed as a puppet ruler
for the Combine Advisors, and takes the role of Earth Administrator. Additionally, the Vortigaunts arrive on Earth,
now free of their own enslavement. Owing an eternal gratitude to Gordon Freeman,
the Vortigaunts are convinced by Eli Vance to join Humanity in creating an underground
resistance to fight, and ultimately overthrow, the Combine. Shortly after the Combine invasion, in the
Aperture Science Enrichment Center, GLaDOS is now seemingly “alone” in the facility. One of the last surviving employees, scientist
Doug Rattmann, gets a hunch about an initially rejected test subject named Chell. Due to her extreme stubbornness and tenacity,
Rattmann instead moves her to the top of the list of potential test subjects, hoping she
would be able to take down the increasingly violent and sadistic AI running the facility. He then goes into hiding, finding various
“dens” throughout the facility where he takes refuge, slowly slipping into madness
caused by his now untreated schizophrenia. GLaDOS then awakens Chell from stasis sleep,
and begins running her through tests using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device,
promising her cake upon successful completion of all of the tests. However, Chell soon discovers some of Rattmann’s
dens, finding various messages and warnings about GLaDOS deceptions and true intentions,
notably that the cake is a lie. GLaDOS also tortures Chell by providing her
with a Weighted Companion Cube as a friend, but forcing her to incinerate it after the
test is complete. Chell completes all of the tests successfully,
and afterwards GLaDOS leads her into a pit of fire. Chell is able to escape, however, and begins
to traverse her way through the empty offices and halls of the abandoned facility. Eventually, she reaches the Central AI Chamber,
where she finds GLaDOS’s mechanical chassis hanging from the ceiling. Chell is then able to outsmart the AI, using
the portal device to redirect turret missiles at GLaDOS, removing and destroying her personality
cores. After GLaDOS’s hardware is destroyed, a
portal opens and transports Chell and the remains of the chassis outside to the facility’s
parking lot. However, shortly after, a “Party Escort
Bot” arrives to drag Chell back inside the facility, immediately placing her in a stasis
sleep. Shortly after, Doug Rattmann finally escapes
the facility, just in time to see Chell being dragged by the Party Escort Bot. Feeling responsible for Chell’s fate, Rattmann
re-enters the facility, finding her long-term relaxation room, where she is in stasis sleep. He is soon met with opposition, however, and
is hit by a bullet from a turret. Knowing his only chance to save Chell would
be to ensure her life-support remains active, he crawls to a local workstation and redirects
her room’s power source to the facility’s reserve grid. This ensures her survival, but puts no end-date
on her cryogenic sleep, meaning she will stay asleep indefinitely. He then crawls into a Relaxation Vault and
falls asleep. Years later, around twenty years after the
Black Mesa incident, Gordon Freeman is awoken by the G-Man on a train car inbound to City
17. At the trainstation, Gordon is captured by
Combine Overwatch forces, but is intercepted by an undercover Barney Calhoun, who has infiltrated
the opposition. Barney leads Gordon to safety, and sends him
off to find Dr. Isaac Kleiner’s lab. As he heads out, however, he gets caught in
the middle of a Combine Overwatch raid. He is almost captured, but is soon saved by
a young woman: Alyx Vance, none other than Eli Vance’s daughter. Alyx leads Gordon to Kleiner’s lab, and
there, Kleiner reveals his own teleporter built to quickly transport members of the
underground Resistance. They decide to use it to send Gordon and Alyx
to Black Mesa East: a resistance base and research facility where Eli Vance is leading
the group’s scientific research. Kleiner gives Gordon a new and improved version
of his HEV suit, and the pair set up the teleporter to send Alyx to Black Mesa East. After a successful teleportation, Gordon enters
the machine to be sent next. However, Kleiner’s defanged pet head crab
(one of the hostile creatures from Xen), named Lamarr, leaps onto the machine, causing it
to malfunction. Gordon is then teleported to various locations,
including Wallace Breen’s office at the Combine’s monolithic central building called
the Citadel. Breen sees Gordon and immediately recognizes
him, alerting his Combine superiors, the Advisors, of his return. Gordon is finally teleported outside Kleiner’s
lab, and the scientist turns off the teleporter to leave him there. Barney meets with him and gives him the crowbar
he used during the Black Mesa incident, and instructs him to use the canal system to reach
Black Mesa East and find Eli and Alyx. Gordon then fights his way through the Combine
and other alien forces to make his way, witnessing the G-Man once again observing his progress,
He is soon met with opposition from a Combine Hunter Chopper. Using an airboat provided to him by the resistance,
he is able to fight it off and eventually reach Black Mesa East. There, Gordon meets Dr. Judith Mossman, another
