References:Marc Laidlaw emails/Unverified

The following email messages attributed to Marc Laidlaw have not yet been verified by OverWiki staff. Laidlaw has remarked that a number of emails listed on community forums purported to be from him are forged.

Unverified emails

On Half-Life 3

“	Thanks for your letter. Whatever we do next, I think we all expect it to be better than we've done before. It would be very hard to go on if we didn't feel we were continually improving. And while we don't want to repeat ourselves, it could be argued that HL1 and HL2 are very different, and that whatever happens next in the HL series can be very different from the preceding games but still be very good. That's my hope anyway.	”
	– Source

On the Nihilanth

“	Capture of vorts is fairly common. That particular Nihilanth was the last of its kind, and had never been captured, but some of its predecessors might have been.	”
	– Source

On the Alien Controllers

“	The Xen Controllers were part of the Nihilanth's support network, and they relied on the Nihilanth to throw them around where it wanted them to go, so if there are any left, they are probably stranded in what would not have been their natural native environment (nothing's native to Xen). However, without access to a steady food supply (whatever it is they eat), they may well have simply died out.	”
	– Source

On Race X

“	Thanks for writing. Explanations outside the context of the game are not really something we want to get into. Most of the things that are hazy are that way simply because the right time and place has not come about for clarifying these things in the context of the games. So, I try not to say anything that would spoil revelations and backstory that we may want to use in the future or are currently developing. The relation between the Nihilanth race and the combine is one of those things. As for Race-X being from xen, I'm not sure any of the aliens we've seen were actually from xen originally. Xen is a borderworld--a place you have to go through to get to other places. It was colonized by certain creatures that could adapt to it. The Race-X creatures didn't seem particularly well adapted to Xen. I imagine their home lay somewhere beyond.	”
	– Source

“	Race X was purely a Gearbox creation that doesn't figure at all in my thinking about the world. Understand, they wanted to come up with a set of creatures that would create gameplay they knew how to make. They could have been making an original title or an add-on for some other franchise, and plugged racex into that--the reason being that they had gameplay they wanted to explore and needed the freedom of their own race of critters to conduct those experiments with. If Gearbox had kept making HL games, I suppose we might have seen these threads develop. Since blackops are not a Gearbox creation per se, but an opportunistic use of existing real-life elements, I don't see how the idea of canon applies to them.	”
	– Source

On the Portal Storms and Headcrabs

“	Those things came through during the portal storms, which continue erratically to this very day. Some of the critters came early (immediately after the Black Mesa incident) and adapted to earth. I think the poison headcrabs must have eaten something poisonous at one point, and liked it so much they added it to their repertoire.	”
	– Source

On Bullsquids in the Half-Life 2 continuity

“	The Bullsquids are around here somewhere.	”
	– Source

On Eli Vance's leg

“	Like many things in the HL universe, we like to reserve these things until we can make some use of them. There's no point in carving a story idea in granite, only to get there and learn that it leads to bad, boring gameplay. I hope mod makers don't spend too much time worrying about whether they're in conflict with Half-Life. If they get something "wrong", we won't change what we decide to do because of it. They can, if they want, show Eli losing his leg to a Bullsquid while helping Kleiner get to safety in Black Mesa; but if I have an opportunity to later show Eli losing his leg while helping kleiner get into City 17, I'll go ahead and do that. I'm not out to spoil the fans' fun! Perhaps there are many many parallel universes, in each of which Eli loses his leg in an entirely different way.	”
	– Source

“	He lost it to a Bullsquid while helping Kleiner get to safety, but I'm not sure if that was in Black Mesa or later.	”
	– Source

On Civil Protection

“	CP/Metrocops are humans at the first level--basically unaltered volunteers. From here, if you are hardcore, you must volunteer for modification in order to become a soldier, so advancing in rank requires surrendering even more humanity. This stuff was certainly thought through in advance; sometimes we just make things up though.	”
	– Source

