Half-Life's Lost Superweapon | The Borealis | Full Half-Life Lore

this video contains spoilers for half-life alex [Music] through a brutal war with the combine empire the resistance of humanity had finally resisted against their dominating oppressors locked them away from their homeworld and could now evenly match them in combat with a new wave of a war coming after the battle of white forest the resistance of humanity had discovered a potential new weapon that they could use against the combine a weapon they had previously believed to simply have been a myth what was this long long-lost piece of technology where is it now and how could it affect the future of humanity here we explore in the law behind the borealis way back before the invasion of the combine empire and the enslavement of humanity under their brutal reign the black mesa research facility and aperture science have been fighting in competition over the years in an attempt to become a leading research facility in the scientific field as both companies worked on portal technology a team within aperture began work on a top secret project called the borealis working within the 1970s section of the facility 3975 meters below the surface the science team experimented with a large heli class icebreaker ship while this type of ship was typically used in the polar regions of the planet the scientists had found another use for it but even now its secrets are mostly unknown stored on a dry dock deep underground the aperture scientists took out everything from the ship that was not required for its function allowing more room for the scientific equipment with this working from blueprints the scientists fitted the borealis with various pieces of technology such as material emancipation grills advanced particle fields mostly used in apertures test chambers designed to vaporize unauthorized items that pass through them and secondly unstationary scaffolds again advanced technology created by aperture science that was used in their test chambers to move on demand to allow access to various areas with the borealis project being top secret those outside of the dry dock could only speculate what the scientists were actually working on and at one point some details of the project were leaked where the scientists of black mesa heard of their work too that the borealis was being used to test some sort of teleportation technology as the portal guns used within the test chambers could only take its user from point a to point b based on the creation of the portals by the user of the aperture handheld portal device the aperture science facility had not yet figured out localized teleportation to the degree that black mesa had at this point where they were able to travel to a border world outside of this dimension with a project as demanding as this and with the risk that came with exploring new scientific endeavors this project surely would break boundaries as the research continued cave johnson the founder of aperture began to create pre-recorded messages which played across the facility one of them about the borealis and a hint at what the nature of the experiment was here cave explained that the team were working on a teleportation experiment and this experiment would possibly change the fate of the future in the right hands although apertures experiments were pushing the boundaries of the scientific field the facility was spending more money than they were making but aperture continued to push their scientists desperate to beat black mesa in the race for cutting edge technology with this regular safety precautions were ignored with the borealis being one of the more prominent projects ignoring the standard safety precautions in combination with such advanced technology could only lead to something bad during their tests the crew of the borealis had reported back to cave that during teleportation some skin types did not teleport along with their respective bodies leaving those now without skin in a great deal of pain it is said that on a regular day of experimenting with the borealis the scientists continued to push their limits but something went wrong from within the deep test chamber the icebreaker borealis suddenly disappeared taking the crew with it and everything inside with the ship gone and aperture completely unaware of where it had landed all they could do was leave the project until it was rediscovered although disappointed it seemed that aperture had successfully performed teleportation but they had lost their project and everything within it during the process from this the dry dock lay empty with a piece of it missing that had been taken with the borealis as time passed word of this event leaked yet again to members of the scientific community across the planet one of these being dr isaac kleiner who heard that aputure had been working on a project of some promise but because of their rush to beat black mesa for funding safety measures had been avoided resulting in the research vessel as well as all aboard disappearing while the disappearance of an extremely pricey research project would have been a major blow to aperture science under their fight to be black mesa for funding more tragic events were soon to come it is unknown in which order these events occurred but both facilities faced their troubles the black mesa research facility performed an experiment with an exotic crystal sample collected from the border world of zen using an anti-mass spectrometer the scientists sent the crystal into the high-powered beam of the machine where it shattered flooding the area with exotic mata this in turn formed a resonance cascade ripping a hole in space creating a domino effect leading the combine a multi-dimensional alien empire to earth where they set upon it conquering the planet and its armies in a mere seven hours with a disaster above ground another incident had unfolded within the aperture science facility here a murderous artificial intelligence glados had outsmarted the scientists of the facility and acquired neurotoxin with this she flooded the entire facility with it murdering the majority of the members within leaving only few survivors as well as many test subjects that she could use for her testing needs fully in control of the facility glados was able to keep out the combine army attempting to break in to discover earth's advanced technologies and from here she continued to test in peace as the years passed humanity became completely enslaved by the combine empire but few members of this resilient species worked in secret to form a resistance so that one day they could defeat the dominating empire and reclaim their planet approximately 