Just For Fun: PDown's fan outlines for Portal 3 and Half-Life 3

Purely for amusement, I've outlined ideas for Portal 3 and Half-Life 3. Feel free to express opinions on them, or give me your own ideas, it might influence future drafts of the same! HL 3 ideas will get a separate post to avoid having a single giant post. Also if there's a better board for this on TV Tropes, feel free to tell me. :)

PORTAL 3:

Chapter One - Natural Environment

You apparently wake up in a little hut made of wheat with the companion cube from the end of the second game. The implication is that what you are about to see has been a daily routine for an indefinite period of time for Chell since the second game. Your first clue that something is wrong should probably be the fact that you have a portal gun. You get ten to thirty seconds to scout around outside before you hear a voice from in the hut. It sounds like the Party Escort Bot, and it's coming from the companion cube. It claims to BE the companion cube. This ought to be a pretty good indication that something is wrong. Its dialogue implies that this too has happened on a regular basis since the end of the second game. After it "chats" with you for a brief period of time (it's a rather one-sided chat, you being unable to talk and all) it reminds you that you are probably hungry, and that you should go get your breakfast. Panels rise out of the ground (camo-colored) and form test chambers in front of your eyes. This is a surprise to the player, but it is implied that it is not a surprise to Chell - this has been going on for some time. The tests are all fairly easy, and are essentially just there to get the player back in the hang of Portal (though they also reintroduce some of the puzzle elements). The Companion Cube accompanies the player (no ME Gs in these chambers, the tests are built around this). It should be noted that none of these chambers have anything potentially lethal in them - no crushers, no turrets, no acid. All this while, the companion cube is insistently (and pointlessly) reminding players that the tests are "naturally occurring", and are completely unrelated to Aperture Science or G La DOS. At the end of this series of tests the player recieves a plate of bacon, eggs, and an achievement, which they eat using the use key. They return to their wheat hut. The companion cube tries to make conversation (for example, encouraging Chell to look for humans in the wheatfield), and, in case the player hasn't gotten it by now, the "sun" moves from "sunrise" to "noon" in the span of about twenty seconds, with loud mechanical scraping noises, visibly changing color. The companion cube makes it obvious that this is NOT part of Chell's normal routine - its voice becomes distressed and it repeatedly insists that it must just be a previously unknown cosmic anomaly of little import. Then, panels start raining from the sky.

Chapter Two - Fluctuations

The next set of "natural tests" starts - and early, too. The companion cube reminds the player that the tests arriving ahead of schedule must just be a natural byproduct of the unknown solar anomaly. The tests are broken and dangerous because panels are falling in them, creating deadly pits or simply landing with a turret standing on top of the panel. These tests also reintroduce the player to the three gels from the first game. The player eventually breaks out of this series of tests, leaving the companion cube behind (but its voice remains equally loud everywhere, further making it obvious that its story is false). It is now obvious that the player is not in an infinite landscape, but in a giant sphere that attempts to make the player THINK they are in an infinite landscape by constantly moving the player's location to the center. It's getting worse at being subtle about it - and in fact, it's getting worse at it in general. The player must use a combination of clever running and clever portalling to take advantage of the AI to get to the edge without constantly being pulled back to the center. At the edge, they are standing on a catwalk that is connected to the interior surface of the sphere, so they no longer can be pulled to the edge. The player finds a button labled "Sun Release" and, against the objections of the companion cube's voice, pushes it. This causes the "sun" to fall out of the sky and create a giant hole in the center of the room, which the player is promptly sucked into. There they find themselves back in normal Aperture Science. They immediately hear G La DOS, frustrated, confused, and most of all dissapointed. She describes the environment simulation as an effort to make Chell happy, and decides that Chell's barbaric destruction of it is evidence that that approach did not work. She sends Chell back to standard Aperture testing.

Chapter Three - Paradise Lost

G La DOS's statements at the end of Chapter Two are more fleshed out here. It turns out that G La DOS has some data on Aperture history, and she remembers tests that they did on hobos in the seventies. At one point, to determine how test subjects responded to unearned rewards, they simply gave hobos sixty dollars for nothing. They did not appreciate it. (The money was explosive, but her point still stands.) This is why she still forced Chell to test in the natural environment - without it, her meals would have felt meaningless. Between tests, she tries to make Chell feel bad again, comparing her to various figures from human religion, mythology, and folklore for giving up a perfect world. She fizzles the companion cube in front of Chell, states that it was not the original one from Portal 1 anyways, and "reveals" that the companion cube was not really alive - it was the Party Escort Bot impersonating a companion cube. This last point is hurt, however, by the fact that the PEB has become honestly convinced that it is a companion cube. It escapes from G La DOS's control. She brushes this aside and continutes to the next test. During the tests in the chapter, we are reintroduced to lasers, ME Gs, redirection cubes, excursion funnels, and hard light bridges. We also get our first new gameplay element - Adhesion Gel. This would be the gel cut from the first game (with some tweaks to the way it works to make it less nauseating). The earlier nausea could even be referenced in G La DOS's dialogue as a side-effect of the gel. We also get some puzzles requiring cubes to be covered in adhesion gel, allowing them to be stuck to buttons on walls (thus making wall buttons possible to push without a constant excursion funnel), and some puzzles with adhesion gel used to put turrets in unusual places. There are vague hints throughout the chapter that there is something wrong with G La DOS. Not "Wheatley Laboratories" level wrong, or even as bad as in the DLC. More "give her a couple of years and this place will be a wreck" wrong.

Chapter Four - Senility G La DOS continues to test you, and a new puzzle element is introduced - environmental portals. Environmental portals are like normal portals, except that they're built into the environment, they vary in size and shape, and you can shoot portals through them. (These already exist, but as a way for the developers to cheat, not as a puzzle element). The existence of these environmental portals brings up new implications - for one, the explicit statement that many corridors in Aperture Science connect to completely distant sections of the building, and some of the "dead ends" that you can encounter could be corridors to different areas if they were turned on. The same applies to elevators - the elevators nearly always go through environmental portals between chambers. The PEB-that-thinks-it's-a-companion-cube repeatedly attempts to disrupt tests, imitating Wheatley from the previous game. However, it proves to be less competent than Wheatley, and though on one occasion it manages to interrupt a test, it consistently fails to actually get you out. This is just a minor gag, though, and ultimately has little significance to the plot. Meanwhile, less visible but more important, the nature of G La DOS's problems are becoming clearer. She has major gaps in her knowledge database. She either fills them up with random junk to make herself look intelligent, or awkwardly avoids the things she's missing. She also lets slip at one point that, between Portal 2 and Portal 3, she found MULTIPLE cryogenic storage vaults... and tested every single human in them to death (except for a few, who either died or went into a vegetative state in cryogenic storage).

NOTE: I forgot a detail in Chapter Three, albeit a minor one. As part of her general campaign of making you feel bad for giving up the natural environment, she implies that she reason to believe that the surface does not exist anymore, or at the very least would be unsuitable to release you to - a subtle Half-Life reference that players can choose to ignore.

Chapter Five - Epiphany

G La DOS has an "epiphany" - she'll make you the first human subject in the Aperture Science Lunar Enrichment Center. She begins to outline how she got the idea for constructing a base on the moon, but interrupts herself, realizing that she can't remember. She uses environmental portals to transport you to the moon. There, you are introduced to three new testing elements. Gravity manipulation - that is, the ability for the gravity level (or even direction) in a chamber to change, based on, say, a button being pushed or a laser in a laser reciever. Second, Conduction Gel. It's not very useful in and of itself - it constantly generates electricity, so you can kill turrets with it, though you can't cross it yourself - you're pushed back as though you tried to step into a thermal discouragement beam. However, it can be used in combination with the third new testing element of the chapter - coils. Coils can be connected by having conduction gel on the floor or wall between them, and when the coils are connected, effects will occur specific to the individual coils (once again, this is analogous to having a cube on a button, or a laser in a laser reciever). There also might be a test involving a cube covered in Conduction Gel with no water supply to wash it off with, so you have to move it using portals and cannot pick it up or push it. In any case, the festivities are interrupted by Wheatley's arrival. He's just a cameo, albeit an important one. Wheatley and the Space Core crash into the ASLEC (possibly preceded several levels earlier by the Adventure Core) and begin to have a cheerful conversation with G La DOS. G La DOS is initially completely confused, as even though she recognizes Wheatley, and knows she has memories of him, she can't remember many of the events that he describes from Portal 2. She finally owns up (a la owning up to lying when she's nervous in Art Therapy) to the fact that there is something wrong with her. Even though she's not sure of the exact extent of what's wrong with her, she's determined that she is missing major chunks of her memory. She retrieves Chell from the moon, and takes the portal device from her. She then has Chell put on a special suit, stating that it will allow her to communicate with Chell even when she is not in an area that G La DOS controls. It also allows her to see everything that Chell sees, and hear everything that Chell hears. G La DOS then returns the portal device to Chell, informing her: "The device has been waterproofed. This is not to imply that the device or the subject is invulnerable to acid. Any fluids of unconfirmed integrity should be avoided as they would have been previously." She then drops Chell down, down, down into Old Aperture...

