I LOVED episode 2's ending, and yes it's pretty short but it's intense and while Ep. 1 had an ending that left you excited about 2 but not really much else... Ep. 2's ending really digs into the story. Play through Portal first (super short but filled with dark humor and one of the best ending videos ever), it ties in a bit with 2 (and I'm assuming will be a MAJOR part of 3).

Not quite. Like Despare said, it is pretty short. Not as long as Half Life 2, but it is a little bit longer than Episode 1. A bit more interesting too.

Conflict: Denied Ops on Extreme.

i could never grasp what exactly was happening in HL2...was there a huge time lapse between the first and second game? why are the combines out to get everybody? WHO are the combines? what happened between these two games?

HL2 takes place about twenty years after the first one. Did you beat HL1? Because defeating the Nihilanth supposedly caused portal storms on Earth which attracted the Combine who basically just conquer other planets and bleed them dry.

there's the problem. i got the the final boss in HL 1 but never got around to beating it. thanks for clearing that up for me.

about 20 years later? where did you find that out?
Gordon must be an old bastard!

i think it is more like 11 years later (alyx was a kid during the black mesa incident, but not a small one)

Gordon has been in a stasis, out of the loop so to speak. the world has gone one without him since he accpeted the gmans offer at the end of HL (assuming you chose not to leave the train ;))


How do I know? I was a staff writer for planet halflife for a while :)

thats gnarly that you know that. so can you tell if the rumor of "all these incidents are tests gman is putting Gordon through in preparation something much bigger" is true?

no clue. pretty sure ,most of the developers at Valve dont know either. the story seems very malleable, some things are set in stone, some are added after the fact.

Do this though, if you decide to play the original (or god forbid, black mesa source if they ever fucking finish it...), watch The Mist at some point and marvel at the similarities.

"Half-Life 2 begins an undisclosed number of years after this war, after the rule of the Combine has been firmly established. There is, however, some evidence from the Half-Life 2: Episode One official website indicating that Half-Life 2 takes place nearly two decades after the Black Mesa incident.[2] Such a time frame is logically consistent with the aging of the series' characters between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. It also explains why there are no children in the game, the Combine having set up a reproductive suppression field a short time after the war, preventing any further births."

The G-Man is really tough to read... the Vortigaunt's obviously (from their reaction to him in HL: E1) don't trust him. Not only that but he WAS the person who gave them the sample which caused the Black Mesa incident. I think it's his "employers" who really need to be worried about though.