researcher at the resistance base, before he is reunited with Eli Vance, who fills him
in on the events that transpired since the Black Mesa incident. Alyx then takes Gordon outside to demonstrate
the Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator, or the Gravity Gun: a handheld device with the
ability to manipulate physics. She also introduces her giant mechanical pet:
Dog. Gordon plays with Dog using the Gravity Gun,
but their fun is cut short when the Combine arrives and launches a raid on Black Mesa
East. As they re-enter the facility, a ceiling collapses,
and Alyx and Gordon are separated. Alyx instructs Dog to take Gordon to the path
to Ravenholm in order to escape. Gordon makes his way to Ravenholm, and finds
it mostly abandoned; however, he soon finds several humans turned by parasitic Headcrabs
into zombie-like creatures. He also finds the town to be filled with various
elaborate and deadly traps aimed to kill these zombies. Shortly after, he meets the town’s sole
inhabitant, and the creator of the traps: Father Grigori, who helps Gordon fend off
the Zombies and make his way through the town to find a mine that will take him back to
City 17. Refusing to leave his town, Grigori continues
to distract the Zombies, entering a burning crypt, leaving his fate unknown as Gordon
leaves the town. Afterwards, Gordon learns that Eli was captured
and taken to the Combine run Nova Prospekt detainment facility. He then begins to travel along Highway 17
to find him, meeting Colonel Odessa Cubbage along the way, who equips him with an RPG
to take down an approaching Combine Gunship. Eventually, Gordon fights and defeats an alien
Antlion Guard. Afterwards, a Vortigaunt extracts a pheropod
from the creature, giving it to Gordon and allowing him to control Antlion forces to
aid him in his fight against the Combine opposition. Gordon reaches Nova Prospekt, and meets up
with Alyx. There, they find a recording of Mossman talking
with Breen, revealing that she had been a spy working with him in some capacity. Alyx and Gordon track down Mossman and confront
her, but she insists that she only acted to protect Eli and their work. Alyx refuses to listen, retrieving her father
from captivity and forcing Mossman to use a teleporter the Combine built based on the
research supplied by Mossman to take them all back to Kleiner’s lab. However, Mossman is able to take Eli and teleport
them to the Citadel, leaving Alyx and Gordon behind to fight off Combine forces as they
prepare the teleporter to take them to Kleiner’s lab. However, when they use it, the teleporter
explodes as they do, destroying the facility. Once they arrive in Kleiner’s Lab, Gordon
and Alyx are informed by the doctor that their teleportation wasn’t instant, and the two
had been missing for a week. Kleiner reveals that in that time, the resistance
began their Uprising, taking the destruction of Nova Prospekt as the signal to strike. Gordon then takes Dog and the pair leave Alyx
and Kleiner to escape the city while they head out to aid in the battle. Dog is separated from Freeman and carried
away by a Combine dropship, but Gordon is able to meet up with Alyx, who is later captured
and taken to the Citadel. Gordon then finds Barney, and the two fight
towards the Citadel where they find Dog searching for Alyx. Dog is able to open a passageway for Gordon
into a Citadel, and he enters to search for Alyx and Eli. Inside, Gordon uses a transport pod designed
for Combine Stalkers (resistant humans that are transformed into lifeless husks by the
Combine) to traverse through the facility. Eventually, Gordon comes across a weapon confiscation
field, which destroys his weapons, save for the Gravity Gun, which causes the field to
malfunction and instead charge the Gravity Gun and Gordon’s suit with the “dark energy”
the Combine uses as the basis for their weaponry. After he fights his way through the facility
and enters another pod, however, he is discovered by Breen, who transports the pod to his office. There, he is met by Mossman, who apologizes
and leads Gordon to Breen, who is mid-conversation with Eli. Breen tries to convince Eli to join him, but
Eli refuses on moral principle. Breen then brings in Alyx to use as a bargaining
chip, threatening to send all three of them through a Combine Portal to their Overworld. However, Mossman intervenes and releases Eli,
Alyx, and Gordon from captivity. Breen then takes the Gravity Gun and Flees
to head to the portal to the Combine Overworld to escape. Alyx and Gordon leave Eli and Mossman (who
escape the Citadel using Breen’s escape pods) and the pair give chase, witnessing
Breen talking to his Combine masters before he runs off again, leaving the Gravity Gun
behind to be retrieved by Gordon. He then makes his way to the Dark Energy reactor
as the portal begins to open. Gordon is able to destroy the reactor, causing
a giant explosion, seemingly killing Breen. The G-Man arrives and freezes time, congratulating
Gordon on his continued success, and revealing that he has received other “interesting
offers” for Gordon’s work. Sometime after these events, a group of Vortigaunts
