Just What The Hell Are The Half-Life Games All About, Exactly?

Author: Rees | Date: December 21, 2007

I’ve Been Expecting You, Mr. Freeman…

There have been 7 games set inthe Half-Life universe so far (Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, and Portal, in that order) so you’d be forgiven for getting a little confused about the whole story. Hell, I’ve played all of them, some of them multiple times, and even I hadn’t pieced together all the parts of the story. To cut a long story short, this is a tale that makes Halo look like Spot The Dog.

So I was glad to stumble across this site today, which tries to piece together all of the different parts of the story into one coherent whole. Of course, a lot of it is completely open to interpretation, but this is definitely the best attempt I’ve seen yet at trying to make sense of what we’re told and shown in the games. It even manages to fit Portal into the timeline, which may not star Gordon Freeman or the G-Man, but is certainly based in the Half-Life universe, as are Aperture Science (who I believe will have a large part to play in Episode 3, when Gordon should be discovering the dark secrets of their long-lost freight ship, the Borealis).

Aaaanyway, this is good for a read if you’ve played all of the games through and want to make sense of everything that’s happened, or if you just want to know what Half-Life is all about. It’s been a long time since the original, after all.

Oh, and it goes without saying that you shouldn’t read it if you haven’t played all of the games yet, as the story will be well-and-truly spoiled for you.

1 Comment »

Comment by zagony

2010-03-08 04:10:15

That is not correct, I pieced the whole thing together and Portal happens before the seven hour war. Half-Life 2 starts in 2018(Gordon not aging was correct.). The Black Mesa incident happened at the beginning of the seven hour war.

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