20 years after the combine invasion a resistance had formed across the wasteland where bases have been constructed just out of view of the combine within these they could save those trapped within combine settlements and place them in safer locations to either live in peace or join the resistance to fight for humanity while they had now at this point been able to gain small wins against the combine the resistance still needed a spark to ignite their revolution and begin a fight to reclaim planet earth to their look the legendary gordon freeman returned after being removed from stasis by the g-man with the resistance now having their symbol of revolution with them they could begin to fight against the combine and over the following days a group led by barney calhoun charged through the streets of city 17 towards the citadel in a string of events the citadel within the combine stronghold became unstable with this judith mossman and eli vance escaped the city to a resistance base outside of the city within the outlands white forest arriving at this base the lead scientist there dr ahn magnusson sends judith out into the north to discover the combine portal codes so that the resistance could be fully prepared in the event a super portal were to form from the unstable citadel on her mission it seems he also asked her to seek out a long-lost project apparently based on a rumored location of where the borealis had landed with this brief information judith and a resistance team set off to the north during their trip they successfully discovered the location of the lost project but could not get to it recording their discovery the team were wary of how much of the borealis had actually survived its journey and whether anything inside could still work that the resistance could use in the fight against the combine all they knew about the project was that it contained an immensely powerful and dangerous secret as aperture at this point had almost perfected the aperture science handheld portal device it was believed by some that this giant icebreaker ship had been fitted with a similar device capable of transporting the whole of the ship and everything within it with this project now believed to be a key to the resistance success judith worried that the combine also searched for the borealis and feared what they could do with the potential technology on board with the project rumored to have the ability to perfect localized teleportation this could potentially give the dominating alien empire the ability to create a bridge between earth and the combine overworld where they could flood earth once again with their massive armies and squash the resistance before it could do any more damage to their cause with the research team having come across something so powerful and possibly hugely significant to the resistance cause judith and her team record a message to send to the white forest resistance base while they had not been able to access the ship they believed they had found the project and would simply need to go back to the location in a few hours unfortunately the fears of judith and her team were correct as the combine had discovered their location and in turn had also discovered their information on the lost research vessel encoding her transmission with information they had discovered on the borealis judith's broadcast is interrupted by a combined assault where it is later taken by the combine and stored within the citadel to the resistance's luck alex and gordon would later enter the unstable tower in an attempt to slow down its inevitable destruction alongside slowing down the meltdown alex also hacks into the combine network and discovers judith's lost transmission files related to the borealis and the combine overworld portal code after traveling to the white forest resistance base with this information alex gordon eli and isaac watch judith's footage in awe of the borealis trapped in ice as well as observing blueprints and indications of aperture's specialized technology on board this discovery had confirmed the borealis to actually be real and not a myth thought by other members of the resistance aware of the capabilities and possibility of such a project two of the leaders of the resistance dr eli vance and dr isaac kleiner view this discovery at completely different ends of the spectrum as dr isaac kleiner views this discovery as a great way for the resistance to gain another advantage over the remaining combine forces on planet earth he is opposed by dr eli vance as he views the discovery of this technology as a catalyst to trigger another seven hour war only in his words humanity would not last seven minutes this fear came from the role he had played during the resonance cascade the major incident that had brought the combine to planet earth in the first place to this eli demands that the borealis be destroyed believing you could not control the kind of power they believed was on the ship but isaac believed there was always a risk when it came to this kind of technology and this risk could save humanity discovering the coordinates for the borealis within the transmission waves eli demands that he should go to this location but the resistance believed that his potential capture would result in irreparable damage to the cause due to the combine's ability to interrogate and access information from those they came across with the pleas of his daughter eli agrees not to go and in his place gordon and alex plan to go instead to discover the borealis themselves and save judith mossman from the combine's grasp after the successful battle of white forest under the closing of the forming super portal cutting off the combine from their overworld gordon and alex set off straight away to save judith mossman and discovered the secrets of the borealis unfortunately disaster strikes when the duo prepared to set off as combine advisors crashed through the windows of the hangar housing their helicopter in one version of reality eli is brutally assaulted and killed by a combine advisor to the look of alex and gordon doug arrives just in time to attack the advisors leaving alex to mourn the death of her father as gordon watches from the sidelines in another version of reality alex with the help of the g-man reaches through time and strikes the combine advisor destined to murder her father using charged up vortigaunt energy alex strikes at the advisor saving eli and in turn changes the future although eli's life had been spared the g-man would take this opportunity to employ alex and pull her from the timeline while these versions of reality differ slightly it is believed that gordon's quest would still