“	They are the lowest form of human security organized and run by the Combine. Ones who show aptitude may be promoted to soldiers. Ones who don't are probably treated like damaged equipment by management; if it's more expensive to repair them than they're worth, they are probably just discarded. Their buddies might try to save them, I guess--but the ones who don't bother will get promoted faster, and the ones who show weakness are probably going to wash out pretty quickly.	”
	– Source

On an Episode Two character - Arne Magnusson

“	We try not to answer questions about the story directly outside of the game--believe what you play, not what you read, is my motto. The waters are murky, unfortunately, when it comes to the Gearbox titles because we did not make them and i don't feel compelled to abide by every story idea they came up with to make their game more fun. That said, it's now public knowledge that you'll be meeting at least one further survivor of Black Mesa in Episode 2. Hope you enjoy it.	”
	– Source

On Barney Calhoun, Half-Life: Blue Shift and expansion involvement

“	Hi, Daniel, I won't be able to clear up much. It was a deliberate decision to have Gearbox never call him Barney in Blue Shift, only Calhoun. Raising the bar is not a game, so material is presented differently there; manifestations differ in every medium. Gearbox took our Barney and did their own best version, but I'm not sure that Barney is the same Barney I'm picturing when I picture Valve's Barney. In the time BS was created, there were many Barneys. Only gradually have the redundant creature and character types slowly settled into iconic individuals...it's an ongoing process. Gearbox did what was right for their games. Even though they had feedback and guidance from us, they didn't always listen to it, and they steered by their own lights, etc., etc. I wasn't very close to the creation of the expansion packs, and much more concerned with how to move the story forward and open up the universe; so I only take the games created by Valve into consideration when I am working on the story...there are more than enough potential contradictions in our own designs without me worrying about contradictions in the inventions of other developers who were not part of our initial creative meetings. I know this is confusing to fans; it's partly a byproduct of the way expansion packs were created, the way they were packaged and published, and also I was very new to this whole concept at the time. It never occurred to me that large chunks of the story would be taken out of our hands, changes made beyond our control, and then have the stuff handed back with some odd unexpected kinks in it. So I try not to worry about it, and simply do my best with material directly in my control. However, as to your last question, there was pressure on us to set Half-Life 2 at Black Mesa, which a lot of us felt would be creative death; it was important to break new ground. Nuking Black Mesa was a good way to ensure that we had a way to avoid setting Half-Life 2 there. You might say I gave the G-Man his orders. The whole issue of canon is something the fans came up with. I guess you will be able to identify as canon those story elements we continue to build on and develop and mention repeatedly as the story progresses. Others might fall by the wayside once they've served their purpose. Couldn't you say the same of us all?	”
	– Source

“	Hi, Ben, I am going to swear off contributing to this bizarre argument about canonical versus noncanonical works. If we can make good entertaining use of the elements of OpFor in future games, then we may well do that, and at that time I guess folks will have a better idea of where we stand on all this. We can't speak about story ideas outside of the games themselves--it's meaningless. The games must stand on their own, contradictions and all. My only hope is to keep unreeling the story in such a way that it will continue to please the fans and spark interesting conversations. Thanks for writing!	”
	– Source

On Black Mesa and Gordon's big day

“	Hm...I don't remember stating that the Black Mesa Incident occurred on Gordon's first day of work (NOTE: This applies to a letter in the HL PS2 manual by Rosenberg. Or was it Keller?) (Barney sure acts like he's known gordon a while) although I might have. Shrug.	”
	– Source

On the Combine

“	The "Combine" is a name for a large organization. So asking if the advisors are the combine is like asking if a roman senator is the roman empire. There's no one creature called the Combine.	”
	– Source

“	The combine is a combination of different species (including humans) working (or forced to work) together. Other than that, you'll have to stay tuned for more information as we work it into the games.	”
	– Source

On the initials "L.M."