Chapter Six - Deja Vu

You land at the bottom of Old Aperture - the same age as the beginning of The Fall, but a different part. It'll still feel similar to The Fall, at least at first, even though it's new content, new gameplay, and new chambers, because it's the same visual style. (This is the first of the two meanings of the title Deja Vu.) G La DOS keeps a constant line of communication with the player, though she is still prevented from telling the player how to solve puzzles, and she tries to be quiet during prerecorded messages. You wind up in Testing Track Five (you were in TT 9 in The Fall), and recieve a series of prerecorded messages from Cave Johnson. Everything seems familiar to G La DOS, but she doesn't know where it's familiar from, and this distresses her (the second meaning of the title Deja Vu). Before I get into the plot developments of this chapter, I'd like to say the gameplay idea that I've come up with for this chapter, because I'm rather proud of it. Cave would get one of his scientists, Mark, to explain to the test subjects (astronauts, war heroes, and olympians) that most Aperture Science fluids (gel and water) have actually undergone a special process to make them two-dimensional. This is why they vanish upon hitting a wall, taking up area but no volume. In any case, it's not an automatic property of water. And so we get into our new gameplay element... three-dimensional water. You can swim in it (since your suit and your portal gun have both been waterproofed). And even better, you can shoot portals underwater, and realistic physics will apply. For example, a simple puzzle with three-dimensional water involves a need to have water in an area which lacks it. So you shoot a portal under the body of water, and a portal above the other area, and the water drains out through the portal and collects in the second area. In connection with water, a couple of other testing elements are introduced. Wheels need water to constantly fall through them to keep spinning and thus to stay on (like a button or laser reciever, the wheels can be connected to other things, such as doors). Jets create currents in the water (and these currents can be redirected to keep underwater wheels spinning). Meanwhile, plotwise, this chapter reintroduces Chell and G La DOS to Cave - G La DOS can't remember that she heard him in Portal 2, but, like in Portal 2, she recognizes his voice. Caroline recieves more characterization (she's loyal enough to Cave, and fearful enough of Cave, that she doesn't strongly object to anything that he does, but she definitely shows signs of disagreeing with some of Cave's less moral "scientific" practices. We also learn of three individual Aperture employees. There's Greg, who Cave despises because he supports safe science, and eventually fires (it's implied that he's the scientist being fired in the "why don't you marry safe science if you love it so much" scene from Portal 2). There's Mark, who Cave is continually using as an example of a good employee, but who we never actually hear. And there's Ben, who Cave tolerates (as he obeys everything Cave says and is a total suck-up) but does not trust or consider a real scientist. Caroline is distressed when Greg is fired, and for good reason - that's the point when Aperture goes from "questionable ethics" to "Ethics? What ethics?" Things soon decay to the 1970s tests with vagrants. Ben and Mark kind of disappear for the time being, giving us more time to characterize Caroline. For example, there's one chamber (with an old-style companion cube, no less) where we learn that Caroline invented the companion cube (and, in a reference to the original Portal's development, the companion cube was invented to remind the test subjects that they were supposed to keep the companion cube). There's no incinerator, G La DOS invented that herself. :P And speaking of G La DOS, as she hears these prerecorded messages, she's regaining memories in one sense, but not in another - she knows that she's seen all of this before, but she doesn't know how. In other words, she's getting the information, but she's still missing huge chunks of context so the information isn't worth much in terms of fixing the problem with her memory. We are also introduced to two different kinds of Old Turrets. Ironically, the turrets undergo the opposite of Aperture's transformation - they become more advanced as Aperture falls from glory. The first turrets are literally just machine guns attached to tape recorders. They were still TRYING the "intelligent turret" thing back then, but they didn't have AI, so they just have a recording of Greg pretending to be a gun (he is... not enthusiastic, because he sees no reason to include turrets in unrelated tests). "Hello... Could you come over here? I am... not a gun. Well, at least, I won't shoot you. I am a gun to trick you into thinking that I will shoot you. But I will not. Please come over here so that I can continue to not shoot you." When Greg is fired, they replace the recordings with recordings of Cave, and make the turret itself physically more advanced - something like the current turrets, except black instead of white and rectangular instead of elliptical - though equally anthropomorphized. "Hey! You! Come over here! Now! 'Cuz, that's why! I'm food, or money, or something. [if you get shot] Heh heh, you're stupid."

Chapter Seven - Refusal

Before I begin, this chapter has a recurring theme of signs warning employees that the effects of gels on animals have yet to be tested. Foreshadoooowiiiing... The chapter starts out with Cave announcing that his therapist has told him to keep an audio diary to come to terms with his death. (The player is left to imagine how or why Cave attained a therapist.) In the middle of the first recording, though, he decides to ignore the therapist's advice - nay, do the precise opposite. He instead makes a series of audio logs about how he refuses to die. The player gets a brief break from testing, to activate a generator. The generator is a pipe with some water in it and a wheel, the player activates it by pushing a button to remove panels opening up a pair of environmental portals at the bottom and top of the pipe. So the water falls through constantly, and we know how Aperture gets their infinite power. "So, the lab boys have made a list of ideas on how to get me to not die. The first idea is 'turn into a ghost'. Who thought that one up? No, seriously, I want to know who came up with that idea. It may be a stupid idea, but if we didn't try everything we came up with, it wouldn't be science. You can be the first test subject." And so the player is introduced to Numbered Things, the most esoteric new testing element. A thing can be numbered, such as a wall, a wall segment, or a cube. Specifically, it can be numbered from 0 to 8. (No 9 to avoid confusion with 6.) There's not just one number on it, the thing is covered with the number. (This helps the player to tell what section of a wall exactly is numbered.) A number can be on or off. When the number is on, everything with that number acts normally. But when that number is off, everything with that number becomes intangible, except to other things that have had their number turned off. For example, you can walk through wall segments that have had their number turned off, and cubes that have had their number turned off will fall through everything until they hit something else that has had its number turned off. Between tests with this new mechanic, we get several plot developments. For one, we get a simple running gag (of a similar level of importance to the earlier PEB-that-thinks-it's-a-companion-cube gag) just to make Cave miserable: Mark quit without so much as a termination notice, and he apparently stole quite a lot of technology on his way out. Cave is continually discovering new things that are missing as a result, and feels particularly betrayed because he thought Mark was his best employee. To make things even worse, Cave's hated rival, Black Mesa, has built a facility on top of Aperture's underground facility, and it pains him to know that such cautious "scientists" are doing safe "science" above him. Going back to the "effects-of-gel-on-animals" signs, between test chambers you can catch brief glimpses of bizarre, mutated birds that do not look how birds should. The first one you see is fairly normal. G La DOS reacts with fear, as in the DLC, and lets slip that she built a detonator into your suit to kill you if you turn against her (she considers using it to kill the bird). She brushes this aside, though, and attempts to assure you that she was kidding. Additionally, Cave decides that the turrets sound better with Caroline's voice, so the turrets encountered in this chapter say the same things as the normal turrets, but in Caroline's voice, not in G La DOS's. Cave finally comes up with the idea to prevent his death by uploading himself into a computer, at which point G La DOS THINKS she now knows that she was originally Cave Johnson. Cave gets work done on the uploading machine speedily, and between test chambers we are given the results of his initial tests. This includes what is one of my favorite bits in the game: "So, today we got the first upload test done! It worked! Well, it didn't work WELL... we're improving it... but that brings me to an interesting philosophical development. After the process was done, the scientist brought up the philosophical problems that might arise from having two copies of the same mind in existence at the same time. So I took out the gun and shot him. Problem solved! There are now no multiple copies of the same mind. The next version of the uploader will do the same thing automatically." And indeed, the uploading project is steeped in some of Aperture's finest moral ambiguity. Cave includes several audio logs of upload tests, and between the tests where the test subject was unwilling, and the tests where the uploading process was obviously painful, this is not a fun device. (These audio logs also imply that all the personality cores you've seen thus far were once humans - and, to put some extra bite into a minor joke from Portal 2, one of the most intelligent, human A.I.s they ever created was put in charge of doors.) At one point, Cave mentions that many uploaded minds will delete their own memories when under extreme distress. G La DOS correctly concludes that this is what happened to her, but is still under the belief that she is Cave. Meanwhile, the increasing "success" with the upload tests gives Cave the resolve to buy the Black Mesa facility above him. Doing so only drives him further into debt, but he's too irrational at this point to care about something like that, and it's worth it to him just to no longer have an operational Black Mesa facility on top of him. Caroline informs us that Greg works at Black Mesa. The tone in her voice lets us know that at this point, however much she's invested in Cave, she really trusts the less insane Greg or Black Mesa-style science more. We finally approach a giant room that signs inform us is the uploading room. We get our first prerecorded VIDEO in the game - it plays on giant monitors on all sides of the room. We only really get a chance to hear the audio, though, because we are distracted from the video by an enormous mutated bird that crashes out of the ground, providing a bossfight halfway through the game. Apparently it heard you walking in the room, hence its arrival. It has gels dripping from it, extra body parts growing, turrets embedded in it... fortunately for you, it's too big to really move, though it has smaller mutated birds that are more mobile. You must fight it using entirely your portal gun and various testing mechanics that become avaliable as it attempts to rip apart the room. Meanwhile, in the background, G La DOS incites you to fight harder, because she doesn't want you to die, because then she couldn't hear the end of the video. In the video, Cave gathers together all of his employees and their families in a giant auditorium (in fact, this is the auditorium you are having the fight in). He brings Caroline onstage. She is confused and distressed, and when she is told that Cave has a surprise for her, she responds by asking him if this is one of his fake, tragic surprises, or one of his real surprises with tragic consequences. He assures her that it is the latter. He apparently intends to forcibly upload all of his best employees, starting with himself and Caroline, so that Aperture Science can continue after humanity ends. Caroline does not want to be uploaded, so she struggles as she is forced into the machine. There are a few hushed whispers from the audience, but noone really speaks out, until one lone voice speaks up. It's Greg. Cave is bewildered to have Greg in the audience. Greg immediately sets about informing Cave why what he is doing is wrong (he doesn't care) and, further, sets out to psychoanalyze him, deciding that what he calls "science" is actually just how he describes his own impulses. Furthermore, Greg publicly reveals that he has married Caroline, and they have had a daughter. This enrages Cave, as, A, he's creepily possessive of Caroline, B, he hates Greg in particular, and C, he thought that he knew Caroline well enough that she would tell him anything that important. Cave calls Greg onstage, and considers just giving him the worst tests until he dies, before deciding that a miserable eternity is worse than death. So now he intends to upload himself, Caroline, and Greg, the last one just to torture forever. The process begins... but Caroline finishes uploading first, and she immediately shuts off all power in the building. This should coincide with the end of the boss battle. As you ascend, Ben states that in summary, Caroline's upload was isolated and is now to be referred to as G La DOS (new employees may not be informed of G La DOS's originally human nature). Greg's upload was put into storage in the Black Mesa facility that Aperture purchased (which Aperture has abandoned - they don't actually want to do anything there, they just don't want Black Mesa doing anything there), and Cave's upload is assumed to have failed, as no data can be recovered from the uploading machine. G La DOS needs some time to process all of this, so she simply tells you to continue progressing upwards to return to her for our next mission.

