Now that the dust has settled, what is your opinion on the story

>>389420392
good enough. better than being left in the dark.

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>>389420392
It gave me feels.

I want to play it but know I never will.

>>389420392
It was good, I really liked how our being able to decide Breen's fate is a subtle hint we no longer are under G-Mans control or protection. Also the ambiguity of G-Man and Alyx and whether she is being controlled or goes with him willingly, it certainly makes her killing Mossman an interesting question of whether she was doing for herself or G-Man.

dyson sphere

>>389420392
it was pretty good i'm just glad it's finally over

>>389420392
it's the closure the series desperately needed
based marc laidlaw

HL doesn't tell stories through text
I'm gonna need a playable demo to give you any real opinion

It was the biggest missed opportunity for video game kino in history.

It would have taken a well executed but standard story into a very alien and dark conclusion, drawing emotions of awe and helplessness. It was exactly the direction the HL2 arc needed in every single way, and we're never going to get it.

>>389423213
this

>>389422658
The thing is, with the saving Earth subplot totally resolved, where would the story be able to take place next?

>>389420392
I consider everything after HL1 & its spinoffs as non-canon. Something felt off about HL2 story wise. It was just so radically different. It was just a bland dystopian sci-fi with half life tacked on.

>>389425027
Half-Life 2 launched off of Half-Life 1 by taking the idea of the portals to Xen and expanding it into an interdimensional space empire technologically capable of building a dyson sphere conquering Earth in 7 hours, turning it into a dystopian regime where humans are artificially prevented from repopulating and technology has stopped 20 years so that the regime can mine Earth for its resources. The whole point of the conclusion to HL2 and its Episodes is to leave a jumping off point that HL3 could go in any direction.

>>389422049
Not unless you take it into your own hands, anon

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>>389420392
Brilliant, especially the ending where the player gets the rug pulled out from under him about the sheer size and power of the Combine and the futility of all their actions.

It's even better when adding in the "twitter fanfic" BreenGrub revelations that. after all the fan assumptions about a Combine "master race" that could be targeted and wiped out in a decapitation strike, even the Shu'ulathoi are just synths with their own niche to fill in the Combine system, like the Gunships and Striders and Hunters we fought before.

There is no Combine master race. There is no Combine home world. It's all one unimaginably large system of replaceable moving parts, where a solar system size dyson sphere is just one staging area of many.

Reminder that everything after Half Life Decay is non canon and the hl2 heathens need to be gassed

>>389429617
>headcanon

>>389425027
>saving Earth subplot totally resolved

It wasn't resolved, the ship missile did literally nothing to the combine. Earth is still under their control.

>>389430197
>mug mug mug

>>389420392
It was kinda weak, but I was expecting it honestly. I'm just happy to get some closure, and pissed that Gabe didn't have the balls to kill his own franchise himself.