“	Dear X, thanks for poring over those letters...I wondered if anyone would ever notice those lowly initials, appended by whichever administrative assistant happened to be in the office that day to do the official typing. As you may know, before coming to Valve, I held a number of emp word processing and admin jobs; manpower sent me for a stint to the Alaskan pipeline, but it was already finished and there was no one needing typing at that point, and then immediately after to Black Mesa, which ran out of funding for temp administrative assistants shortly after my arrival. In fact, I lasted one day in New Mexico, and quickly fled. So as not to confuse my word processing career with my developing reputation as a professional writer, I did not want to sign "ml" to any of my typing. So U reversed the letters. For this, and many greater transgressions of which you may become aware shortly, i apologize. Oh, one more thing: This hasn't happened yet. - lm in the mirrorworld.	”
	– Source

On Citizen clothing

“	The only readily available new clothes for humans are made in Combine facilities, so if you happened to have or find a set of comfortable clothes that weren't bland citizen uniforms, you held onto them. It's probably a good thing that we're not running an odor simulator.	”
	– Source

On currency under the Combine rule

“	It's a fair question. I don't recall coming down hard on an answer in the game itself, so I don't want to make something up now. If you don't hear specific reference to tokens in conversation, then it's hard to justify their existence. There may well be token slots on vending machines, etc…but in fact if you push the button for a can of breen's private reserve, it appears to be free of charge. Citizens are given or issued basic standard clothing and food, so it seems like the combine don't encourage currency in their dealings with humans, and among citizens there may be something more like a barter economy. For your roleplay, you should come up with whatever generates interesting gameplay. I don't see any egregious conflict with the game.	”
	– Source

On what happened to Gordon's HEV Suit helmet in Half-Life

“	While it protected Gordon's head from radiation, toxic waste, headcrabs, etc., it caused a really bad case of helmet-hair. So he conveniently lost it.	”
	– Source

On a playable Alyx

“	I personally don't see how that would work. Alyx is a creation of animation and audio. If you were to play Alyx, you wouldn't see any of her animations, and her motivations are (I think) more interesting when they are her own, and somewhat mysterious. But perhaps there would be some way to do this.	”
	– Source

On Concerned and Breencasts

“	Many of us, including myself, are big fans of the truly funny Concerned--but that's not a Concerned reference. Lots of the citizens in City 17 considered Dr. Breen's broadcasts and announcements to be his "show." I figure that from time to time he broke out of the lecture format and provided a bit more in the way of entertainment. I personally missed the jugglers episode, but the citizens have been talking about it ever since.	”
	– Source

On Laszlo

“	I was thinking about that scene myself last night as I drifted off to sleep. It made me weep. That's just how I react to the loss of the finest mind of a generation. So, um, yeah, I guess it is a little bit significant when such greatness leaves the world. It's good to know you appreciated Laszlo. Yours in the Fellowship of Laszlophilia, Marc Laidlaw	”
	– Source

On Adrian Shephard

“	Thanks for your letter. Adrian Shepard is a bit like Schrodinger's cat he's neither canon nor non-canon, depending on whether or not the G-Man may or may not have a use for him.	”
	– Source

On Magnusson and his casserole

“	Yes, that was supposed to be his casserole, but maybe he wasn't in the room at the time. A deeper explanation is that the scientists in HL1 originally picked their models randomly, so you'd never have the same scientist model in the same scene twice...but over time this changed, and in various ports of the game I believe it might have been nailed down to just that one scientist you observed. Maybe he was just looking out for Magnusson's casserole (and told him what you'd done, sometime before disaster struck). The nature of the casserole is lost to history.	”
	– Source

On the story arc

“	Half-Life Half-Life 2 Half-Life 2 Episode One Half-Life 2 Episode Two Half-Life 2 Episode Three	”
	– Source

On Gordon's lack of a helmet

“	Whoa! I never thought of that! We messed up! Actually, we try not to think about these things too much. We're making a game...can't take it all too seriously. He put a helmet on in HL1, but then you know the G-Man let him keep his suit but then Dr. Kleiner gave him new one and now I think of it as a Heisenberg suit. I figure the HUD is projected on those phat spex. Maybe his hair shields him from fallout. Certainly his upper lip and chin are safe.	”
	– Source

