pandar wrote:
(spoiler)
Precisely. Hopefully Valve makes it a tad less predictable than that. I may have missed something during the game, but I'm really curious as to what those weird giant flying maggot things are that kill Eli.

I thought they have made that pretty clear, those are Combine Advisors. They are the actual "combine", the ones who decided to invade Earth and sent the Citadels and created the Combine Troops and so on. They are the leaders of the Combine.

Hmm, such details I sacrifice by playing with very loud music.

If I remember my lore right, essentially the advisors have became telekinetic at some point, either naturally or through some sort of genetic enhancement. (The latter, IMO, seems more likely because, well, they're the combine.)

At that point, all their other appendages got evolved out, and over the millenia they've ruled the Combine, they've used super-soldiers (think the white-suited special forces Combine soldiers) to rule their empire with an iron fist. This obviated their need for any actual physical attributes.

Also, thanks to their telekinesis, they could as easily use a gun as their proboscis to kill people.

I dunno how accurate this is, but someone had taken the time to actually piece together the evens from all of the games to create this timeline.. I read it and its pretty interesting.

http://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/index.htm

Yeah, that's the best and most exhaustive source. It's as close to authoritative as there is, IMO.

pandar wrote:

(spoiler)
Precisely. Hopefully Valve makes it a tad less predictable than that. I may have missed something during the game, but I'm really curious as to what those weird giant flying maggot things are that kill Eli.

IMO, The Combine Advisors seemed to be related to the brain bugs from Starship Troopers, all the way down to how and what they eat :O Maybe the sand bugs in HL2 and the Combine Advisors are the "beginning" of the Bug infestation in the movies :O

J/K I am sure that the developers at valve were strongly influenced by that movie... but wouldn't you like to know more?

I read through his timeline, and I think the author forgot a few important facts, one of which being that the vortigaunts as well as the alien soldiers, the gargants, and other aliens were all under the control of the Nihilanth. The hidden vortigaunt in Half-Life 2 mentioned something about them all rejoicing and watching when Gordon killed the Nihilanth. He wasn't their leader by choice, necessarily, and I am under the impression that the Nihilanth is a hatched and fully-developed advisor, while the floating, mutli-armed aliens that shot fire from their heads in Half-Life 1 are baby Nihilanths(especially since they were supposedly called "Alien Controllers". To me it makes more sense that the combine simply lost control of the vortigaunts, but found another fun race to play with in humanity.

Anyways, that's just my understanding of the storyline.

pandar wrote:
(spoiler)
Precisely. Hopefully Valve makes it a tad less predictable than that. I may have missed something during the game, but I'm really curious as to what those weird giant flying maggot things are that kill Eli.

I'm still pissed about that. I was screaming at my monitor.. Not because Eli died, I was yelling at Valve for being assholes.. Lol, Eli was inches from explaining some things about GMan! I've been talking about GMan for like 10 years w/ friends and still feel no closer to who he is. Haha. Okay, a little closer, I thought he was a figment of Gordon's imagination, origionally, at least we've proved that theory wrong.

y-aji wrote:
I thought he was a figment of Gordon's imagination, origionally, at least we've proved that theory wrong.

Adrian Shephard had his own dance number with the G-man eight years ago. (Real time)

quentin wrote:
I get the impression that something went wrong during the "bring your daughter to work" day... as I'd imagine that the untested AI instantly realized her situation and trapped everyone in the facility, killing all those who posed a threat and placed these "kids" into an Aperture detention/relaxation chamber for later use...

Based on context clues (it was alluded to 3 times, twice in game and once on the aperture science website), the player is most likely the daughter of one of Aperture employees, brought to work on "bring your daughter to work day." This would put her age at probably somewhere between 7 and 15 at the time GLaDOS initially took over.

pandar wrote:
If you go to http://www.aperturescience.com, type LOGON.
Username : cjohnson
Password : tier3

Then, either type DIR for directory or NOTES to go directly to the timeline you're speaking of.

GLaDOS took over "several years later" after 1996 according to the NOTES file on the aperture science website. Since it seems unlikely that the company would have been functioning during or after a resonance cascade, we can assume that GLaDOS took over shortly before the events of Half Life 1, which according to the Half Life Saga Story Guide is the year 2000.

quentin wrote:
I dunno how accurate this is, but someone had taken the time to actually piece together the evens from all of the games to create this timeline.. I read it and its pretty interesting.

http://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/index.htm

Looking at the player (which outside of a model viewer is easiest to do by putting two portals on a wall at ground level next to each other and climbing half way through one while looking at the other) she appears to be late twenties/early thirties. Assuming she was 7-15 to start, that means roughly 15-25 years have gone by. This means Portal is taking place within plus or minus five years of the events of Half Life 2.

