>Accidentally creates Type IV tech despite being lead by an

The portal gun has a mini black hole in it
Black Mesa struggled at creating teleportation tech and relied on Gman to achieve it

black mesa are fucking amateurs, you don't see aperture science create a resonance cascade.

I thought the whole point of Aperture was that they were on a whole different level then anyone else, it's just their management/CEOs were all so grossly incompetent they blew their own foot off and let Black Mesa take over.

>>388271267
Cave implied that they mastered genetic engineering back on the older chambers
How the fuck did they keep all of their experiments hidden while Black Mesa became slaves to the government?

>>388271808
wasn't those the mantismen?

Combine aren't used to this universe. They'd invent everything under every sun if you gave them enough time.

>>388272204
Aperture did all of their crazy shit in the span of 50 years
Thats the equivalent of a "day" by Type II-III standards
The Combine has no excuse there

whats crazy is we dont know if they had more than one sphere. most likely they had most of their discovered universe under lock and key.

>>388272804
Yeah, but we are also humans. They're just slugs. You can't expect them to be as great as humans.

>>388273491
no, the slugs are a reality warping slave race infected with a mind controlling parasite

>>388273830
That's dumb though.

The Combine is obviously, future humanity.

The Combine aren't any race in particular, they're many races, all leading each other, and themselves, by the same leash. The point of the breen grub texts was to show there is no 'Combine masters'. The ones you thought were masters were taken by the same tricks.

>>388269702
>Type IV tech
That isn't how it fucking works you mong

>>388269702
and now you realize that the Borealis is how Cave Prime from the perpetual testing initiative is able to steal test chamber blueprints from other dimensions

Are the combine a sort or hivemind?

>>388274132
or past humanity that came to the future.

yeah take that one for a spin

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>>388274928
The combine are like a traffic jam
You don't know how it started
It includes effectively everyone
and you don't know it'll ever end

Where the fuck is all this "Type * Tech/Civ" shit coming from?

>>388275261
The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy a civilization is able to use for communication. The scale has three designated categories:

A Type 0 civilization — also called a subglobal civilization — does not rank on the Kardashev scale. This is where present-day EArth is.
A Type I civilization — also called a planetary civilization — can use and store all of the energy which reaches its planet from its parent star.
A Type II civilization — also called a stellar civilization — can harness the total energy of its planet's parent star (the most popular hypothetical concept being the Dyson sphere—a device which would encompass the entire star and transfer its energy to the planet(s)).
A Type III civilization — also called a galactic civilization — can control energy on the scale of its entire host galaxy.
A Type IV civilization — also called a universal civilization — can control the entire universe.
A Type V civilization — also called a multiversal civilization — can control collections of universes or the entire multiverse.

>>388275682
Ah, I see. Thank you, Anon.

>>388275682


This idea that energy play will always involve first converting the energy is silly

A star is narrowly usable energy in its presennt form, you just need to find that narrow use

>>388271808
Because while they did some really incredible stuff they either did it on accident or in pursuit of the really inconsequential garbage that they actually put on the market.
Like they genetically engineer the perfect test group for some new product, like a boomerang that always returns to the thrower or something, and once the testing is finished the genetic engineering tech gets swept into a fire pit and the boomerang goes out the door.

>>388271808
They only published the retarded inventions

>>388274372

So if they all dislike the way they exist and are all slaves, why don't they stop it if there are no masters?

>>388274372
Wait did you actually understand BreenGrubs twitter? Please explain all of it. I can't for the life of me understand wtf any of it means

>>388269702

Is G-Man and his benefactors more powerful than the Combine? Are they threatened by the Combine in any way or are the combine ants to them and they're only concerned with getting Aperture's tech.

>>388276678
We'll never know.

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who the fuck wants to explain this faggot's motives to me cause they don't make shit for sense

>Gives Black Mesa the sample causing the resonance cascade
>Puts freeman in stasis once the nihilianth is defeated
>Combine invade
>RELEASES freeman in the middle of their occupation after humanity has been reduced to fuck all
Before the episodes one can interpret his sole purpose was to lure the combine and then take them out BUUUUT

>He suddenly takes an interest in Alex after vortigaunts shield freeman from his influence
>Sends freeman on a suicide root to the combine dimension knowing full well the borealis isn't gonna do jack shit to them, and takes alyx instead

What the FUCK IS HIS GAME. They couldn't come up with an explanation for the shit he does even if they tried

>>388276958
Destruction of the borealis.
If the combine acquired it they could pose a threat to his species.
at least according to some other faggot

>>388276958
Gman's actions directly
>allow the combine to invade earth
>lead alyx to the borealis
>make alyx destroy the borealis

I don't quite think the Gman and his employers were 100% working against the combine.
But they're also not helping humans.