On the Vortigaunt slaves

“	The vortigaunts were related to the Nilhilanth, as indicated by their vestigial chest-arms, which is why it had a particular ability to control them. The Nih., the alien grunts and the vorts were all from the same world. That doesn't mean there aren't enemy vortigaunts however. Pretty much everything you encounter in the Combine's domain potentially exists in a Combine-coopted and a natural, non-coopted form.	”
	– Source

On Half-Life 2: Episode One intro

“	It was intended to be Gordon's POV. As I recall, the idea behind that segment was that Gordon is sharing a vort's eye view of the events, as they nip back in time to extract you guys (somewhat messily) and then it all folds back into place again to catch you up.	”
	– Source

On the Hydra being in Episode Two

“	Dear Trase, If you've played the episode yourself, you will know that there is no such scene--it's not something you would miss. There are no hydras in any of our games, and nowhere a zombie is grabbed by anything. I can't imagine a magazine lying in a preview, so perhaps it is just a confused description of something from the Episode? Thanks for writing. Yours, Marc Laidlaw	”
	– Source

On the Combine's transhuman assimilation process

“	Dear Roma, Metrocops are the first step--originally I wanted to be able to transmit conversations between bored metrocops. They are still just human volunteers. Combine Soldiers are a step beyond that, and submit to certain processes that remove autonomy and weaponize certain other aspects of humanity unrelated to freewill. So you won't hear them cracking jokes or disobeying orders. The Combine are made up of many many species and get their tech where they find it. But they haven't been in touch with Earth for all that long, so it seems unlikely they built so much of their tech around something gleaned from Aperture. Perhaps these matters will get clearer as we investigate them. That's usually how it works. Yours, Marc Laidlaw	”
	– Source

On Gordon's height

“	I think you can determine Gordon's height by looking at the model in Hammer--one unit = one inch. Eye height is the only height we worry about. You may also note that all the human characters in the game are the same height. This is very unrealistic and has to do with the size and height of the bounding boxes and collision models, I believe. Maybe someday we'll feature a normal range of human heights. You are incorrect in thinking that "the game aims for realism." We very deliberately do not aim at realism, but rather at a level of stylization that allows us to suggest just enough reality that it's surprising fun when we bend it. We don't think of our characters as realistic, but as stylized. And a lot of our design choices reflect that. We experimented with Halo style loadouts prior to HL2 and they didn't sit well with the Half-Life experience. Thanks for writing. Marc	”
	– Source

On Barney and involvement with Portal

“	Hi, Dimitar, thanks for you letter. Hard to imagine 37th Mandala being anyone's introduction to English language fiction, but...well...wow...that must have been very strange. The Barney in HL2 and the episodes is indeed Barney Calhoun. I few a bunch of us had just watched Ravenous. Colqhoun is the character Robert Carlyle played. I grabbed the name but went with a more familiar spelling. Names come from odd places. The question of Barney's identity is fuzzier in HL and Blue Shift because that represented a shift-over from the generic clone army of "Barneys"...somehow he became individuated in there. I try not to think about it too hard. He didn't have a last name in HL, and didn't need one until later. I can't comment much on Portal, I'm afraid. Wikipedia only knows what it's told, and we don't talk about this much. I was an early point of contact for the Portal team but once Erik Wolpaw took up the reins, I stopped peeking into the process; he knew the HL universe as well as anyone and I trusted whatever he might do with it in reference to Portal. The worlds overlap in meaningful ways, as I think are indicated by the slideshow in Portal and Kleiner's words about Aperture and Borealis in Episode 2.	”
	– Source

On the cause of the Resonance Cascade

“	I think it was a perfect storm of malevolent influences, not to mention the fact that you personally must have put the crystal in wrong.Thanks for messing it up for everybody, Max!	”
	– Source