Chapter Eight - Normalization

We get prerecorded messages from Ben, who took over Aperture after the uploading incident. These messages establish his character, not as someone crazy like Cave, but as someone focused on paperwork and bureacracy who obsessively adheres to tradition. We also get a lot of Rattmann backstory via various messages left by Rattmann. Aperture was very focused on AI during this period, though they weren't making any new ones; just modifying old ones - old ones that the last chapter informed us were once humans. They were trying to remove G La DOS's homocidial tendencies (as seen in Lab Rat), and it's implied that only the scientists very high up in the project knew that any of their A.I.s were previously humans. Aperture's fall is not quite done yet; they went from testing their own employees to testing essentially anyone they could get their hands on (with nasty implications that some of their subjects were kidnapped for this purpose), before finally shifting at the end of the chapter to their own employee's children. During the chapter, we can see Aperture transforming to the more modern look. At the beginning of the chapter, they still have the Cave-style asbestos spheres; they later change to a look more like in the first game. This is also not the final look; prerecorded messages inform us that the next level of the Aperture Science facility will be focused on "panel-based dynamic architecture" - ie, where you spend the modern sections of the game. Also, in a callback to a major visual scene in the second game, and in a setup for future plot events, it's mentioned that this new level of Aperture will be designed to automatically integrate any other testing facilities that come into contact with it. We also hear descriptions of tests involving cryogenic storage and extended relaxation techniques. The chapter ends with various posters on the wall notifying employees of the upcoming Bring Your Daughter To Work Day. Gameplaywise, this chapter introduces changing the temperature to change the properties of water. For example, a button may be hooked up to a freezer that turns all water in the chamber into ice (this can be used to form cracks, as ice is larger than water, or it can be used to form solid surfaces, say, to spray gel on, or to walk on). You can also heat water into steam (not sure what you would use this for, though).

Chapter Nine - Benevolence

G La DOS determines that she must reestablish contact with Greg's upload. Greg is apparently being stored in the abandoned Black Mesa facility on top of Aperture Science. She uses the Aperture Science Space Observatory Portal (a giant environmental portal onto the roof of Black Mesa) to send you onto the roof of the Black Mesa facility (she threatens to detonate your suit to prevent you from simply jumping off). There you find a crowbar, which you use to bash your away through a grating to get into the building. The crowbar is promptly emancipated by a Material Emancipation Grill. G La DOS is confused, as she is fairly certain that Aperture did not do enough work in the BM facility they obtained to install an MEG. You soon find Greg in AI form, who has managed to take control of the entire facility. It turns out that he has amused himself through the years with scientific experiments (more realistic ones, not Aperture's type). He is happy to see you and reestablishes contact with G La DOS through your suit. They spend a while conversing, and though Greg is distressed by the effect that the upload had on G La DOS's sanity, he's still happy to finally be reunited with her. Communications are cut off, however, when one of Greg's experiments does damage to your suit. Greg apologizes, but is unaware of his location relative to G La DOS. He makes plans to find her eventually, and in the meantime has you assist with his experiments. They are safe, sane experiments, not Aperture-style death courses. However, they gradually transform into Aperture-style death courses. Greg realizes that Aperture must have built the Itch into the BM facility's computers as well, but he is unable to stop himself. That is, he's conscious that what he's doing is wrong, and he protests as he does it, but he does it anyways. Greg's experiments involve Suction Gel, a kind of Gel that he invented himself. Basically, it turns any surface that it covers into a universal magnet, sucking in any other loose objects (it effects you, but it's not too strong for you to escape it). Eventually, however, proceedings are interrupted. Remember the Natural Environment that you destroyed at the beginning of the game? That was the highest thing in the Aperture facility. The Black Mesa facility that Aperture quickly converted into an Aperture facility was immediately on top of it. And the Aperture facility is programmed to integrate any adjacent science facilities automatically. The pieces of the Natural Environment finally fall away enough for that to initiate. Greg sends you down to investigate, and G La DOS is so surprised that she activates your suit's detonator. It was damaged earlier, though, so instead of killing you, it knocks you unconscious...

Chapter Ten - Resurrection

Chell wakes up in an unidentified cave. There's a large hole above her, and by looking up through this hole, you can kind of determine what happened to you - the detonator propelled you down into caves so deep that Aperture never even built in them. The cave is uninhabited and has only scraps of Aperture technology that have themselves been lost, so your portal gun is largely useless, except maybe for a couple of puzzles with small wall segments that have fallen into the caves. Fortunately, this segment of the game, wandering around in the caves, is rather brief. You soon find a small chunk of computer equipment hooked up to a Weighted Storage Cube. It claims to be Cave. We then get a humorous sequence playing off of the cave/Cave pun where he convinces you to pick him up and attach him to your portal gun. He claims that when Caroline was uploaded into G La DOS, the mess that she immediately created wound up getting his own upload lost. He has since spent years upon years stuck, motionless, in the cave. And being stuck for centuries in a cave taught him a valuable lesson, or so he claims. Apparently, the little bit of water that's been dripping on him provided him with barely enough power to even think. The portal gun provides him with more power, as with G La DOS, and, like Wheatley, he helps you escape, by creating high-pitched noises designed to break barriers such as cave walls. He helps you break through large sections of the deepest part of Old Aperture, finding the one good elevator "to the surface". The elevator stops when you get up to modern Aperture, though, where you meet G La DOS and Greg (they are now both in control of the one, unified facility - remember, it was starting to merge at the end of the last chapter). G La DOS is relieved that you are unharmed, but her tone quickly changes when she notices that Cave is with you. Cave quickly identifies that she has deleted her memories, and tells you that any AI with missing memories is so unstable that it will doom anything it controls. What follows is a The Escape-style sequence where G La DOS tries to detain you and convince you that Cave is lying, while Cave helps you through the facility to gain access to her main control room. G La DOS is more serious about stopping you than she was in The Escape, but despite her best attempts, you successfully initate the Core Transfer anyways. She was right. Cave was in fact lying, and he rubs it in your face as soon as he gets into power. He is overjoyed that he is once again in charge of the facility - and it's even a better facility, now! - and he can now oversee scientific progress once again. G La DOS killed all the cryogenically stored test subjects, as mentioned earlier - which Cave teases her about but ultimately doesn't blame her for. Cave decides to use you as a test subject, "until either the robots find test subjects on the surface, or the cloning project finally goes through".