appear and rescue Alyx, as well as separating Gordon from the G-Man. The pair are then brought out of stasis by
the Vortigaunts and teleported to the outside of the Citadel. They reunite with Dog and contact Eli and
Kleiner, who reveal that the Citadel’s Core is about to explode, threatening to destroy
all of City 17 as well as everyone in it. Alyx and Gordon then head back into the Citadel
to try to stabilize the core to stop it’s explosion. There, they find a recording of Breen’s
final conversation with his Combine masters that they interrupted, in which it is revealed
that they evidently wanted to transport him using some kind of “host body”. Afterwards, they see an image of a Combine
Advisor, and encounter a kind of telepathic effect before an Advisor Pod is sent through
a tube beneath them. They are able to reach the Citadel Core, and
are able to stabilize the core and delay the explosion. Afterwards, Alyx finds intel that the Combine
intended on allowing the explosion to signal off-world Combine forces of the current crisis
on Earth. They then find another recent recording, this
time from Mossman (intended for Eli, but intercepted by the Combine). She claims to have found the location of a
mysterious “Project” before her and her team are attacked by the Combine and a yet-unseen
creature called a Hunter. The transmission then cuts suddenly. Alyx takes a copy of the transmission, and
her and Gordon then board a train to escape the facility once again. While the train crashes, the two are able
to escape the wreckage and fight their way through City 17, eventually meeting up with
Barney, who is taking a group of survivors to a train station to escape the city. After fighting through very strong Combine
opposition, BGordon and Alyx are able to lead Barney and the Survivors to safety before
boarding a train themselves and leaving the City. Just as they escape, the Citadel explodes,
decimating City 17 in its wake. The shockwave also causes Alyx and Gordon’s
train car to overturn, and the pair are once again knocked out. Alyx is able to recover and use the gravity
gun to free Gordon from the wreckage of the train. They look out to the ruins of City 17 and
see a superportal above the remains of the Citadel. Suddenly, a portal storm occurs, and Alyx
and Gordon use a path it opened to enter a mine shaft. They reach a communication building, where
Alyx is able to contact Eli and Kleiner, currently stationed at the White Forest resistance base. When Alyx mentions the recording from Mossman,
Dr Magnusson, the base’s leader, then enters the call and demands they bring them the recording
as quickly as possible. Afterwards, they are found by the Combine,
and Alyx is attacked by a Hunter, critically wounding her. A Vortigaunt arrives just in time to keep
Alyx alive, and it carries her to a small Resistance outpost nearby. There, Gordon and two other fighters, Griggs
and Checkley, protect the Vortigaunt and his brethren while they heal Alyx. Unfortunately, they are unable to fully restore
her health without an Antlion larval extract, and Gordon and the Vortigaunt that saved Alyx
then head off to retrieve it and bring it back to them. While the Vortigaunts are distracted healing
Alyx, the G-Man appears to Gordon once again, explaining that he had saved Alyx from the
Black Mesa incident due to her importance in his plans, despite Breen’s objections. He then instructs Gordon to get her to White
Forest, and instructs Alyx to relay a message to Eli: “prepare for unforeseen consequences”. Alyx awakens, fully healed, and the Vortigaunt
then takes her and Gordon to the surface, where they witness a militia of Combine forces
heading towards White Forest. Gordon then retrieves a car while being covered
by Alyx and the Vortigaunt, and brings it back to them. Alyx and Gordon then leave in the car, separating
from the Vortigaunt, who returns to his brethren to hunt the Combine Advisors escaping in their
pods. On their way to White Forest, Alyx and Gordon
stop at a radio tower to try to contact the base to warn them about the approaching Combine
ambush, however, they are attacked by Hunters, which Gordon is able to defeat. Afterwards, they notice that their transmission
is being blocked by the Combine Advisors. They continue on, but soon find a crashed
Advisor pod on the side of the road. Upon finding it, they start to again encounter
the telepathic effects they experienced when they witnessed the Advisor inside the Citadel. They enter a nearby barn and find an Advisor
inside. Gordon and Alyx attempt to destroy it’s
life support system, but it emerges from its cocoon-like structure and telekinetically
pins Gordon and Alyx to a wall, attacking and almost killing Gordon before an explosion
causes the creature to flee. Alyx and Gordon then fight their way through
more Combine attacks, eventually meeting up with Dog and reaching White Forest. There, they reunite with Kleiner and Eli,
and they all meet with Dr Magnusson. Magnusson reveals that they plan to launch
a rocket using the data Alyx retrieved at the Citadel, along with the satellites Gordon