On the Citizen nationalities

“	Viktor (Antonov, visual designer for HL2)was a big influence on the design but we were heading that way already--one reason things clicked so well when we first started talking with him. He was key in helping it crystallize. It certainly helped that the influences were in his blood. The Americanness of the citizens was the result of audio limitations. One thing I wished we could have done, once the localization was accomplished, was mix it up so that the citizens' dialog drew from every single language we had translated for the game. The code to do this is not difficult; but it would have meant adding every single citizen audio file for every single language, rather than simply the local language. I wanted to do this for the City 17 announcer voices as well. If someone were to make this mod, it would represent what I think is a much truer picture of the City 17 that was in our heads.	”
	– Source

On the Combine and Aperture Science

“	Sorry, can't comments on unreleased story elements. I can only say they tried to get in.	”
	– Source

On the lack of wildlife in Half-Life 2

“	I imagine the suppression field had an effect on a great deal of mammalian life actually. The lack of creatures has more to do with where we were able to invest resources but it does raise an interesting story angle.	”
	– Source

On how weather impacts the Combine

“	When you ask about the Combine, you're sort of asking if the Roman Empire was affected by weather. Horses probably didn't mind the snow along their marches, but the men shivered. All the different creatures that comprise the Combine would react differently.	”
	– Source

On why City 17 is totally Americanized

“	If someone wanted to, they could mod a version of City 17 that would play as intended: Namely, the citizens should have spoken every language in all our localized versions, and Breen's broadcasts (and all the PA broadcasts) should have looped through all the translations. Maybe someday, the amount of audio you'd have to load to have all those wavs in memory will seem insignificant and this will be a really easy thing to do...but I always pictured the citizens speaking every language with every accent. The fact they all speak American English is just an unfortunate byproduct of our various physical limitations...it could be modded to be otherwise.	”
	– Source

On why he doesn't like sequels

“	[The fact that I don't like sequels is] nothing to do with "fear," just with what is actually interesting to work on or experience. "I prefer to create new worlds" is more accurate. Most sequels are inferior to the originals, with a few exceptions: Game sequels can often improve on the original because of the iterative process that goes into game design...this is very different from sequels in other forms. And there are sequels which aren't really sequels, but simply multiple parts of a long single thing. So for instance I don't consider the Game of Thrones books to be sequels...they are part of an ongoing serial story. And they would probably work anyway because GRRM is an amazing writer, even if you were to consider them sequels. I admit, I get cautiously excited when I find out that an author I like is going to do another book with a setting or characters that I already love...but the anticipation is mixed with dread that they'll blow it somehow...and often they do.	”
	– Source

On early Half-Life 2 journeys

“	(The version of the HL2 script referred to in the Final Hours, in which the game starts on the Borealis) wasn't really the "first pass" at the script. We had many different starting places and many different storylines we kicked around. In that version, you started on the ice, on foot, near the ice-locked Borealis, and then you boarded it, made you way through the ship, the ship travelled out of the ice and you boarded a minisub that took you down to an underwater lab run by Dr. Mossman and an army of stalkers. The lab was flooded, you narrowly escaped in an escape pod, were rescued by rebels and fought your way to a weather station where you boarded a C40 that flew you to the city where you crashed into a skyscraper and worked your way down through the ruined building to ground level where...my memories become unclear because we never built most of this. We already felt it wasn't working and we were moving on to more compelling scenarios. So in answer to your question "how would this have worked, exactly?" I reply, "It wouldn't work." That's why we didn't make it. I'm not sure why people thought Borealis was placed toward the end of the game in the stolen version. (By the way, it was not a "leak." It was "theft.")	”
	– Source

“	...This diagram shows a later version of the story than the one I described. And the DC/Middle East settings were even earlier than the version that had Borealis in it. Don't forget, we had six years to churn through alternatives and lose our way over and over again.	”
	– Source

On the ages of the Half-Life characters

“	We've never disclosed, because we didn't want to pin it down precisely, because that just leads to painting ourselves into corners.	”
	– Source

On the Hazard Course timing in relation to Half-Life

“	The Hazard Course was done well before the rest of the game, at the very beginning of Gordon's employment.	”
	– Source