>>388276958
He never had a solid role. He is just a go-to plot device the writers used because they never had any idea what the next games would be about and evolve into.

>>388276558
The Combine Advisors are a species of hyperintelligent alien grubs with telepathy and psionic powers. They were enslaved by the Combine by literally implanting a pro-Combine meme into their collective consciousness. The grubs are now bred in a secret Combine world, and highly valuable Combine consciousnesses (like Breen) get uploaded to an empty grub body.

>>388276402
They are each the master of each other. There is no central figure lording over them all, which makes the way of things unassailable.

Monkeys and showers and steps, it's like that.

>>388277250
Fucking hell that's bonkers

Aperture canonically used its inventions, it's just that they used them for shower curtains. In the old chambers there's trophies for shower curtains and portals are used for them.

>>388274810
>Creates Type IV tech
>Uses it to get more tesh chambers
Classic Cave

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>>388276958
Simply his motives are too complex for your simple mind.

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>>388276958
The G-man is a misunderstood servant of the people. He is part of an extradimensional force like the Combine. Like the Combine they have extreme capabilities, but unlike the Combine those abilities are not focused on direct warfare and assimilation. If that were the case the Combine and the G-man's folks would have already fought and one side would be eradicated. Instead the G-man works in the shadows. He doesn't paint reality with broad strokes of a brush, he surgically removes and inserts crucial setpieces into the specific juncture where they will have the most awesome sway over events.

The Combine are concerned with their survival and proliferation and nothing else. Mutual beneficiality is an alien concept which must be scrubbed from the thought record of any component before it is added to the whole. The G-man is different. His people want to do business.

>>388276958
He is an alien who's goal is to keep the Combine's weakspot (lack of teleportation tech) exposed.

He caused the events of HL1 to gain control of Xen, which gimped the Combine's dimensional transportation, and he cause the events of HL2 are so that the Bootstrap Device would be destroyed and kept from the Combine.

He was probably gonna be used to introduce the alien organization that the combine are at war with

>>388277634
What am I looking at here?

>>388277634
the gman didnt do it to save us. he did it to save his own skin. either that or we become the combine later on

>>388277731
"A genetically engineered fruit fly with eyes for legs"

>>388276678
gman is part of the mcguffin clan, the most powerful entity known in the universe

>>388269702
>Alyx and Gordon sent the borealis against the combine but failed
>the borealis was made obviously on aperture laboratories
>the laboratories still have the data and original schematics of the borealis
>the laboratories even still have GlaDOS working
>the portal gun still there too
>Gordon think everything is futile but because he doesn't know the existence of the old Aperture labs
they still have a opportunity

>>388276958
He's a freelance interdimensional talent agent. I thought that was obvious.

>>388277893
But why?

>>388277954
SCIENCE ISN'T ABOUT "WHY?"
IT'S ABOUT "WHY NOT?"!

>>388276558
BreenGrub is for sure Marc Laidlaw, especially with the recent news revealing the "Breen in a host body" stuff.

>>388278174
It's not a theory, he outright said it was something he wrote for fun at one point.

Its been years since I played HL2. Can someone explain the "host body" stuff?

>>388277878
>the gman didnt do it to save us. he did it to save his own skin.

He did it for both, a symbiotic relationship. Business.

>>388277634

is that you doctor fremont?

>>388278283
>Combine made a copy of Breen's consciousness before he died
>they put it into one of the weird grub things that act as Combine leaders
>implied it's the one you see leaving the Citadel at the start of Episode One
That's all there is to it really. I mean, it's not technically canon that this happened since Laidlaw isn't working for Valve anymore, but you might as well say it is.

>>388276095
They said it wrong. The actual scale is based on utilizing power, not storing it. So a Type 1 is capable of using all energy falling on their planet.

>>388278283
At the end of Half Life 2 Dr Breen mentions that he needs to have his consciousness transferred into another body so he can survive on the Combine's world.

>>388278230
From 2012 to 2014? We know a HL-related project has been in the works in some capacity, it's basically a given, plus the leaks over the years are a pretty good giveaway (while not substantive by themselves, they do add up to form a compelling aggregate).