Chapter Eleven - Rebellion

Cave puts Greg into "a digital iron maiden", a piece of software that keeps him alive but in consistently painful pain - or, essentially, android hell. He has G La DOS oversee the tests, though he makes comments as well. G La DOS, however, was effected by the time she spent connected to Greg between chapters eight and nine, and is more human now, with sympathy for your plight- though she hides this aspect to retain authority. She secretly lets you know that she's on your side via private messages through your suit. During the chapter, background comments from Cave indicate that Aperture is crazy in a way that it's never been since Cave died. The tests themselves reintroduce several gameplay elements not seen in the Old Aperture levels, such as gravity modification and the newer three gels - and they combine them with new Old Aperture elements, like the numbered items and water. (This means that this chapter has one of my favorite puzzles, where you must use portals to have water gushing from the ceiling, you then must freeze it to make a giant pillar of ice, and finally, you must cover the ice in adhesion gel so you can walk to the exit). G La DOS informs you via private communication that she's slowly moving the tests closer and closer to the edge of the facility, so she can open up the wall and you can escape while Cave is still confused. However, several chambers before this would hypothetically happen, Cave finds the private communications system, and listens in on G La DOS's message. He removes G La DOS's authority (though he blames her actions on Greg) and states that when he's ready to take a break from testing, he'll reprogram her to have a sense of science again.

Chapter Twelve - Scientific Progress

Cave directs you through a series of challenging tests, alone. On the one hand, the facility is running smoother than ever, and Cave is smug and Cave-ish as a result. On the other hand, he's right on the edge, as several things are slowly beginning to hit him: the fact that no-one likes him, for instance, or the fact that he only has one test subject. Unlike G La DOS, he doesn't care about human pain, so he's willing to mass-produce robots for testing, but that doesn't tell him anything about the effects of science on the human body. And the surface is - he won't tell you, but whatever it is it's something that bothers him. And he's not sure that being a robot is all that it's cracked up to be - has he been denied his eternal reward? (This last bit is a reference to earlier stages of Portal 2's development. ) This chapter is primarily here for atmosphere and puzzles, not much happens story-wise except for foreshadowing of Cave's actions in Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Thirteen - Apocalypse

Cave decides that science needs to be put on hold, because he doesn't feel as confident in himself as he should be feeling. He decides that it must be some kind of modification that Greg has made to the system (though it's thoroughly implied that it's actually just Cave's own insecurities coming up, and he's making excuses). Though he can disable Greg's AI's authority by himself - and he already has - the system has been set up so that A.I.s cannot delete other A.I.s from the system. However, the system has also been set up so that, while A.I.s can protect themselves from human attacks, they cannot INSURE their safety from humans. That is, G La DOS was smart enough to make your odds of survival 0% in the previous two games when you fought with her, but the system literally prevented her from doing anything that could have totally stopped you from killing her. Cave sends you up to kill Greg. Greg doesn't know why you're taking orders from Cave, and what ensues is a guilt-trip boss battle with Greg (Greg is effected both by the shock of you fighting him and the pain of the digital iron maiden Cave has put him in). However, the player isn't trying to KILL Greg. Rather, the player is trying to use Greg's weaponry to make a hole in the floor, so that they can escape from the fight altogether. Cave then attempts to kill the player, and becomes even more mentally unstable than he already was, creating a The Part Where He Kills You-style sequence where the player is introduced to the final gameplay element, a la how they were introduced to rockets in the first game and bombs in the second - number gel, a mixture of the gel mechanic and the number mechanic. Number gel is a clear gel with numbers floating in it, that makes the surface effected numbered. The player makes it to Cave's control room, but Cave, fearing death, abandons the room and leaves G La DOS behind, with a program forcing her to attempt to kill the player. A boss fight with G La DOS then ensues, and all the while, despite attempting to kill the player with full force, G La DOS's dialogue indicates that she thinks Chell is doing the right thing, and she cheers Chell on through the battle. When the player disables G La DOS and proceeds out of the control room, the player chases Cave through several rooms. By this point, Cave is thoroughly insane. He's taken Greg's speech to heart, albeit in the opposite way that Greg intended ("YOU CAN'T KILL ME! I'M SCIENCE!") Cave uses everything at his disposal to kill the player and to protect himself, though, as was earlier established, none of his attempts can have 100% effectiveness. The player eventually corners Cave, and defeats him in a boss battle utilizing many gameplay elements, particularly the recently introduced number gel. When the player defeats Cave, he makes a last ditch effort to save himself by uploading himself into one of the comatose, brain-dead humans that G La DOS could not use for testing, thus becoming human again. He confronts the player, though both the player and Cave are apparently doomed because they are now both in the neurotoxin-generating room, and everything is falling apart so neurotoxin is leaking out. The player and Cave are both starting to go down in consciousness, as Cave rants about how he'll still live forever, and do science forever, etc. However, the player simply runs straight into Cave, knocking him off of the catwalk and into the neurotoxin tank. Suction Gel then sprays into the neurotoxin tank, sucking all of the neurotoxin into the tank. Adhesion Gel, Conduction Gel, and turrets also spray into the tank, so electricity begins running through it. The player is just about to get sucked into it themselves, when the Suction Gel causes the tank to crumple up on itself, into a ball. The ball then begins rolling through the collapsing facility as the player watches - at one point becoming covered with Propulsion Gel, causing it to roll faster. Thermal Discouragement Beams and High Energy Pellets superheat the ball, causing it to roll even faster and catch on fire, before it becomes covered in Repulsion Gel, causing it to bounce around, still on fire, catching several pits of unidentified toxic waste on fire in the process. G La DOS has apparently resumed control, and tries to limit the destruction, manipulating gravity in an attempt to control the movement of the ball. She finally uses Aerial Faith Plates to launch the ball through the Aperture Science Observatory Portal, where it explodes in the night sky in a shower of debris that overwhelms Chell's senses. (Yes, I designed that entire sequence as the most ludicrous overkill imaginable. :P) Chell is brought back to consciousness. G La DOS and Greg have repaired the facility fully. With full human ethics restored, they decide to send Chell away before the Itch comes back, in the process thanking Chell for all that she's done. The game ends as the player walks into a bright hallway leading outdoors, leaving whatever has happened to the surface ambiguous. We get some kind of song (I'm not sure how it would go or what it would be about) and then we would get a post-credits scene where the Party Escort Bot lets Wheatley and the Space Core into G La DOS's abandoned moon-base. As we fade to black, we hear the PEB say "Wait. Why do I have legs?", indicating that it might have finally realized that it is not actually a Companion Cube. Co-Op mode would exist, but I'm not sure what the story would be like. I'm thinking it would have three "acts" - one that acts as a prequel to single-player mode, concluding with Atlas and P-Body accidentally damaging the Outdoor Simulator, one that happens concurrently with single-player mode, showing what happened to Atlas and P-Body while Chell was having her adventure, and one (brief one) taking place after single-player mode, demonstrating how much G La DOS has been changed by the events of single-player (specifically, she no longer values pain)and introducing the fact that G La DOS and Greg oversee tests together after the events of single-player.

edited 31st Dec '11 11:14:01 PM by PDown

1. ANGULAR SPEED

We start with a speech by G-Man, followed by waking up in a pool of blood in a helicopter, surrounded by Resistance members. We get Alyx's attention, and she's relieved to know that we've finally returned to consciousness. Apparently Gordon was nearly killed by Advisors. Even the Vorts thought that he was dead for sure, but Alyx brought him along, just in case. She's glad to see that he's still alive. We look out the window, as Alyx informs us that since we went unconscious, several weeks went past during which Gordon was comatose. Combine attacks have come in from every direction during that time. The helicopter was broken in an early attack, and it only recently has been fixed. There is a cloaking device on the helicopter so that it can't be discovered by Combine forces. Alyx and Gordon are now looking for the Borealis. When the Superportal was up, it was under immediate threat of being discovered. However, the Superportal is down, so the only risk is that the forces that came in through the Superportal during that brief window of time could have spread the information to forces that could find the Borealis. It's possible that that's already happened, but Alyx and Gordon and several Resistance members are going out in the hopes that it has not. Meanwhile, through the helicopter windows, the player can see several previously unseen Combine/Xen creatures in the arctic environment. Gordon is shown to his HEV suit, and puts it on. However, it's apparently been bugged at some point, and as a result it reveals the location of the helicopter to the Combine when Gordon puts it on. The helicopter is shot down. Alyx scrambles to repair the damage, but she's too late. It crashes into the ground upside-down and explodes, so Gordon goes unconscious.