originally helped launch during the Black Mesa incident, which they hope will close
the Combine superportal. After fending off another attack, Gordon and
Alyx return to Kleiner and Eli to watch Mossman’s message. In it, she reveals that the mysterious project
she found was the “Borealis”, an Aperture Science ship carrying an unknown powerful
technology that had long since mysteriously disappeared from it’s dry dock. Kleiner and Eli then get into a disagreement
on what should be done with the Borealis, with Kleiner seeing value in using the technology
for good, while Eli believes that something of its power would only lead to another incident
like Black Mesa. Kleiner leaves to assist Magnusson with the
rocket, and just after he does, the G-Man appears on a screen behind Alyx for a moment. When he disappears, Alyx delivers his message
to Eli to “prepare for unforeseen consequences”. This takes Eli off guard, and in confidence,
reveals to Gordon that he knows of their “mutual friend”, and tells Gordon that he had delivered
the same message to Eli at Black Mesa, and also reveals that the Xen crystal sample that
caused the Resonance Cascade was provided by the G-Man himself. Magnusson then enters and interrupts the conversation
with a warning that the giant, walking Combine Strider forces are advancing on the base,
and instructs Gordon to use the “Magnusson Device”, a sticky bomb that he can launch
at and destroy the creatures. He then heads out and successfully uses them
to fend off the Strider attack. Back inside the base, the team regroups, and
Eli tells Gordon that he believes the G-Man’s warning to be in regards to the Borealis,
and instructs Gordon to destroy the ship, promising to explain more later. He then expresses his pride and gratitude
to Freeman, likening him to a son. The group are then able to successfully launch
the rocket, which works in closing the superportal and preventing the Combine from calling in
further reinforcements from their homeworld. Alyx then leads Gordon to a helicopter hangar
to retrieve a chopper to fly to Mossman at the Borealis, while Eli follows. At the hangar, however, they are ambushed
by two Advisors, who again pin Gordon and Alyx to the wall. They then capture Eli, who gives one final
warning to destroy the Borealis, no matter what it takes. He then tells Alyx he loves her, and to look
away before an Advisor impales his brain, probing his mind and instantly killing the
man. An Advisor then moves to grab Alyx, but Dog
arrives and fights off the Advisors, causing them to flee which frees Alyx and Gordon. Alyx then rushes to her lifeless father, and
caresses his body as she weeps. This is the last we see of Gordon and Alyx’s
story, at least for now, but we do have one more to tell… More than 50,000 years in the future, Chell
is finally awoken from her stasis sleep by Wheatley, a bumbling personality core who
hopes to receive Chell’s help escaping the Aperture Science facility after it’s reserve
power was lost. Wheatley leads Chell to a chamber containing
an escape elevator, but she soon finds the remains of GLaDOS’s lifeless chassis. Wheatley attempts to route power to the elevator,
but instead accidentally awakens GLaDOS. Upon awakening, she immediately recognizes
Chell and resents her for killing the AI. She then crushes Wheatley, tossing him aside
before leading Chell to her old discarded Dual-Portal handheld device. GLaDOS then forces Chell to go through test
chambers once again, as the AI scrambles to repair the broken-down facility. During her testing, Wheatley appears to Chell,
hiding from GLaDOS, but revealing he survived his encounter with her. A few test chambers later, Wheatley and Chell
are discovered by GLaDOS and are forced to make their way through the back halls of the
facility to escape. On their way, Chell discovers a science project
exhibit left over from the “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” when GLaDOS began killing Aperture
employees. Interestingly, one of the “potato power”
projects is credited to a girl named Chell, indicating a potentially deeper tie between
Chell and Aperture. Chell and Wheatley then decide to sabotage
GLaDOS’s defenses by causing the turret assembly line to produce defective turrets,
as well as cutting off her supply of neurotoxin. Chell and Wheatley return to GLaDOS’s chamber,
and when she tries to kill them, she fails due to their meddling. Due to GLaDOS’s corruption and Wheatley’s
presence, a transfer of Wheatley into GLaDOS’s body is initiated. While GLaDOS tries to stop this, Chell is
able to initiate an override and successfully complete the transfer. Afterwards, Wheatley sends Chell on the elevator
to the surface, but quickly changes his mind, seemingly corrupted by his new power. He then puts GLaDOS into one of the Potato
Power experiments as an act of embarrassment. She then reveals that Wheatley was designed
by Aperture Science engineers to be a moron, installed onto her to potentially diminish
her intelligence so she would no longer be able to outsmart and kill her creators. This pushes Wheatley over the edge, and he
destroys the elevator, causing Chell and GLaDOS to begin a deep, deep fall into the depths