I would guess that it takes place shortly before Half Life 2. This way the unnamed Portal player could potentially appear as a character in Episode 3. Having escaped the Portal facility (which is clearly on land with trees blooming around it and in the distance, so it is probably not on board the Borealis) she could be trying to find the Borealis herself. Perhaps it was her that led Dr. Mossman to it in the first place. Something certainly did.

From what i think... i reacon that Valve is too smart to try and include other peoples work into their own. To them it could be considered being Lazy.
More than likely we would be able to take a stroll through the Aperture Science facility, but i HIGHLY dought we would be able to use a Portal Gun on half-life 2; nor would we meet up with the character.

More than likely Valve would think of something even more intreging (spelling) and exciting than the Portal gun such as a WAY more improved version of the Gluon Gun from Half-life 1.

Portal would more than likely be based around the year 2000, which means that the character from Portal could have been taken hostage and stript of her weapon and was used to open up that portal in Episode 2.

Also... The Advisor, what i reacon what it does is that when it sucks the brains out of people, it can use the brains to find out in other words... what it sucks out... becomes apart of it's own brain

Everyone may have already of known that but yeah... i spoiled it just in case

So Episode 3 will be 1 HELL of a fun game... lots of battles, more monsters, guns, vehicles, solves mysteries and we may FINALLY find out who the hell the Gman is.

I would LOVE to find out who that bastered is but... then again i want it to remain a mystery... hard to explain but... games that have mystery make a game fun.

thehermit2 wrote:
This way the unnamed Portal player

Her name is Chell. (/nitpick)

And who took away deep-quoting? How can we have 10-deep conversation trees? SLEEPER!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hober wrote:
And who took away deep-quoting? How can we have 10-deep conversation trees? SLEEPER!!!!!!!!!!!!

bscly

No matter how they eventually link up the two story continuities, they're going to have to fit the Portal technology into the Half-Life universe, and I think it's going to take some fancy explainin'.

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but it seems to me that everyone is just assuming the portal gun is an improved version of the teleportation technology that everyone already has (everyone = Combine, Vortigaunts, and human resistance), and that if the Combine get their hands on it they can easily open a portal to their homeworld(s) and invade in overwhelming numbers.

But is there any indication that the portal technology could be used in that way? I don't think so. To me, the Half-Life teleporters and Portals seem very different:

Half-Life Teleporters

• Not quite instantaneous (i.e. you disappear, maybe spend a second in limbo, then reappear somewhere else)
• May be a "slow warp" (seen at least once in Episode One when Gordon and Alyx were MIA for a week)
• May or may not be interdimensional (to Xen, the "border world")
• Cancel momentum; require a stationary target
• Not permanent or self-sustaining (must be initiated by machines or Vortigaunts)

Portals

• Instantaneous
• NOT interdimensional. (That is, both portal ends always open on the same dimension. At least so far.)
• Conserves momentum.
• Permanent and self-sustaining.

My biggest nit to pick from a story perspective is that they have never shown a Portal that goes from Earth to anywhere not-Earth, or indeed anywhere not in the immediate vicinity; why does everyone assume that Portals can be used to get to Xen or other Combine worlds?

</massive geek-out>

Crooked Paul wrote:

There is an (unused) skybox texture in the Portal GCFs.

Xen? In my Portal? It's more likley than you think!

msleeper wrote:
There is an (unused) skybox texture in the Portal GCFs.

Xen? In my Portal? It's more likley than you think!

They put that there to screw with us!
twitch

So you are stating that Xen is a world in an other dimension IN a Portal?

No, I'm just stating that file is in the Portal GCFs, and it marked as a skybox texture.

I think Valve is chomping at the bit to introduce the portal gun in a combat setting, maybe not in one of the episodes but definitely in a form of deathmatch. Of course there are practical challenges with doing so, like the rendering problem of having 24 players operating twice as many portals simultaneously (plus what colors would you make them? Maybe you would only see colors on your own portals, and everyone else's would be white?) Also, would portals be useful in combat, or fun? Deathmatches seem too fast paced for portals to do much more than help a player get special weapons, but maybe some people would find a way to use them to their advantage.

Half Life 2 could incorporate Portal with a simple plot point like "the portal gun doesn't work without a broadcast power source, or without proximity to a GLaDOS type computer network." That way the portal gun would only function in certain areas. Gordon could pick up the gun shortly after boarding the Borealis, play with it, then have it stop functioning as soon as he leaves. Or the limiting factor could be simpler, the lack of available surfaces. In Episode 2's outdoor environments there were relatively few flat non-metallic surfaces to make a portal on (although portals would have made getting to the car a lot easier.)

You could also have portals in HL2 without Gordon actually getting the portal gun. Chell (is that right?) as an NPC could assist him using portals, or could appear as an adversary, a paranoid character in the shadows using portals to trap him until she can figure out what his angle is.

thehermit2 wrote:
Chell (is that right?) as an NPC could assist him using portals

Would kinda defeat the whole idea of the puzzle solving to have an NPC shoot portals for you.