2. SUB-ZERO

Gordon wakes up in the helicopter wreckage. Alyx is nowhere to be found. He recovers a crowbar from the wreckage and uses it to defend another survivor from several frozen headcrabs and headcrab zombies. He also finds a pistol on a dead resistance member in the wreckage. He tries to regain communication with a resistance member, but the helicopter's machinery for this purpose is broken. With the survivor, Gordon fights several frozen headcrabs and headcrab zombies. He's also introduced to something that I'll call Apebears for lack of a better name. They're about the size of a grizzly bear. They come in two types - the white type observed in the arctic levels and a brown type observed later in the game. They're furry and are generally like mammals (except for the presence of two perpendicular sets of jaws), but they have eggs like fish and claws like birds.

3. LOW FRICTION

The player reaches Kraken Base, Judith Mossman's base, which was once underwater but now is not due to the Combine's draining of water. It is completely wercked, thanks to the attack witnessed in the message from Episode 1. The player finds Judith Mossman's hideout. Apparently she found Alyx and brought her there; Alyx is recovering from her injuries under a blanket. The attack is over, and Mossman is reestablishing the base. Mossman also found Gordon's gravity gun, and returns it to him. Mossman sends Gordon and the survivor down to fix basic functions in the lower parts of the base, which she has still not tended to. During this task, the survivor enters an elevator ahead of Gordon. They are attacked by a headcrab and the elevator closes and drops, forcing the player to use the stairs to reach the lower floor. When the player reaches the lowest floor of the Kraken Base, the elevator door opens and there's a headcrab zombie there. I think that this would be the first time in the game that the player meets a specific character before they become a headcrab zombie. Anyways, specific tasks you perform in the chapter include restoring power to areas, draining flooded areas, fighting off a pack of Apebears, and finally recovering some first aid to finish the process of healing Alyx.

4. SAVE OUR SOULS

Judith Mossman gets the player a Powersled (Sand Buggy->Muscle Car, Airboat->Powersled), and Gordon and Alyx set off to the Borealis. As you get closer to the Borealis, there's more and more Combine presence, indicating that the Combine has already reached the Borealis. Alyx is losing hope for humanity's salvation. On your way there, you encounter several Overwatch Soldier camps and a few Apebear packs. Closer to the Borealis, there are several gunship encounters, and flocks of gunship and dropship patrol the skies. However, once the player actually gets to the Borealis (it's inside a giant iceberg), we discover that the Combine have completely FAILED to penetrate it. The Borealis is protected by giant, incredibly powerful turrets that can kill just about anything. The Combine is still sending in troops, but they are always killed. Alyx notices a security hole that the Combine have missed, though, and directs Gordon through it...

5. "CONNECTION LOST"

The player navigates through the Borealis, fighting Genetic Experiments (Mantis-Men), Aperture Science Unmobile Sentry Turrets, and Aperture Science Unstationary Sentry Turrets (aka Military Androids). (The latter might seem like an oxymoron, but NOTHING seems like an oxymoron to Aperture Science! Except maybe "safe science".) All the while, we get prerecorded messages that explain Aperture's history, and more specifically, the Borealis's history, to Gordon and Alyx. Though it's thoroughly demonstrated that Aperture was insane and irresponsible, this is treated in a more serious manner. We're quickly introduced to Cave, and treated to an abridged version of Portal 2's "astronauts, then hobos, then their own employees" story of Aperture's decay. Cave apparently started an AI program because he was dying. This program concluded ambiguously, but what we do learn is that when G La DOS was turned on for the first time, the Borealis was teleported out of its underground drydock in the ensuing chaos. We also learn about portal technology, and use it several times, though we never actually get a portal gun. The only portals that we use are automated by the Borealis's systems, like the early ones in Portal. Further, there are no flinging maneuvers, as Gordon doesn't have long-fall boots, and none of the portals are oriented so that Gordon can see himself. We might allude to these uses of portals in the next chapter, say, by having a scripted event wherein a Combine Overwatch soldier gets caught in an infinite fall and dies.

6. UNWORTHY HEIRS

Even if the Combine couldn't notice the security hole themselves, they could certainly notice Gordon and Alyx using it. The Combine begins using the security hole themselves, flooding the Borealis with troops. Gordon Freeman, you've brought us all to trouble again... Aperture's things put up a bit of a fight for the Combine soldiers, but not much of one. Pretty much everything that the Combine have except for Advisors are swarming in. You have a Capture-The-Flag style area where you must prevent Combine from getting any Aperture technology off of the ship, and if they get it off of the ship, you recieve a non-standard Game Over.

7. HYPERBOREA

Vortigaunts arrive, and they're much more competent at holding off the Combine invasion than you have been. The Vorts direct you and Alyx to the Borealis's much smaller sister ship, the Hyperborea (about the size of the tram from the opening of the first game). You and Alyx escape from the Borealis (which has turned from an invasion to a full-fledged battle between Combine forces and Vortal forces), with Alyx steering the Hyperborea and you defending the Hyperborea. When you finally get out of harm's way, Alyx tests the portal features. They are wildly unstable, and we get a scene similar to the teleporter accident from HL 2, except that instead of being in a stationary thing, you're in a moving vehicle as you're teleporting from place to place (you plow several people over in the process, enemies and allies alike). You finally wind up somewhere unspecified, though meant to be somewhere in western North America...

8. INTACT BRAIN STEM

Gordon and Alyx fight constantly increasing swarms of Metrocops, along with Hunter-Choppers, Manhacks, and the occasional group of Headcrab Zombies in the canals of City 26, in the Hyperborea. There are no Barnacles, but there are Houndeyes - and they look much thinner than they did back at Black Mesa. They're completely starved, so they're highly aggressive pack hunters prone to infighting. (This was originally planned for HL 2; there's concept art of it.) Alyx's conversations with the various Resistance bases she comes across alert the player to a nasty fact - destroying the main Citadel in City 17 did not destroy all of the lesser Citadels in other Cities. In fact, far from City 17, the Combine's structure is still holding up pretty well - even if they're cut off from their leadership, they still have their intraplanetary communications. On the good side, the other Cities DO have their own uprisings, though at various different stages of development. City 26 supposedly has one of the strongest uprisings, thanks to the presence of one Adrian Shephard to lead them. "He may not be Gordon Freeman, but he's right up there." The chapter ends when you find a safe Resistance camp to drop off the Hyperborea at.

9. "WELCOME TO CITY 26"

You continue with Alyx through the canals of City 26 on foot. You encounter a nasty new Combine enemy, Flashbacks. Like Poison Headcrabs, Flashbacks can't kill you by themselves, but they're nasty when combined with other enemies. They're floating Synths, a bit larger than a Manhack but thinner and longer, with slug-like protrusions. Essentially, they do no damage, but they immobilize and disorient you - if they come into contact with you, then you find yourself in an earlier section of the game (or an earlier section of an earlier game) for several seconds before returning to reality. (Damage or ammunition used in the memory has no effect on reality, and dying in the memory is consequence-free. They're essentially immobilizing you by briefly trapping you in your memories.) But they're not the big plot twist of the chapter... You finally reach the main area of City 26, and discover to the confusion of both Gordon and Alyx, that there is no uprising in City 26. Monitors display a substitute administrator giving a monologue similar to Breen's initial Welcome To City 17 monologue, and it carefully avoids mentioning any kind of uprising at all. The citizens are disgruntled as they were at the beginning of HL 2, but everything seems to be in working order... Resistance-aligned but unorganized Citizens help you to hide and run from Metrocops and direct you through an apartment to the City 26 Underground, telling you to look for Adrian Shephard.

10. "GO FIND SHEPHARD!"

Gordon and Alyx search through the City 26 Underground, which is much like the City 17 Underground, except not wrecked. There are no Resistance members anywhere to be found, nor zombies or Antlions or Houndeyes or Apebears; only Metrocops, Overwatch Soldiers, City Scanners, Manhacks, and Flashbacks. All this time, Alyx is baffled by the incongruity between the descriptions she heard of a massive uprising from Resistance members in the canals and what she's actually seen (a strong, organized Combine without any real Resistance activity) in the main City. You finally get out of the City 26 Underground, to discover that City 26 is very much undergoing a violent uprising with both Resistance and Combine putting in their best efforts. This confuses things further. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), you're about to get your answer as to how these two different images of City 26 exist simultaneously...

11. CELLULAR PLASTICITY

Alyx's confusion is interrupted by the introduction of a new type of enemy - in fact, a whole cycle of enemies. The cycle begins with the Nightmare. The Nightmare is a Synth about the size of a horse, and it moves at about Fast Zombie speed. It has no ranged attacks, but it's fast enough that its meelee attack might as well be ranged. It pins its victims down and performs a process transforming them into Spawners (unlike a Headcrab, which stays after making a Headcrab Zombie, the Nightmare leaves once its victim has completed the transformation). Spawners are immobile on the ground and cannot directly attack anything (though their limbs are constantly thrashing about). They're more human than Headcrab Zombies - they have similar "OH GOD HELP ME" statements, but they're not reversed or even put through audio effects. They are very bloated, looking almost as though they're going to burst, particularly in their chest and belly areas. Their main gameplay development is that as long as they're alive, they'll spawn Buildhacks - Spawners are basically living Buildhack factories. Buildhacks are a Manhack reskin. They can fight the player, much like Manhacks, but if they don't encounter any Resistance members to fight, they'll set about repairing any damaged Combine technology they come across - or building Combine technology from the ground up, if there is no Combine technology present. There are several set pieces designed around this, with broken bridges or collapsed buildings being rebuilt by huge swarms of Buildhacks. Meanwhile, as the player is soaking in the Nightmare/Spawner/Buildhack lifecycle, Resistance teams help Gordon and Alyx towards Adrian Shephard's base.