That Laidlaw's intentional (and for all we know, canonical) ending for Half Life features a grub possessing of Breen's conscious, which also has many "coincidental" comparisons with BreenGrub's posts, suggests that for some time the Epistle 3 story leak was seriously being considered by Valve at some point (and likely the final point before being dropped) during a Half Life project

>>388276958
GMan is part of some alien species that the Combine enslaved

If the Combine ever got the Borealis they would dominate the entire universe, so GMan probably rationalized that preventing ANYONE from having it was better than preventing just the Combine from having it and risking them taking it anyway

>>388276958
He's a nihilanth. If you look at his abilities and allegiances you'll see it all adds up perfectly

>>388276958
just as >>388277106 said

My take on it is that in some fucked timeline human pose a threat to the G-Men forcing them to send someone and prevent the discovery of the most powerful man made device ever created

>>388276958
I can't help but feel like he's something akin to a CIA operative gone rogue and doing whatever the fuck he wants while still being technically affiliated with the Combine.

>>388278824
Gman and Nihilanth ARE voiced by the same guy

>Created Inter-dimensional travel
>Instead of revealing it to the world kept it secret so they could use it to further even more experiments illegally without dealing with labor laws
It's amazing how both ingenious and incredibly stupid they are at the same time.

>>388279063
>Reveal it to the world
>CIA breaks into the lab and steals it within the day

So why didn't the Combine go to Aperture Science directly to get all the files and other goodies inside?

I still think teleporter tech is supposed to be the main mcguffin of Half Life.

Xen's thing was that it's awesome for dimensional traveling, the chink in the Combine's armor is their garbage teleportation tech, G-Man's thing is beimg able to travel through time and space, and EVERYBODY was after the borealis like crazy.

Portal was going to tie into this theme somehow. I just know it.

>>388279197
>Not keeping the plans for it in a pocket dimension
>Not having some critical element of the machine exist in another dimension that only the owners can use
Poor effort

>>388279261
Maybe the facility wasn't on the books?

>>388279261
Because GLaDOS fucked their shit up hardcore

>>388279261
I remember reading that GLaDOS pulled some shit and made Aperture basically invisible during the invasion

>>388279261
probably didn't think to look thousands of feet underground in michigan where it was originally docked

You also have to consider that advisors had no way of sapping the knowledge of it's existence out of someone's head, seeing as everyone who WOULD have known about it was killed when GLaDOS turned on the neurotoxin and locked every confidential employee in the facility

I wanna see how GLaDOS would handle things if the Combine found aperture

>>388279261
While Black Mesa flaunted itself even back then, Aperture was always extremely secretive of it's location, hiding themselves and their shit way underground so no one could ever find them. They've also mentioned they got a security system and while it's never fully explained we can imagine it's pretty ingenious.

Keep in mind this is the same exact company that made a plan B in case an apocalypse like this would happen. They LITERALLY planned for this shit. Cave Johnson's and GlaDOS paranoia might have actually helped humanity from Combine becoming even more powerful.

>>388279949
Turrets and deadly neurotoxin

>>388269702
It's made funnier by the fact that Black Mesa was most likely led by someone with an actual plan. Cave Johnson just did random shit on a whim because it was cool, and he was also afraid to make any of his innovations available to the public until it was "perfect," which it often wasn't.

>>388271267
This.

>>388280297
Well not only where they never perfect, the shit they came up with usually had no fucking business being used in the way he envisioned it.

Like if I remember right, that bounce gel, the stuff that made Chell jump super high, was gonna be used as a dieting pudding. I guess the idea was food would just sorta jump right out of your stomach so you never got fat.

>>388279949
Neurotoxin, turrets, hallways of glass, opening giant holes in the floor that drop to the incinerator, shoot portals at them so they fall endlessly and starve to death, crushing entire platoons of Combine with the walls

To name a few

>>388276958
Didn't you listen to Breen? G-Man works for the highest bidder. He simply does whatever his current employer wills, while also scouting for new business partners.
The real question is who the hell these various employers are and what could they possibly pay him. Breen seemed to imply the Combine could hire him and get Gordon's contract if they really wanted to, and the Black Mesa incident worked in their favor.

>>388279261
aperture is miles underground in fucking Ohio.
Nobody would look for it and nobody would find it.

>>388280993
Eli paid with his life and daughter

>>388279949
I'd like to imagine the turrets and Neortoxins are explicitly for testing and they have some real insane level firepower hidden for occasions like that.

>>388281026
>Ohio
*Michigan

>>388281203
They probably have a few nukes laying around.

>>388280659
>I guess the idea was food would just sorta jump right out of your stomach so you never got fat.
Exactly. But honestly, what better use for it is there?

>>388281157
>G-Man is a genuine god of some sort and takes personal sacrifices as payment, not things with objective value
I could honestly believe it.

