This might have been explained in Ep. 2, but what exactly does the borealis do? (lol, that rhymed) Does it hold a bunch of supplies, like different gels, or even portal guns? I'd love to see this stuff in Ep. 3...

I've never played the Hlalf-Life series (inb4 my lack of credibility - they're just not my type of game), but after having read the entire plot and most of that CombineOverWiki or whatever it is, I got the impression it was a testing facility, but a mobile one.

Hoo boy, you walked into it this time. If this is anything like the other speculation threads, I'm in before bigtime debate. Or not perhaps.

Anyway, the short answer is no one really knows for sure what's on the Borealis, or, indeed, what its purpose is. The general consensus, I believe, as taken from the times it was mentioned in HL2:Ep2, was that it contained some new and vastly powerful sort of technology, as not only Dr. Mossman and the rebels but also the Combine were in a race to find it. Eli Vance has told Gordon ingame that it's vital that the Borealis/its cargo must be destroyed and never used. Some have speculated that it was some form of portal technology, but I doubt it, seeing as how 1) the Combine have already made use of portal technology (albeit cross-dimensional) and 2) there's no real reason for Eli to have warned against using it in my opinion.

So to summarize it's a cargo ship that disappeared from the drydock in the older parts of Aperture Science and reappeared somewhere in the Arctic, and it contains a new and interesting form of technology which, if we're lucky, might be featured in Ep3/HL3. And for the record I think that's about as far as a crossover as we'll have between the two games. I think any sort of further storyline intersections would ruin things quite honestly.

And now I'm fairly depressed because reading over this I've realized how much of a nerd/geek I am.

Winston is pretty much right, except that I believe it was an icebreaker, not a cargo ship. Which makes it odd that it's drydock is underground in Michigan. The blueprints show that it contains Unstationary Scaffolds and Emancipation Grills, so a limited form of testing might have occurred onboard. Eli doesn't want it to be used, but Kliener seems to think that whatever it contains could destroy the Combine, so it's presumably pretty powerful.

I played Ep2 without sound so I had no idea what was going on most of the time. (no speakers, silly me) I gotta play it again sometime.

What is on the Borealis? Probably something you can't find in the portal games. Something that is worth stealing from by competitors.

If I ever buy a boat...

Yeah, nothing is really known about the Borealis - it was all left up to Episode 3 to explain. Which makes it a horribly cruel move by Valve to put a reference in Portal 2 to a game they haven't even started work on yet.

chickenmobile wrote:
What is on the Borealis? Probably something you can't find in the portal games.

F-STOP!

NuclearDuckie wrote:
F-STOP!

Time travel. Most probably the answer.
With time travel they could stop the combine, or the combine could completely rule the earth before humans had any way of retaliating.

I'm sure I saw "GLaDOS" on the Borealis Blueprints shown on the screen in the room where Eli and Kliener talk about it.
Oh, and in regards to the Borealis teleporting all those years later, it could have been a "slow teleport" like in HL2.

BTW I'd want to see Mantis Men as an enemy in HL2 Ep3/HL3 if Gordon actually gets on the Borealis.

MasterLagger wrote:
BTW I'd want to see Mantis Men as an enemy in HL2 Ep3/HL3 if Gordon actually gets on the Borealis.

Hah, oh yeah. Or maybe Aperture's still yet to be seen "military androids".

The "Military" skin for Atlas is basically 100% what I pictured "military androids" to look like in my head. During the firt ARG with the ASCII screenshot leaks from the BBS where we first saw the 2 coop bots, I was pretty sure it was Episode 3 stuff and that that's exactly what they were going to be.

As for the Borealis, it's an icebreaker vessel with some sort of R&D portal tech on board. The Combine want it to absorb the technology into their own. It's very obvious from the HL2 series that they don't have that sort of perfect transportation tech available to them - they need a giant dark matter reactor just to power their own, in the HL2 finale - and since their M.O. is traversing the multiverse and conquering habitable worlds, they could really use it to do that more efficiently. And the rebels just want it to keep it out of the Combine's hands, obvious global reconstruction implications not withstanding. I imagine Eli wants it destroyed because the first time humanity played around with teleportation and reality warping, Half Life 1 happened.

One thing I really hope Valve does, is that the "Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System" that is onboard the Borealis is not the GLaDOS we know and love. It's a completely separated, much older version of the system. I'd really love it if it's voice were male and it was completely different from the GLaDOS from the Portal games. Totally uncorrupted, original version of the software.

One minor detail that Portal 2 fucked up though is that in Ep2, Kleiner (I think?) says that when the Borealis disappeared from Aperture it took part of the dry dock with it. But the Borealis dock in Portal 2 is totally intact although incredibly bland.

EDIT
Found this, wish it wasn't $20 because I love subtle game/geek stuff.

msleeper wrote:
One thing I really hope Valve does, is that the "Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System" that is onboard the Borealis is not the GLaDOS we know and love. It's a completely separated, much older version of the system. I'd really love it if it's voice were male and it was completely different from the GLaDOS from the Portal games. Totally uncorrupted, original version of the software.

Hmm, sounds a lot like "the mainframe" from that Portal 2 machinima: watch it here
Watch the newest one. It's much more epic.
Now THAT I'd like to see.

msleeper also wrote:
One minor detail that Portal 2 fucked up though is that in Ep2, Kleiner (I think?) says that when the Borealis disappeared from Aperture it took part of the dry dock with it. But the Borealis dock in Portal 2 is totally intact although incredibly bland.

Maybe it sent it back. Anything could've happened in the 50,000 (or something) years between Portal 1 & 2.

chickenmobile wrote:
Time travel. Most probably the answer.
With time travel they could stop the combine, or the combine could completely rule the earth before humans had any way of retaliating.

Ooh, I like that idea. Maybe because I'm a big fan of time travel. And there's plenty of reasons to use and destroy it. You could even say it was hinted at in that one 70's chamber from Portal 2. But no, I think Valve is actively trying to keep their games (for the most part) on Earth, with time moving forward, so that none of their games can comepletely overshadow the others.

In regards to the dry dock comment msleeper made, I don't think that the whole room counts as a dock. It looked more like an area to build the Borealis than it does to launch it. I think the dock for launching the Borealis took place somewhere else since the old Aperture is inside an old salt mine.

chickenmobile wrote:
Time travel. Most probably the answer.
With time travel they could stop the combine, or the combine could completely rule the earth before humans had any way of retaliating.

Ooh, I like that idea. Maybe because I'm a big fan of time travel. And there's plenty of reasons to use and destroy it. You could even say it was hinted at in that one 70's chamber from Portal 2. But no, I think Valve is actively trying to keep their games (for the most part) on Earth, with time moving forward, so that none of their games can comepletely overshadow the others.

Well, did you know they banned time travel in china? (Unrelated, I know.)

Side note: Playing a 3d, first person, shooter game, with lots of story and audio elements... WITH NO SOUND WHAT SO EVER? WTF?

rellikpd wrote:
Side note: Playing a 3d, first person, shooter game, with lots of story and audio elements... WITH NO SOUND WHAT SO EVER? WTF?

I had subtitles :S!!

Chicken lives in the middle of australian redneck hell so its no suprise she can't afford speakers /jk

chickenmobile wrote:
rellikpd wrote:

Side note: Playing a 3d, first person, shooter game, with lots of story and audio elements... WITH NO SOUND WHAT SO EVER? WTF?

I had subtitles :S!!

and did you have close captions too?

Moo I'm a pony.