12. ADVISORY

On the way to Adrian Shephard's base, Resistance members point out that the Combine is defending a single point with no particular known Combine materials. That single point proves to be the only way to continue towards Adrian Shephard. Gordon and Alyx fight through the Combine base... only to discover that the thing they were defending was an Advisor. Oops! The Advisor grabs Gordon and rockets off into the sky, leaving City 26 far below...

13. APERTURE SCIENCE HANDHELD VORTAL DEVICE

The Advisor takes you to a Combine Orbital Satellite, where a group of other Advisors are waiting. They discuss plans on what to do with you (in an alien language that you can't understand), but they are interrupted by the portal-aided arrival of a large group of Vorts, led by Dr. Magnusson, wielding Aperture technology. The Vortigaunts perform awesomely, not only saving you but killing or scaring off the entire little council of Advisors. The Vorts take you to the next Aperture sattelite. Apparently the Vortigaunts won the Battle Of The Borealis, and they're using their newfound Aperture technology to hunt Advisors. The Vorts drag you through several other Combine Orbital Sattelite battles (which are similarly brief). However, while they're dealing with the big stuff, you have to deal with the little stuff - with the Vort/Advisor battles going on, you might be rather distracted from the individual smaller Combine enemies, like Overwatch Soldiers, that also inhabit the Combine Orbital Sattelites. When the Vorts feel it's a good time, they deliver you to Adrian Shephard, since that's where you were going anyways, and it's where you would be the most help. ...actually, this chapter could probably be cut down and just made the introduction to the next chapter; but this chapter was in my original plan, so I'll leave it in until I make a second draft.

14. ANCIENT GRUDGE

Gordon Freeman finally meets Adrian Shephard; the Vorts leave to do more Advisor-hunting. Gordon's relationship with Adrian is... complicated. On the one hand, they're both on the side of the Resistance. On the other hand, Adrian's first exposure to Gordon was what the HECU thought of him, and Adrian Shephard blames Gordon for the G-Man imprisoning him for over a decade. This isn't so obvious at first; though it'll become important later. For the time being, it manifests in the form of a couple of barely veiled remarks about the G-Man, and a lot of harsh insults and sarcasm about Gordon at every oppurtunity, using his military background as an excuse (y'know, the "loud, aggressive, and critical" military stereotype). But there are more pressing matters at hand; Adrian Shephard has his assistant, a former HECU medic, explain things. The Combine Air Exchange, a giant building nearby City 26, has been gradually replacing Earth's atmosphere with toxic gases as long as the Combine's been around. It's been a very gradual process, so though it's done things like increase the risk of cancer, it hasn't made the Earth uninhabitable... yet. But it became a much more immediate threat after the destruction of the Citadel - they ramped up the Air Exchange speed so that by the same time in a couple of months, everyone will need gas masks to breathe. Adrian Shephard puts asides his differences with Gordon Freeman for the time being, and the two of them fight their way to the Air Exchange together. On your way to the Air Exchange, you are introduced to a new type of Combine Device - the Luremine. A Luremine appears to be a friendly NPC, a supply box, or even a Lambda Cache, until you get close to it, at which point it disappears and is replaced by a blinking bomb which explodes. The first Luremine you encounter looks like Alyx and you're set up to think that this is her return, just to screw with you. (Other character's dialogue indicates that Luremines look like different things to different people.)

15. AIR EXCHANGE

Gordon and Adrian finally reach the Combine Air Exchange, but they are quickly cut off from each other by a self-reactivating Combine field. "APPARENTLY I FORGOT THAT GORDON FREEMAN HAS TO DO EVERYTHING BY HIMSELF. ...just do a good job, okay?" Gordon fights his way through the CAE, melting the rotors so that they can't work, removing several of the blades, and destroying the oxygen and noxious gas teleporters. (You might ask "how do they have oxygen and noxious gas teleporters". Teleporting pure substances is a lot easier than teleporting mixtures, and the more complicated the mixture is, the more complicated the technology needed to teleport it. The exception would be Aperture; their technology is better-thought out so everything teleports equally well for them.) The "removing several blades" point proves to be a particularly important one, as it coincidentally transforms the giant, spinning CAE fan, which is visible from much of City 26, into a lambda. The CAE disabled, Gordon Freeman then proceeds to fight his way back out of the CAE, where he meets back up with Adrian Shephard...

16. RETURN

Shephard and Freeman return to Shephard's base, pursued by Hunters. On the way, they witness - and have to make their way through - a fight between a pack of Apebears and a group of Headcrab Zombies. They finally reach the base - and discover Alyx is already there. (She was separated from Gordon at the end of Advisory, if you don't remember.) This prompts a sarcastic remark along the lines of "I didn't know you swung that way" from Shephard. Portal technology from Aperture reunites Dog with Alyx, and restores all Resistance communications to better levels than they had ever been at before. This reveals a major incongruity, though - Dr. Kleiner informs Shephard that Barney Calhoun attempted to teleport to Shephard's base about a week ago. Shephard explains that it must have failed because Shephard's own teleporter has been broken for quite some time. Gordon gets sent into Shephard's teleporter to fix it so that Barney's teleportation can finish - he's sent alone because he's the only one with the HEV suit. This apparently involves going to Xen, though noone told Gordon because they assumed that he already knew. Gordon makes his way through Xen, and eventually Alyx joins him, in her own, new HEV suit. They find the thing that's broken, fix it, and return to Earth. Barney appears in the teleporter, and is informed that he underwent a Slow Teleport, like the one Gordon and Alyx were in after Nova Prospekt.

17. MAKING PLANS

The Resistance is in better shape than they've ever been in before, because of the advantages that Aperture's technology provides them with. In fact, they see the advantages stemming from Aperture's technology as being so drastic that victory against the Combine is practically guaranteed. The Vortigaunts are assigned the task of directly fighting the Combine - and by God they do a good job of it, too! It's not too far into the chapter that we see City 26's Citadel collapse from the Vortigaunt's actions. Meanwhile, the humans - Gordon, Alyx, Barney, and Adrian - go to fix one of the nastier problems humanity has OTHER than the Combine - the Antlions. Barney is an experienced Apebear trainer, apparently, so packs of friendly Apebears are sent in to assist with the destruction of the Antlion Center. There are only a handful of Antlion Centers on any given continent - less on smaller continents. Each Antlion Center has a single Antlion King - and killing an Antlion King makes all the Antlions under its command helpless. Hypothetically, if there were no living Antlion Kings on the planet, Antlions would not be a problem, period. With the help of trained Apebears and an Aperture Science Anti-Animal King Rocket, we take out the Antlion King. All the while, character dialogue indicates the characters' newfound hope for the future - Barney dreams of rebuilding society, Alyx dreams of "rebuilding society" with Gordon, and Adrian mostly tries to hide his emotions, though he does a poor job of it - he's clearly enthused too. Someone else is making plans, too, though, and they don't give them much time to celebrate killing the Antlion King.

18. PROPER DISPOSAL

The dead Antlion King's room is flooded by Vortigaunts. They are immediately questioned as to why they're no longer fighting the Combine. Apparently the Combine have started hitting harder than they ever did before - and they're hitting every Resistance base in the world, trying to steal the Aperture technology. The Vortigaunts portal you back to Adrian's base (as you're in a horrible defensive position) which is promptly ripped apart by incoming Combine troops. You get EVERYTHING - Flashbacks, Manhacks, Nightmares and all they entail, Overwatch Soldiers, Gunships, Dropships, Striders, Hunters, Headcrab Shells, even a few Advisors (which keep Dog and the Vorts occupied). We're even introduced to a heretofore unseen Synth: the Grappler. Grapplers are giant, somewhere between an APC and a Strider in terms of size. They have six legs and are structured something like a spider. They're incredibly fast, so as long as they're not too large to get to you, they can always get to you quickly. Further, their feet can stick to anything, so they can climb on walls and ceilings almost as fast as they can walk on normal ground. Their main body is made up of a series of rings that allow their central feature to point in any direction. Their central feature is a giant claw, like the kind construction equipment would use to pick up dirt. They have no guns, but they use their claw to attack things (they can also trample things). They can also use their claw to grapple across ravines and onto ceilings. Anyways, at the end of the chapter, Adrian Shephard sends out a message to all Resistance bases in the world - destroy all Aperture equipment so that the Combine cannot steal it.