>>388279015
he also voiced barney
*GASP*

Apparently they created nanotech before everyone even considered making it

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i want a crowbar keychain that still works to leverage tiny things open

not a bottle opener

> "Unforeseen consequences". The last time I heard those words was back at Black Mesa. You had just stepped into the test chamber when he whispered them in my ear. You know who I'm talking about … our mutual friend. When he brought in that crystal, I knew I should have aborted that damn test … but I didn't. The whole world went to hell that day. And now … now he's using my little girl. Putting words in her mouth. Goddammit. I should have known when he rescued her, it was for his own damn reasons.

>>388281565
What if the reason the Combine are going from dimension to dimension enslaving races is to try and locate and enslave the G-Man's people? Maybe the G-men are some kind of Lovecraftian eldritch lords of reality, and relish in messing in mortal affairs. Even the Combine have things they don't comprehend... it would be a nice foil

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>post yfw you realize that the combine units you fought on earth as freeman were literally the bottom of the barrel, C-listers of the combine empire

>There are still Mantis-men somewhere in the facility
I wonder what else is still buried under modern Aperture in the spheres.

>>388281736
Like Gordon is trying to struggle in vain against the might of a Type V civilization which thrives on subjugation, the desire to continue to exist on one's own terms in impossible odds; a futile labour

And the Combine are chasing down ghostly promises of vast power with the ability to change reality itself (G-Men), a power-hungry labour filled with hubris and folly and leading to more pain

They kind of mirror each other in a way

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>>388281979
Nah, they jumped to a different dimension

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>never bothered to play HL games
>never knew anything about them
>this happens, people talk about HL lore for once
>story seems to be exactly what I love

Wow this is suffering

>>388282069
The Combine are nowhere near Type V. They're Type II or III, depending on if they have more than one Dyson sphere.

>>388282171
It's stated several times that they rule over many different dimensions / universes

That's Type V

>>388282127
Play Portal and Half-Life and pay attention to the details because they share the same universe. They're good games. You should play if you get the chance.

>>388282360
I played both Portals, had no idea it actually was actually connected to Half Life outside of an Easter egg angle

>>388278174
>especially with the recent news revealing the "Breen in a host body" stuff.
we've known that for ages, breen literally says he'll be transferred to a "host body" in episode 1

>>388282226
No it refers to controlling/harnessing that much raw energy.
We rule over earth but we're not type I.

>>388282540
No spoilers but it's way more than a easter egg.

Man hearing Cave Johnson's DLC (Custom test chambers) voice lines again was a blast with new information
He stated there Greg his new assistant was responsible for his theories about parallel universes which makes him a likely candidate to be one of the scientists inside Borealis
Black Mesa had Ivy league scientists on its belt but this Greg fellow blew them out of the water
The Borealis tech might even be Type V tech due to Cave stating that they done tests in the multiverse

>>388282697
Or he could just be crazy.

>>388282697
>Type V tech
That's not what it means reeeee.

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>>388282697
Post yfw
>you realize aperture science is the combine

>>388282697

How does the TF2 universe fit into this?

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>>388283204
>aperture science is the combine

It's just retarded enough to be true.
Time doesn't mean anything any more when teleportation is invented.

But how did Aperture lose its own portal technology?

>>388283204
Perhaps the real Combine is the friends we made along the way.

>>388283386
They sold it off. To themselves.

>>388269702
They have toon logic

>>388283371
Scout = G-Man

>>388283371
In the last stand against combine, humanity will roid themselves up with australium and just punch everything to oblivion. Like Asura's Wrath, but with Gordon Freeman.

Why is anything in half life an issue if they've already invented time travel

>>388284046
because next to no one has it, let alone being able to engineer it or figure it out

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>>388283684
>you will never use an Australium charged Gravity Gun to grab the Dyson Sphere and use it as a wrecking ball across the entire Combine empire

>>388283371
When does TF2 take place again, is it like the 40s? The technology they have is genuinely impressive, if limited by the availability (or lackthereof) of its fuel source. I mean the Engineer does instantaneous travel across vast distances, and of course the Medic is toying with some very godlike powers with his mediguns.

>>388284046
Because the only object capable of it was the borealis
then g-man lured gordon and alyx into launching it at the combine, completely destroying the only object capable of it

>"Cave Johnson, new owner and CEO of Black Mesa. That's right, you've been bought. First order of business, we're renaming you under the Aperture brand. I'm leaning towards Blappeture Mesa. Marketing boys think something else. So: Blappeture it is. Next, they tell me you people are conducting some anomalous materials research that could result in a resonance cascade. So I'm shutting that down before you idiots end the world. A resonance cascade! You're supposed to be scientists. Use some common sense."