of the facility. At the bottom, Chell watches GLaDOS get snatched
away by a bird, and she begins to search her way through the bowels of the facility, finding
it to contain the old Aperture Science facility. Inside, she hears various recordings of Aperture
founder and CEO Cave Johnson explaining the history of the company and its facilities
and experiments, including the portals and various “gels” with physics altering effects. One investment was $70 million worth of moon
rocks, which are grounded up. They proved to be great conductors for the
portal gun to create portal surfaces, but prolonged exposure caused Cave to fall deathly
ill. Chell finds GLaDOS and saves her from the
birds, and the pair put aside their differences to take on the common goal of stopping Wheatley
before he destroys the facility. As GLaDOS begins to hear the records of Cave
as well, however, she somehow recognizes his voice, despite having never heard it before. She then begins to mimic Cave’s assistant,
Caroline, during a recorded conversation between the two. When Chell finds a portrait of Cave and Caroline,
GLaDOS recognizes them and is overwhelmed. In order to regroup, she turns herself off
for the time being. Chell also finds another startling discovery
in the Aperture facility: a dry dock for the Borealis, with the ship nowhere to be found. Chell then hears another recording of Cave
during his last days, where he instructs his engineers to research artificial intelligence
so they could transfer his mind into a computer to preserve it. He then proclaims that should he die before
they can do so, he wants Caroline to take over the facility, even if she disagrees,
and states that she could take his place as an AI as well. GLaDOS then develops a plan to present Wheatley
with a paradoxical phrase that should cause his logic processors to fail and disable him. However, when they reach him and present the
paradox, it has no effect, due to his programming to deliberately not think. Wheatley then succumbs to the scientist’s
AI design to forcefully test subjects, and he sends Chell and GLaDOS through tests of
his own, lazy design. However, as he discovers an increasing tolerance
to the “high” provided from successful testing, he reveals that he found a new subject
to test (in the form of a robotic test subject) before leading Chell into a spike-filled trap. Chell is easily able to avoid this trap and
make her way to Wheatley’s chamber. There, GLaDOS sends in corrupted personality
cores, which Chell is able to attach to Wheatley, raising his corruption level and triggering
another core transfer. When Chell goes to press the button to complete
the override, Wheatley reveals that he actually foresaw this outcome and sabotaged the button,
which explodes. Chell survives the explosion, and notices
the moon through a hole in the crumbling facility. She grabs the portal device and shoots a portal
onto the moon, causing her, Wheatley, and everything else in the room to get sucked
into the vacuum of space. Chell grabs on to Wheatley, still connected
to the facility, but GLaDOS detaches Wheatley and pulls Chell back through the portal, closing
it and stranding Wheatley in space. Chell awakens later to see the two robots
Wheatley planned to test on: named Atlas and P-body. GLaDOS, now back in her body and in control
of the facility, thanks Chell for helping her re-discover Caroline deep inside of her
programming. She then deletes Caroline, seemingly returning
to her old ways. However, she decides that despite her best
efforts, she has been unable to kill Chell, and likely will never be able to. She decides that if she can’t kill Chell,
the next best thing she can do is get rid of her. She then finally grants Chell her freedom,
sending her up the elevator, where she is serenaded by an opera of Turrets. Outside, Chell steps into a bright cornfield. Behind her, GLaDOS sends out her incinerated
Weighted Companion Cube before slamming the door shut, leaving Chell outside for good. Meanwhile, in space, Wheatley admits his regret
while floating in space, hoping to one day go back so he can apologize. Afterwards, GLaDOS tests on Atlas and P-Body,
eventually using them to discover a vault deep within the facility, which is revealed
to contain hundreds of still alive human test subjects, whom she kills within a week of
testing… This is where we leave the Half-Life and Portal
universe, until we revisit the events between the Half-Life and Half-Life 2 with Half-Life
Alyx this month. And while Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw has
revealed his plans for an Episode 3 (which I’ll link in the description) maybe one
day we’ll finally get a fully realized conclusion to Gordon Freeman’s story. Hey guys, thanks so much for watching this
video. If you enjoyed, make sure you leave a like,
comment on what you want to see next, and subscribe and ring the bell to see these when
they come out. Also consider supporting on Patreon or becoming
a member on YouTube (links in the description), with a huge thanks to those folks on screen
now.
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