19. SURGE PROTECTOR

Lamarr returns to Earth as a Gonarch, massively helping the fight back in Eastern Europe (though you don't see it, you only hear about it via radio communications). However, intercepted Combine messages seem to indicate that in response to the destruction of Aperture's technology, the Combine are simply going to eradicate humanity without further ado. Dr. Kleiner and Dr. Magnusson are certain that the Combine are going to warm up their superportals any time now to flood the Earth with all sorts of monstrosities. Regular old Black Mesa teleporters are used to supply Gordon with Disconnect, a substance invented early on by Black Mesa that prevents all traditional kinds of teleportation. They are then used to transport Gordon, Alyx, and Adrian to Xen, where the Disconnect is used to plug up the locations where the Combine are generally known to create Superportals. Barney tries to come too, but he isn't careful enough in his use of the teleporter, and thus dies. In the process of plugging up the Superportal candidate points, they fight not only Combine forces (this area of Xen is run by the Combine) but Moderators, deadly, intelligent balls of light that confuse and endazzle Alyx, but that Adrian seems to recognize all too well. When Gordon, Alyx, and Adrian are done, they return to Adrian's ruined base. Adrian Shephard decides that since the Moderators are now working against him, something has to be done. He asks Dr. Kleiner over the radio the following question. "Where would I tell the teleporter to take me if I wanted to be somewhere near the thing that gave me, Gordon, and Barney this fucking mark?" There's a long pause, before Dr. Kleiner gravely reads off some coordinates. Shephard enters the coordinates into the teleporter, tells Alyx to stay behind on guard, and gets in it with Gordon...

20. UNSTABLE CONFIGURATION

Gordon and Adrian fight their way through a mysterious, wide open black void full of invisible walls, Moderators, and Glitches. Glitches are fields of energy that look like mini-Portal Storms. They can either attack you themselves or create Glitch versions of other enemies; Glitch enemies are tougher, hit harder, and can sometimes induce lag or even a game crash with their attacks. Meanwhile, Adrian is talking to Gordon, and slowly letting him in on backstory between battles. He gets through the following points:

• Adrian Shephard was told by other HECU members that Gordon Freeman personally, intentionally caused the Resonance Cascade. He's not sure that he believes it now that he's recieved more information on Gordon from other scientists, but he's not sure he DIDN'T, either.
• Adrian Shephard blames Gordon for the deaths of HECU members, even if the HECU members attacked him first. This point breaks down a bit, and he kind of admits that it doesn't make much sense to blame Gordon for defending himself.
• Late in the Black Mesa incident, the Nihilanth was distracted by Gordon Freeman's attacks on its forces. As a result, a Combine scouting force was let into Xen and attempted to invade Earth. Adrian Shephard single-handedly destroyed that scouting force, delaying the Combine invasion of the Earth by several years.
• Rather than being rewarded for this action, Adrian was imprisoned by the G-Man. Unlike Gordon, who was able to go to sleep in stasis, no time passing for him, Adrian was forced to sit awake in a room for what was from his perspective centuries (every time that he attempted to escape, the Moderators reset him, thus adding to his time).
• Adrian thinks that events and people are being controlled by the G-Man (he actually calls him the G-Man). Gordon, Barney, and Adrian were the three individuals who the G-Man "marked" during the Black Mesa Incident. Apparently the mark has since been removed from Barney (as he died). The G-Man himself interrupts this last point with the words "And from Mr. Shephard as well." Adrian then instantaneously ragdolls.

21. G-SPOT

Gordon suddenly is transported to an office complex deep in the Uncanny Valley - the proportions on things aren't quite right, and there are hallways that suddenly stop and segue into infinite voids. There are some cubicles that won't open, there are some cuibcles that open into an empty void, there are some cubicles that open into an empty cubicle, there are some cubicles that kill you as soon as you try to open them, and there's even a cubicle that crashes the game if you try to open it. There are hallways that loop back on themselves, hallways that are upside or sideways, and signs that say different things if you look away and then look back at them. The G-Man is talking in the background, telling you that he's not certain how you got in here, and that his employers must have turned against him. He tells you that you won't find him here. As you progress further, he attempts to demotivate Freeman, giving him such cryptic statements as "Your power depends on who you think you are," and insinuating that Freeman's attempts to attack the G-Man are useless distractions from helping his friends - not that he apparently cares much for his friends, given the careless disregard with which he allows them to pursue bad ideas. A Mind Screw battle ensues. Eventually, if the player lasts through all of G-Man's attempts to demotivate them, G-Man gives up and tries to save himself with an ending cutscene. "Mr. Freeman... I took the liberty of removing all of your weapons. Not on any particular policy; I needn't follow regulations now, being separated from my... former employers." However, one of his weapons, the crowbar, is just lying there, the G-Man didn't have time to be as careful as he should have been. Gordon picks up the crowbar and bludgeons the G-Man to death with it. It takes a while to kill him, but he is unable to defend himself in any way. After the G-Man is dead, Gordon picks up his briefcase and returns to Adrian's base...

22. FRONT LINES

Gordon arrives at Adrian's base; it's empty, deserted, and wrecked - moreso than when Gordon and Adrian left. Gordon searches around outside to discover a completely empty, very much destroyed City 26. Most of the humans and Vorts are simply gone, and all Combine forces (and a few humans and Vorts) are corpses. There is nothing alive. Gordon searches around for a while before making his way back into a different part of Adrian's base. A tape recorder is playing a message directed at Gordon and Adrian: All human forces have evacuated to Xen to fight incoming Combine forces. Gordon uses the teleporter to access Xen, which is littered with Combine. Gordon eventually finds a Resistance Base, where they are using heavy weapons to destroy Combine troops that are passing through Xen on their way to Earth. Gordon's briefcase proves to be a valuable asset - it is massively overpowered, not only allowing easy teleportation, and not only working like the Physgun from Garry's Mod (though only on nonorganic material) but also easily destroying even the toughest Combine enemies seen so far. As a result, any Resistance base with Gordon in it finds its task very easy. Gordon kills whole swarms of Striders and Grapplers with his briefcase. He is sent from Resistance Base to Resistance Base, at each one proving a massive help. Eventually he meets up with Alyx, who has held up well despite not having the weapons that Gordon does. The numbers of enemies become larger and larger, though the briefcase still makes their destruction easy. But then we start getting Monstrosities. Monstrosities are enormous Combine creatures, larger than Nihilanth. Unlike every other enemy in the game, they don't have a uniform appearance; they're randomly generated using a variety of factors, and no two of them look quite alike. Their properties vary, too - some walk, some float. They can take multiple hits from the briefcase, and they gradually become more and more difficult to defeat even with the briefcase. The Combine is using their full force now, and human bases are going down everywhere. Gordon's the only one with weaponry (the briefcase) that can take out the Combine at ALL, and even for him it's difficult.

23. TANKS VERSUS MICE

The title comes from a comment Alyx made at the end of the last chapter. "This is like tanks versus spears. No... Spears can beat tanks if they're really, really clever. This is like tanks versus mice..." Gordon and Alyx hide from the constantly stronger Monstrosities in the tunnels of Xen, killing a few but not very many relative to the floods of Monstrosities coming in. At the end of the chapter, Dr. Kleiner contacts Alyx, saying that he has enough power to teleport one and only one of them in. Alyx says to pick Gordon, so Gordon is teleported to Dr. Kleiner's base, back on Earth...

24. "YOUR POWER DEPENDS ON WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE"

You teleport to Dr. Kleiner's destroyed base back in Europe. You hear Dr. Kleiner telling a Resistance member "There's something you should know about Gordon Freeman..." He stops when he notices that you've teleported in. The Resistance member asks Kleiner what he was going to say, and Kleiner says that he'll tell him later. There's something that's been happening throughout the entire game, and it happens stronger than ever before during this sequence - whenever someone makes an insinuation about Gordon's nature, his powers waver - his HEV suit becomes unreadable, and he loses his coordination. Before, the wavering was brief and easy to ignore, but this time it happens continuously for five to ten seconds. Dr. Kleiner informs you that the Combine are stepping up their attacks to a level that humanity can certainly not handle. The only chance that humans have is to prevent any Combine forces from teleporting in ever again: with the Disconnect. If the original Resonance Cascade could be plugged up with Disconnect, then travel between Earth and Xen would become impossible, and as a result, travel between Earth and any other universe would become impossible. Kleiner's exposition is interrupted by an attack on the base by a Monstrosity that has successfully teleported in from Earth. Gordon defends the base and kills the Monstrosity and its associated Combine forces with his briefcase (and with a little bit of help from Gonarch-Lamarr). Dr. Kleiner says that there is little time, but Gordon winds up activating a domesticated Flashback that Dr. Kleiner has been modifying. "No, Gordon, don't touch that-it's highly experimental-" We then get the following scene:

• Flashback activation noise. Gordon is in a domestic house, at a very low angle implying that he's a child. Scientific magazines are strewn around him, and he's picking one up, reading it. It's upside-down.
• Gordon's Mother: Maybe you'll be a big scientist some day, Gordon!
• Gordon's Father (in a lower voice, to Gordon's Mother): Please don't.
• Gordon's Mother (to Gordon's Father): What? I think it's cute how he's looking at all of this science... stuff...
• Gordon's Father (low voice to Gordon's Mother): Let's not lie to him, you know he'll never be a scientist.
• Gordon's Mother (to Gordon's Father): I think he can be anything he wants to be.
• Flashback activation noise. We're in a doctor's office now, sitting on a table, with the angle implying a slightly older child but still a child.
• Gordon's Mother: Have you figured out what's wrong with him yet?
• Doctor: Well, you seem to think that he's mute because he's deaf, but that seems unlikely to me. He definitely responds to sounds and noises, so that implies that it's some kind of mental deficiency, not a physical one.
• Gordon's Mother: Are you sure?
• Doctor: Yes. Especially considering the other mental deficiencies that we've observed... We think that he understands human speech, because he can follow some basic commands... He'll just never be a lawyer, or a professor, or a scientist...
• Gordon's Mother: Ssh!
• Flashback activation noise. Angle implies a yet older child or maybe a teenager, we're back in the house.
• Gordon's Mother: You're going to be a scientist, honey. Don't worry.
• Flashback activation noise. Angle is normal, implying an adult Gordon. He's standing in the corner of a Black Mesa room while his mother, a young Dr. Kleiner, and a young Dr. Vance are at the other end of the room.
• Dr. Kleiner: In spite of his impairments, your son is certainly qualified for the position of hazardous environment worker. He outperformed all of the other applicants in the hazard course, showing levels of coordination and persistence substantially above average...
• Gordon's Mother: That's interesting...
• Dr. Vance: We would be very happy to hire him; he'd make a valuable addition to the Black Mesa team.
• Gordon's Mother: I might have an accommodation request, though
• Dr. Vance: As long as it doesn't interfere with our ability to operate, we'd be glad to-
• Dr. Kleiner: What is it?
• Gordon's Mother: Gordon's wanted to be a scientist since he was very young. This is the closest I think he'll ever get. Could you treat him like a scientist, like the rest of you? Call him doctor, put him in a lab-coat between tests, everything like that?
• Dr. Kleiner: We'll see what we can do...
• Gordon's Mother: I've already been telling him that he's applying for a position as a scientist. I don't think he actually knows about his problem... To be honest, I was expecting him to fail his application; he hasn't been particularly good at coordination or physical things before...
• Dr. Kleiner: Fascinating... the placebo effect must be in full force.
• Gordon's Mother: So do you think you can?
• Dr. Vance: For a hazardous environment worker this skillful? Of course we'll indulge him.
• Flashback activation noise. We're in another Black Mesa room, in a horizontal line of people. A young Dr. Vance is at the front of the room.
• Dr. Vance: We would like to thank all hazardous environment worker applicants. However, we have ultimately only selected one to hire. Gordon Freeman, would you step up, please?
• Gordon's Mother (from behind): That's you!
• Younger Judith Mossman: What? But he's retarded!
• Dr. Vance and Gordon's Mother: Ssh!
• Younger Judith Mossman: I've got a Ph D!
• Dr. Vance: Then why are you applying for a job as hazardous environment worker, Dr. Mossman? Have you considered that you might be overqualified?
• Gordon's Mother: Gordon's got a Ph D too!
• Younger Judith Mossman (being escorted out of the room by two Black Mesa security guards, getting quieter as she gets further away): If he's got a Ph D, then why can't he talk? Or act normal? And why did he get confused when I mentioned the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement? And why-(door slams and cuts her off)
• Flashback activation noise. We're in the Black Mesa Transit System.
• Voice: Black Mesa is an equal opportunity employer...
• Flashback activation noise. We're with the scientists before the Resonance Cascade.
• Scientist 1: Though I'll admit that the possibility of a Resonance Cascade scenario is highly unlikely, I remain uncomfortable with the-
• Scientist 2: Gordon doesn't need to hear of this; he's a highly trained professional.
• Flashback activation noise. We're back in HL 2, in 'Red Letter Day'.
• Barney: Great job, Gordon! Throwing that switch and all, I can see your MIT education really pays for itself.
• Flashback activation noise. We're at an earlier point in HL 3.
• Adrian: Not that I'd really expect you to know about that anyways...
• Flashback deactivation noise. We're back in Kleiner's lab now, in reality – though we have largely been disarmed, with only our crowbar remaining.
• Dr. Kleiner: While I'll admit that I would prefer that you hadn't wasted time in that manner, I would like to know if the prototype worked. It was an attempt to reverse-engineer the Combine Flashbacks to create an “epiphany machine” of sorts. It finds strings of connected memories and plays them back to point out important things that the user may have missed. Have you learned anything interesting? [Beat.]
• Dr. Kleiner: Oh dear God. You found out about... I'm so sorry, I – even if you're not quite who you thought you were, you're still Gordon Freeman. You still survived the Black Mesa Incident and liberated the Vortigaunts. You still kicked off the Resistance and destroyed the Citadel. You saved White Forest, essentially by yourself, you destroyed the Air Exchange, you empowered the Vortigaunts to destroy all Combine power structures on Earth, and you even destroyed an entity that many of us doubted could be destroyed. Wherever you might have come from, you've made yourself something great. I hope you can understand that...
• Beat. Monstrosity noises. Dr. Kleiner picks up the briefcase and runs to the window to fight it off.
• Dr. Kleiner (speaking quickly): I also hope that you understand that I've taken your interesting find for the purpose of reverse-engineering. But you must be sent to the site of the Resonance Cascade immediately! Here, take this Disconnect. (Dr. Kleiner provides Gordon with a Disconnect sprayer, similar to the one used in the chapter Surge Protector, but larger.) This is as much Disconnect as we have been able to manufacture. I was lying when I said that we only had enough power to teleport you in. We actually had sufficient power to perform the teleportation of two adult humans. But we could not use one of them for Alyx Vance because you needed to be teleported twice. You must fill up the site of the original Resonance Cascade with Disconnect. It will annihilate all areas of Xen adjacent to Earth and will consequently permantly separate the Earth from the rest of the universe. It'll finally give us a fighting chance. We barely have enough energy to do this... Goodbye, Gordon... (The player is teleported to the long-abandoned, lifeless, nuked Black Mesa facility...)

25. FIXING WHAT WE STARTED

Gordon must navigate the old Black Mesa facility in the American Southwest. There's no combat for the vast majority of the chapter. Gordon is now permanently in his “disoriented” mode, with the HEV suit's symbols garbled and unreadable, and all actions (including walking) performed slower and less accurately. Given the extent of this, there's no combat needed – the environment itself provides more than enough in terms of hazard. During the chapter, Alyx's voice comes in. Apparently, she figured out how to activate a communication system in her HEV suit, allowing her to communicate with the other HEV suit – which Gordon is wearing. It's one-way communication (it wouldn't matter if it was two-way, as Gordon can't talk). Alyx provides Gordon with updates on the constantly escalating battle against the Monstrosities. Human weapons are so ineffective that the humans have been reduced to mere hiding, and Alyx is constantly afraid that she will be found. She remains hopeful that Gordon will have some method of rescuing Earth. Monstrosity noises are audible from the other end of the HEV suit. Alyx reveals that some of the other survivors on Xen are building a basic teleporter to return to Earth, but she's not sure whether they'll get it up and working before they're found and killed by a Monstrosity. Gordon nears the Resonance Cascade chamber, but he gets his final boss – a single headcrab. This would typically be a piece of cake, but Gordon is in no state for combat. To make things worse, towards the end of the battle with the headcrab, the facility comes under attack from a Monstrosity (not visible, as the facility is deep underground, but audible as it begins beating on the ground and digging and scraping). Much like the original game, we get two endings after the defeat of the headcrab. If Gordon sprays Disconnect into the Resonance Cascade, then the Resonance Cascade will vanish and communication with Alyx will be cut off (Alyx is trapped in Xen and is basically doomed). The Monstrosity searching for Gordon continues, destroying the already destroyed facility and burying Gordon under rubble. The final words of the game come from a pair of rebels, after briefcase noises (doesn't really matter which one's a male rebel and which one's a female rebel): Got him!/I just hope we can take the others... If Gordon refuses to spray Disconnect into the Resonance Cascade, then Alyx's group of survivors will finish building their teleporter, and Alyx will return to Earth... but Monstrosities continue flooding in, dooming the Earth as a whole. The Monstrosity searching for Gordon once again buries Gordon in rubble. The final words of the game come from Alyx over the HEV suit: I made it, Gordon! ...But what's left?

edited 31st Dec '11 11:23:12 PM by PDown