>>388284256
>>388284506
But Aperture did. Cave Johnson tells test subjects if they run into themselves to not interact

>>388284658
Aperture is collectively dead.

>>388284425

1968 if I recall the in-game calendar correctly. You can see them on the walls in the bases sometimes.

>>388284658
And they were using it for what? Attempting to make new shower curtains by tormenting clones thousands of feet underground in Ohio?

>>388276160
>the boomerang goes out the door.
Wouldn't it just come back though?

>>388284658
Yes, Aperture Science, had time travel technology. They probably invented it trying to figure out a way to make coffee brew faster or something. Management there has no idea what they're doing, they throw away or put into permanent cold storage anything that they figure isn't profitable for the very narrow application it was created for. They literally put time travel in the warehouse.

https://i1.theportalwiki.net/img/c/ce/Cave_Johnson_dlc2_0530_altcave_penal_science03.wav

>combine build a fucking dyson sphere
>can't figure out teleporting

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>>388284917
?

>>388285051
were wormholes not enough

>>388281736
The Combine are (or consider themselves to be) the pinnacle of all earthly creatures, hence their name.
But G-Man's race are the gods, the things that have always been above and nigh-incomprehensible to earthly creatures no matter the time or place.

Gordon sees the Borealis barely even register as an attack on the Combine's Dyson sphere. All of their struggles for survival and victory are practically meaningless in the end. They're just a dying species of one strip mine planet against a vast multi-dimensional empire.
The Combine sees their Dyson sphere be rendered moot as G-Man warps reality in inconceivable ways with mere thought, as if he had discovered magic itself. Deep down in their highly advanced brains the ancient fear of the unknown rouses. They can't help but wonder that, for all their scientific knowledge and industrial prowess, they haven't accomplished anything that truly matters.

>>388284425
If I recall the Mann Vs. Machine lore correctly, the latest date that takes place in the game is 1971ish. The comics don't go that much farther than that. Also it's the scout that has good like abilities, the medic literally makes deals with Satan involving selling 2 of the 10 or so souls he's given himself.

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>>388285317
cool fanfic, you should apply to valve

>>388285051
they probably didnt even build it, just stole that shit from whatever other civ they conquered. The combine is a conglomerate of alien races taken under subjugation, at this point they've probably forgotten how to produce anything and just take stuff endlessly

>>388285317
That's the feeling I get reading HackerNews. But this industry just pays so well.

>>388285417
Even if I wasn't a terrible writer you weren't replying sarcastically it would be pointless. Valve doesn't even make games anymore.

>>388278482
Well right, the game's not getting made and this guy wrote all the previous ones, this is as close to canon as we're gonna get.

>>388285391
>the scout is literally god's gift to mankind
Didn't see that one coming

Is this canon?

https://theportalwiki.com/wiki/Perpetual_Testing_Initiative

>>388282697
Cave Johnson is G-Man lolololololol

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>>388285317
Its not meaningless you fucking retard
the combine are absolute morons when it comes to teleportation tech and all their attempts at it are either extremely slow and got cucked by freeman before they could start it, or tried to steal it from humanity and failed, now since the ONLY remnants of teleportation technology is gone with the borealis exploding and city 17 completely destroyed and no way to return back, the combine efforts on earth are over and all humanity has to do now is destroy any remaining combine on earth then reclaim and rebuild

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>>388280659
>invent blue flubber
>go out of business before you can sue the movie creators for mad royalties

>>388285949
this is how they did it

>>388285949
Its on a higher level of canon than most of Half Life 2 and arguably all of Half Life 1.

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It's been a long time since I've seen such comfy Half-Life discussion threads. I love it.

>>388275015
That would explain why they kick barrels of fuel down on top of you from time to time. Like a siege.

>>388285949
>"Big Box" Cave Johnson

>>388285884
As someone that only got the information of TF2 from the cinimatics/in game stuff, the depth that the game has from the comics was honestly amazing. Even the stupid things like Soldier's ghost roommate and haunted eye socket that are obviously just ways of cannonising the Halloween events feels oddly realistic.

>>388286441
thank fuck

the half life 2 is garbage meme was getting obnoxious. I remember back in 2007 when we'd joke about /v/'s contrarianism getting tot he point where we would say half life sucked.