lead him to the north with or without alex where the legendary borealis could make a change to humanity's future as time had passed since the discovery of the borealis to the resistance receiving the lost communication from judith it is unknown how much the combine had discovered about the legendary vessel with a potential weapon discovered that could aid the resistance in the future the fight for government funding between the black mesa research facility and the aperture science research corporation had given humanity a great powerful weapon that could help them in the final wave of the fight against the combine empire cut off from their homeworld the combine will now weak against any surprises humanity could throw at them and maybe the borealis could be the final strike needed to remove them from not only planet earth but also from the other worlds and civilizations that the combine had dominated over their many years of conquering it is unknown what the true capability of the borealis is but even if the borealis turned out to be nothing more than an empty shell the discovery of this healy class icebreaker ship turned research vessel had still given the resistance hope and a new spark to continue fighting now with the in-game cannon out of the way let's move on to what happened during the development of half-life 2 and how the borealis would have had a completely different role to play in the first version of half-life 2 the borealis was to appear as the hyperborea in this version of the game the player was to start the game boarding the ship on the way to city 17 while it is unknown at the extent of how the hyperborea was to function in comparison to the borealis we kind of know now we do know that it would have appeared between two cut chapters in the later end of the game the set between the depot and the city 17 street battle sections cutting it out it seems that valve added the slow stasis time jumps to speed up the events of resistance activity in city 17 while the inclusion of the hyperborea does sound great within half-life 2 it was just not meant to be while on the topic of this original version of the borealis i feel like i have to mention odell a hyperborea engineer who sadly was cut as the ship was completely changed odell's face was then reused and given to colonel odessa cubbage in 2007 with the release of half-life 2 episode 2 valve canonized the borealis into the half-life universe by having it referenced and seemingly spotlighted as a major focus on the promised third sequence in the three-episode saga but episode 3 never came all we received was concept art for episode 3 which skipping past the art for the character designs we can see the art of the ship stuck in ice surrounded by combine advisors this suggests that the combine had in fact discovered the ship after their assault on judith and her team leaving gordon and alex to fight for control of it while attempting to save judith for a long time after this we did not get any additional information on the borealis until 2011 when portal 2 released here we were shown the dry dock that had housed the research vessel while the discovery of this location in itself was interesting as it pointed to a major event that had been referenced in episode 2 five years before we would still have to wait to find out the significance of the vessel moving forward to 2015 fans were still eagerly waiting for a continuation of the episodic half-life series and now at this point the meme valve count counter 3 was in full force unknown to the players valve had been working on a vr game called the borealis a game that would have the player ricochet backwards and forwards through time where they could see events from the hour war up to the moment just after the ending of episode two this game like many others would struggle to pick up momentum and later was cancelled in 2016 mark laidlaw a main writer for the series left valve leaving fans to question whether we would ever get a resolution and explanation for the borealis all we had at this point was concept art 4 episode 3. interesting enough but nothing to explain the game or story itself then in 2017 we received a masterpiece written by mark laidlaw himself written as a sort of fanfiction which i guess in a way it is laidlaw posted epistol 3 on his own website clearly the name here referencing episode 3. this is widely believed to at one point been the concluding story for the half-life series i do only want to focus on the borealis in this video and so i will limit it to that so a lot of a pistol 3 will be cut out for that i may possibly put together a sole video on a pistol 3 in the future epistle 3 featured the characters gertie fremont and alex vaughnt clearly gordon freeman and alex vance just after the events of epistle 2 clearly referencing episode 2 here after burying eli alex and gordon travel to the north using a helicopter but they crash land and have to continue to the borealis coordinates on foot interestingly enough the borealis is named here as the hyperborea a nice nod to the vessel's original name approaching the lost vessel they discover combine technology surrounding the borealis which at this point is phasing in and out of existence seemingly a side effect of the teleportation reality bending technology on board with the combine guarding the area of where it is phasing in and out gordon and alex continued to follow the coordinates sent to them by judith believing these to be the location of where the borealis would temporarily materialize where they could board it properly before it disappeared again with the help of a now released judith mossman named dr maas in this version they attuned the frequencies of the ship and bring it into coherence and finally board it on board the resistance members attempt to gain control of the ship as it phases from earth and travels between the many universes across space and time in the multiverse eventually they discover the aperture device that allows the ship to function the bootstrap device essentially the bootstrap device created a self-contained field around the borealis allowing everything within the field to travel to a chosen date and time we also learn here why and how the borealis had left the aperture science facility as the seven-hour war erupted and planet earth became ravaged by the combine forces these scientists became aware that the combine forces were targeting planet earth's research facilities likely in an attempt to seize and utilize their experiments and groundbreaking technologies in desperation to survive and keep the borealis out of combine hands these scientists activate the bootstrap device to take themselves