And the G-Man’s ever-inscrutable plans are central to whatever happens next. The last couple of years have been great for VR, with the release of stellar Oculus Quest 2 and great virtual reality experiences such as Half-Life: Alyx. We still don’t know why the ship matters, although since portal-making corporation Aperture Science is involved, it’s probably somehow related to teleportation. Gordon and the Combine are presumably both looking for the Borealis. The twist leaves parts of Episode Two’s trajectory unchanged. While Valve might fix this problem someday, I doubt it would promise a feature it had just tried and failed to implement.Īlyx’s ending is still an obvious hint that Valve isn’t done with Gordon Freeman, though. When I spoke to level designer Corey Peters before the game’s release, he said Alyx was supposed to use one for puzzles and combat because “it’s a Half-Life game - it has to have a crowbar in it.” But he said the hook constantly got stuck on objects, and it wasn’t satisfying to kill an enemy using a melee weapon with little tactile feedback. That seems unlikely for one reason, though: Valve thinks VR crowbars aren’t much fun. Road to VR suggests that Alyx is hinting specifically at a VR-based Half-Life 2: Episode Three equivalent, since it’s so conspicuously letting players hold Gordon’s crowbar. Alyx undercuts this arc pretty substantially, although it does assimilate some of the core themes. The G-Man then appears and pulls Alyx out of reality, leaving her fate unknown. “Epistle 3” features the player traveling alongside Alyx to find the Borealis, which turns out to be a teleportation system and a sort of time machine. Until now, the closest we’d gotten to Episode Three was a piece of unofficial fanfic called “Epistle 3” from former series writer Marc Laidlaw.

This time, players are in the shoes of Gordon Freeman, who hefts his iconic crowbar as the game ends. After some credits, Alyx cuts back to the final scene. He gives her the chance to save her father, and she takes it. The G-Man, following one of his typically portentous speeches, pulls Alyx into the future. But when Alyx infiltrates a Combine facility to find a “superweapon,” this changes dramatically - because Alyx runs into the G-Man. Then, a Combine “Advisor” bursts in and kills Eli.Īlyx mostly takes place five years before Eli’s death, while Alyx and Eli are fighting the Combine, and Gordon is in stasis. After winning a key military victory, Gordon and Alyx are preparing to hunt down a long-lost research ship called the Borealis, and Eli has hinted at some new information about the mysterious G-Man, who placed Gordon in stasis and saved Alyx’s life as a child. He’s met up with the anti-Combine Resistance, including an old colleague named Eli Vance and his daughter Alyx. Gordon Freeman (who accidentally opened an inter-dimensional portal in Half-Life) has reawakened from a 20-year stasis to find Earth conquered by the alien Combine. Half-Life 2: Episode Two ends with a cliffhanger.

Half life 2 combine