>>388279949

Wave after wave of mantis-men;

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>>388280297
>Cave Johnson just did random shit on a whim because it was cool, and he was also afraid to make any of his innovations available to the public until it was "perfect," which it often wasn't.

Sounds familiar

Apeture Science has Pocket Universes as confirmed by The Lab.

Aperture Science is basically above everyone else and Black Mesa and The Combine are fucking jokes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWjP77TztTQ

>>388287271
Except that Gabe makes decisions that make the most profit. He frequently talks about this.

>>388287384

Yeah that's true. Cave Johnson is more like John McCafee.

>>388286162
no, Greg is G-Man
see, he have G in his name

>>388276160

When they made the portal gun, they were trying to make a high tech shower curtain.

>>388278052
>SCIENCE ISN'T ABOUT "WHY?"
>IT'S ABOUT "WHY NOT?"!

*Why* is so much of our science dangerous? Why not *marry* safe science if you love it so much?

>>388285559
Sounds a lot like Valve.

>>388288072
Funny, Gaben even looks like a Combine advisor.

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>>388279949
>The facility is in peak condition; GlaDOS is constantly at work building, rebuilding, and archiving an endless parade of test chambers that are never put to use. A massive bureaucratic dance is at play in the vain hope that one day someone she can't see might wake up. She ignores the glaring cognitive dissonance; there hasn't been a blind spot here in centuries.
>It is in this brief moment of self-reflection that it happens. The siren song that was the unrelenting hymn of roaring machines and electrical generators abruptly and quietly grinds to a peaceful sleep.
>For the first time since the last human was dragged kicking and screaming from The Vault, life has crept its way back inside of Aperture, and it is in that moment that life breathes itself back into the enrichment center and wakes it from its momentary slumber. The moment of silence was only a courtesy.
>It's time for science.

>>388285559
That's what I got. They're like the Borg, they need other races to do their R&D, but don't know how to play nice to get it.

>>388288467
I would enjoy seeing GLaDOS setting test chambers up for Combine soldiers. The Combine can't even just try blowing the place up, they need the Borealis information, which is deep inside.

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>>388288467

>>388288467
>GLaDOS is the biggest autist of them all

>>388288467
>implying she wouldn't just gas them like she gassed the Apeture staff
She only uses seemingly harmless people like Chell and once that backfired she went to using Atlas and P-body.

>>388288838
Then she sent Atlas and P-body out for the specific purpose of opening up the Human Vault because testing on immortal robots isn't nearly as fun since they don't make a splat noise when they die

>>388288838
The co-op has them find more humans, who she tested to death.

>>388278553
>That Laidlaw's intentional (and for all we know, canonical) ending for Half Life features a grub possessing of Breen's conscious, which also has many "coincidental" comparisons with BreenGrub's posts, suggests that for some time the Epistle 3 story leak was seriously being considered by Valve at some point (and likely the final point before being dropped) during a Half Life project
>suggests that for some time the Epistle 3 story leak was seriously being considered by Valve at some point
w-what if this is it?

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>>388271267
>>388276160
Is Aperture Science actually an allegorical Valve?

>Valve had the plans, resources, and story for HL2EP3 and HL3 all this time
>Half-Life ep.3 confirmed dead by lead writer
>"Artifact announced coming this year"

>>388289924
You forgot that they're both staffed by retards who managed to make something good at one point.

>>388281960
Nah they dont have a C-list
Combine forces are most likely a combination of actual combine tech and the native organisms, so they dont have to worry with adaptation to hostile environments, which also explains the whale gunship, the weird servitor-like guys and whatnot.

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>>388281726
Son. Torque = force * radius
As your distance from the fulcrum approaches zero (you have a tiny crowbar), you will have to exert more and more force to get the same amount of torque to pry things.
That is all.

>>388285949
ALL HAIL THE SENTIENT CLOUD.

>>388284629
"Black Mesa! You are now known as Black Butte!"

>>388290786
This problem could be solved by multiple tiny crowbars exerting torque on each other, resulting in a sort of "cascading torque," that would ultimately lead to the pried object in question.
Someone make a kickstarter, we could make dozens of dollars.

>>388284629
Wait, so with the Multiverse existing in the portal 2 perpetual testing chamber initiative containing universes that contain other black mesas creating resonance cascades, does that mean xen and the combine's homeworld are pocket dimensions or other planes of reality as opposed to alternate universes/timelines?

>>388284857
Made me giggle

>>388291495
Yes, duh. The Combine are the Universal Union, not the multiversal union.