and the borealis to the furthest destination away from them as they could antarctica while they had developed this technology they had still not fully tested it and did not realize that the bootstrap device not only traveled through space but also time on activation the borealis flung its way through space and time described to have at one point been pulled as taught as an elastic band through this process they existed within multiple times and locations at once viewing distant worlds around them as well as crew members still attempting to board the vessel now still attempting to regain control of the ship alex gordon and judith glimpse various realities an interesting one being a staging area of the combine world looking as though they were gearing up to breach a planet just like they had done to earth with the ship still flinging through space and time alex and judith end up arguing about how to use the borealis judeth followed in the mindset of isaac believing they could use it for research and to help the resistance while alex wanted to destroy it following her father's wishes as events pass alex ends up shooting judith killing her with gordon and alex now planning to destroy the ship and with a grasp of how the bootstrap device worked gordon and alex armed the borealis and aimed to launch it at the combine home world they had essentially created a time traveling missile prepared for their fate alex and gordon simply wait for their demise but the g-man appears to alex and tells her they have places to do and things to be with this she walks away with him and they step out of reality leaving gordon unable to escape as the borealis nears the combine empire and begins to tear itself apart gordon observes just how vast the combine empire was and the futility of the struggle of humanity to his look the vortigaunt appear and pull gordon out of the borealis before he could see the impact of the destruction of the borealis as it hit the combine homeworld landing on an unknown show in the future gordon speaks of seeing the world having grown and developed without him few remember him and he is unaware of whether the resistance failed or succeeded the ending is just as confusing as the whole story and we still do not know if the borealis hitting the combine homeworld did its job or whether the combine still reigned over the multiverse again all of this is labeled as fan fiction but it is widely believed that at one point this was the plot of half-life 2 episode 3 and this would have been something i would have loved to play as i wanted to focus on the borealis part of this i skipped much of the story greengrub gets his own video this could be as close to an ending to the half-life series as we will ever get and i am actually okay with that but half-life alex did open that door this story also helps fill in a lot of holes in the canon story of the borealis but creates some new ones too now the timeline of these events is sketchy we find the borealis within the 1970s version of the aperture facility but it marks a pistol 3 the vessel is sent off during the seven hour war which is believed to have taken place in the early 2000s sadly i could not put a more accurate timeline together which is something i normally aim to do it appears that the borealis was activated during the seven hour war which means that the events of pulse will happen during the combine invasion this is also backed up in one part of portal where glados mentions that she is keeping them out them being the combine who had likely sought the advanced technology within if this is the case though the fall of aperture must have occurred just after the borealis had disappeared while the planet was being attacked by the combine with laidlaw having heavily consulted on the development of half-life alex i would like to think that if we do get a continuation which after the ending of half-life alex signifies we should then i would like to believe that mark would either return to valve to finish a project he had begun many years before and ride that ship to the end or act as a consultant again that was the law behind the borealis if you enjoyed this episode i would really appreciate it if you could leave a like and a thought on your comments and i'll even pin the best comment i see if you really liked it then go ahead and subscribe i know you have already watched a couple of videos by now so why not subscribe and be notified when i post in the future as i said for the barney video a few of you may have noticed that i have already made a borealis video in the past i will link the original below in fact the borealis was my first lore video but i felt like i didn't do the video justice and i wanted to go back and make it better with this i wanted to focus on what we knew from within the games and i wanted to look at the story behind its creation anticipated return and the general timeline is important to knowing what the borealis is what it could have been and how it changed if you would like to stay up to date with everything i get up to outside of youtube then go and follow my twitter and instagram i also have a discord server which is linked below finally i would like to thank my patrons who are helping to support the channel i really appreciate you thank you to the old gods talus detroit avw brunette gynas jojo scotia and imaginary holly and an extra special thank you to the elder ones tier scrushroom jonas lewis and queen abbey thank you guys so much what did you think of this lore video the borealis storyline still to this day makes me excited for a potential return to a half-life set after half-life 2 episode 2 and with the success of alex i am hoping we will get one in a potential half-life game what do you think the borealis is capable of do you think valve will wretch on it just like they have in the past and what did you think of the timeline of the borealis and its iterations let me know in the comments below again i will pin my favorite comment if you have any suggestions for future half-life lore videos please let me know i still do have a long list to get through the next few i am thinking about are gordon freeman the quarantine zone and the black mesa any suggestions are welcome this was everything i wanted to cover in this episode now resistance member enjoy your day bye [Music] you

Channel: Skyrionn

Views: 309,666

Keywords: Half-Life, Lore, The Borealis, Aperture Science, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 3, Episode 1, Episode 2, Valve, Gordon Freeman, Cave Johnson, Lemons, The Combine, Teleportation, Skyrionn

Id: YC4U2IBNkWU

Length: 29min 3sec (1743 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2021