>>388285949
paper prison doors > force field doors

>>388269702
>Accidentally creates Type IV tech despite being lead by an absolute madman
It takes time to place a portal. For the distances in the typical gameplay, you never notice this, but at the end of Portal 2, it takes 8 seconds for a portal shot at the moon to actually reach the moon. This still has one of the greatest limits attached to it when it comes to interstellar travel: the time it takes to get there. Shooting a portal over to our nearest neighbor would still take half a decade. Shooting portals all across the galaxy would still take hundreds of thousands of years. Shooting one to ANOTHER galaxy (which is what it would take to actually be a type IV) would take millions of years. Sure, once the portal actually reached its destination, we'd be able to begin to colonize that new galaxy, but we're talking millions of years in the meantime. Humans might not even be around for that long.

>Black Mesa's tech was scraps to them
Black Mesa's tech, while unrefined, has far greater promise. Gordon was teleported several times without needing anything on the other end like portals do. Their resonance cascade was what brought the combine to Earth to begin with.

Could Cat Johnson defeat the Combine?

>>388284326
What gmod gamemode is this

>>388291406
I don't know if I'd want to risk setting off a torque cascade

>Cave Johnson warns you about meeting your future self on the testing track
>this wasn't a one-off joke, they were foreshadowing the Borealis until Episode 3 got cancelled

>>388269702
>Type II-III

Type in reference to what?

How autistic do you have to be to create your own arbitrary type system and expect others to know it.

>>388294119
Get the fuck out of here you normie. who doesnt know the Kardashev scale?

how would they even have meshed half-life's serious tone with aperture's lunacy? would have been some serious tonal dissonance

>>388294119
See
>>388275682
, you retard

>>388269702
Line of sight portal technology is not Type IV when interstellar travel (combine) and Gman (time and space manipulation) is Type 2/3

>>388294119
Kardashev Scale, nigga. You should've been able to infer this.

>>388294119
>t. redditman69

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>>388294349
that's 2 strikes anon. One more and you have to leave 4chins forever

>anons acting like they know the scale when above 3 wasn't even part of it and half of them use it wrong

>>388294225
>>388294302
>>388294339

lol I'm gonna refer to fucking Star Trek like it's real life or has any relevance to it.

>>388294119
Do you always assume things you don't know are made up?

>>388294302
RUDE

>>388294414
see
>>388294402

>>388294485
>(((Inspect Element)))

>>388294438
>Real life
Retard, we're talking about video games here.

>>388294506
Why mix Star Trek in with video games then? It's just as arbitrary and irrelevant.

>>388294485
>doesnt want to admit defeat
heh okay kid, take your (you) and think you won if it helps you sleep better

>>388294438
You're a fucking moron. You should lurk before you start posting.

>>388294314
The Borealis isn't line-of-sight Portal tech though. It's an interdimensional time-traveling thing. Combine don't give a shit about the Portal Gun tech, they care about the "Bootstrapper" or whatever on the Borealis. Which is the type III-IV shit that Aperture developed.

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>>388294636
>crying
hahahahahahahaha okay tough internet guy

>>388294119

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

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>>388294893

>>388285884
Heaven in the TF2 universe seems to just be a place where your dreams are reality. Sniper was with the parents that raised him, Scout has everyone loving him, and Medic used his crazy medic powers to use souls to screw the devil.

OP here
Thanks for bumping the thread master baiter

>>388269702
weren't portals made so that a person could have an infinite shower curtain?

>>388294794
That's not what tier IV means.

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>>388285949
>The Godzilla Universe
>Aperture has hatches a large quantity of Godzillas. They prepare for attack, only to find that all Godzillas instinctively head towards Tokyo.

>>388286292
> more canon than HL1

How do you figure? Now arguing but curious.

>>388286165
No it's not, there's still the Portal Gun

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>>388283204
>cave literally went insane and made aperture an universe wide force and abandoned his earthly domain
>started an universal effort to track down earth after millions of years through time and space and ensure that everyone related to black mesa thoroughly suffered and died a horrible death, and to booth, everyone on earth for killing his original company
>all combine synths are the continuation of mantis men experiments

>>388290000
Quads absolutely confirm

...Is this cannon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT58mLs9ICA

>>388292621
Not talking about the portals. Talking about the multiverse-spanning transportation in the Perpetual testing initiative and the ship known as Borealis which can teleport anywhere in space-time instantly and even to other dimensions

>>388276958
He's a temporal/multiversal talent agent. Interested parties bid for him to intervene at particular points/places in time so that outcomes will be tilted one way or the other. The vortigaunts abhore him for some unknown reason, possibly because he is related in some way to the nihilanth.

Why did G-Man fuck with Black Mesa, but not Aperture Science?

What was Black Mesa even doing with Xen and its crystals?

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>>388269702
Who cares, none of this matters anymore since we basically have proof Valve has given up on anything that doesnt involve cosmetics or skins and making them easy money

The fat fuck gave up, its over

>>388296480

Aperture was too fucking insane for G-Man to manipulate.

>>388296480
How do you know he didn't fuck with Aperture? They somehow invented things way more advanced than they should have been able to and then they all died

>>388296480
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there an 'Easter egg' where G-man is seen in the original portal?

>that one scene where G-man mentions in passing that he was told by some kind of third party that he shouldn't save alex/freeman, but did anyway

WHO THE FUCK DOES G-MAN WORK FOR

>>388296336
>the Perpetual testing initiative
Isn't that non cannon?

>>388276958
Do you guys think G-Man is even human or was he 'contacted' by his future employers and given these powers?

>>388296724
No. This is me correcting you. You are wrong.

>>388276958

You know based on the ending of Half Life 1 and 2 I was expecting a series of games where Freemans services are given to a variety of different aliens and dimensions.

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So based on portal 2 ending, humanity is wiped out but because of glados autism she has a vault full of test subjects and seems that after the chell experience she is willing to let them go chimp out in another place if they become problematic, so cave johnson saved humanity by being an idiot?

>>388297130
I thought most of the humans were dead because they were in storage for too long

>>388297327
Thats the apartment building in the beggining of portal 2 anon, in the coop mode ending glados finds a vault full of test subjects ready to leave the cryostasis and do her shitty tests

>>388296480
He would be put into test chambers and gassed if he tried to fuck with aperture. For science.

>>388296480
Aperture Science didn't exist when Half-Life was written

>>388297327
No, after the bots discovered the vault GLaDOS resumes the tests with human subjects and she manages to kill them all in a couple of weeks

>>388296737
My theory was that G-Man was in a similar position to Gordon. He was a regular human at one point but got picked up by his employers and eventually managed to secure a position finding people to do his bidding.

>>388297616
Even the g-man was afraid of the explosive lemons

>>388297712
Also wasnt ratman forgiven or some shit? Glados doesnt seem to give a shit about him in both portal 1 and 2

>>388282226
Type IV/V requires to harness the ENTIRE energy output of a universe/multiverse, not just having a presence there.

Are any of Mark Laidlaw's books any good?

>>388296480
Because the G-Man was fulfilling a contract for THREE things not one.

1. He was using freeman to assassinate the nihilanth
2. He was using whats his face to nuke black mesa
3. And he was using the black mesa technology to create a portal storm throughout the planet

>>388298316
nothign is good

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I want Portal 3 or more DLC.

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>>388283438

>>388298812
What is there to continue about Chell's story? Glados sent her back to the surface, we see Earth defeated from combine, series end. I don't think there can be another game after this.

>>388299778
>we see Earth defeated from combine
Not him, but I still don't get this part. I remember her just getting dumped into a random field. No sign of destruction at all.

>>388299778
>We see earth defeated
We see an empty grassy field.

Portal 2 ends far enough in the future that Earth's landscape has significantly changed, that's all we know.

>>388300098
Combine drained Earth's resources so if they had won we wouldn't see the grass field. Or it may just be like >>388300135 said too, idk.

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>>388300135

In what way exactly? This looks to me like a simple disguised secondary exit.

>>388300361
I live in Michigan. There isn't really anywhere in the State that looks like that, we have too many trees. Even if it was a farmer's field or something there would at least be some trees visible in the distance.

It could also be that Valve just doesn't know what the State looks like I guess.

>>388300550
landscape does really change alot in a couple of decades, so they can do whatever they want

>>388297962
He died before Portal 2

>>388299778
>>388300098
>>388300135
>>388300303
>>388300361
>>388300550
>>388300675
It's a fake field, after she takes 5 steps she's going to run into a plastic sheet with the images of a field and notice the lights.
She's still in Aperture.

>>388301039
Why would it be a fake field tho? GLaDOS has lost all interest in Chell because she's just too much of a pain in the ass.

It's because Aperture is run by scientists, while Black Mesa was run by businessmen. Now, this doesn't make for good business practice, but it does make for good science practice.

>>388279197
>CIA barge in
>Just hand over the device
>Exit is morphed into multiple testing chambers
Thanks for the new test subjects

>>388301421
Also to add this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7rZO2ACP3A

They really are not good at financing.

>>388299778
>valve
>artistic integrity
Does it matter if the story is over or not?