On the Nihilanth and the Resonance Cascade

“	The Resonance Cascade was not harnessed by aliens; it was an opportunity they exploited. First the Nihilanth and its kind came through, under desperate pressure of pursuit by the Combine; and eventually, more leisurely, the Combine tracked them and followed them through. So the poor Nihilanth was squeezed by enemies on both sides. In general, hunamity's experiments with technologywere noticed and attracted unwelcome attention...like a fly suddenly twitching on a spider's web.	”
	– Source

On the return of Arne Magnusson in a future Half-Life game

“	Hi Rudy, Dr. Magnusson is one of my personal favorite characters, so personally I would always hope for his return. I have a soft spot for curmudgeons, since that's what I want to be when I grow up. Best, Marc Laidlaw	”
	– Source

On Vortigese

“	As for the vorts, I think it's just the passage of time. The first ones were purely an exercise in creature design. For hl2 we had to figure out how to give them a voice...working with an actor who had never heard the first game and didn't have any associations with the original creatures. In response to: Why does Vortigese sound gruff in the first game, yet in HL2 it's calm?	”
	– Source  (August 25, 2011)

On the Black Mesa satellite array

“	The sequence in Uplink was originally intended to be part of HL1. There was a satellite array which had to be active to tune the Lamdba portal. One section was in the Lambda core, one was in earth orbit, and one was in Xen (demonstrated in Blue Shift). Since the events of Uplink got splintered off the main game, this required some "other" Gordon Freeman to handle the Uplink sequence, while the "real" Gordon Freeman was on his way to the Lambda core. The events of expansions and side missions can be considered as taking place in splinter universes, sometimes running parallel to the main HL1 story, sometimes diverging wildly. Just one of the many side effects of the initial disaster.	”
	– Source  (September 26, 2003)

On proper names for Xen creatures

“	I think the reason those critters didn’t get actual names is that none of us knew what we were doing. I tried to change obviously bad names for things during development, but basically stuck with the names the team had given them before I got there…I didn’t realize any of it was going to be public or visible outside the company. For the Prima Guide it occurred to me to try and catch up and name some things, but naming things long after the fact is really hard and they tend to be terrible…for instance, what we called headcrab zombies is referred to in like one location as “mawmen.” It’s a terrible name and naturally (thank god) nobody ever used it. But development was done at that point so it didn’t matter. Vortigaunts was a good name and it stuck, and it’s fortunate because they became pretty important going on. We didn’t need names for the others because we never saw them again. Alien grunts is an example of something that is just descriptive, like a name of the AI entity and model, and had no more work put into it. There’s not really an interesting story about all that.	”
	– Source  (October 4, 2017)

On Half-Life Novelizations

“	Hi Bradley. There are many reasons why there probably won't ever be any HL books. I could write them myself, but honestly that energy is better spent on games. We wouldn't farm the books out to an outside writer; if we found someone clever enough to solve all the problems of writing such a thing (including the ones you list), we would probably just want them here working on the games as well!	”
	– Source

On Valve's story-telling process and Episode Three

“	Thank you for writing Brad...We prefer to address such questions through the games themselves. But you are in luck. These are some pretty hefty questions so bear with me as I try my best to address them for you. Understand, firstly, that Half-Life 2 and the Episodes were not projects that we had originally planned to pursue. On both occasions our decisions were based off of consumer feedback, and our own personal evaluation following each game's release. Upon release, we were not expecting the sheer scale of critical acclaim that Half-Life 1 was to receive. We had never conclusively determined beforehand whether or not we should pursue a sequel. As such, we decided to finish that game's story with something relatively open-ended. It was an ending that did not necessarily scream the need for a sequel, but one which left the door open for it should we have decided we wanted to pursue it. Which we did. In answer to your first question, no, we have not had Half-Life's story fleshed out since day one. We had ideas, inclinations, and concepts but certainly nothing distinct or concrete. For example, we knew that ultimately, sequel or no sequel, something far worse lay beyond Nihilanth, and we very subtly highlighted that on several occasions throughout the game. But make no mistake; we had no idea that it was going to be the Combine that would be that greater foe. So no, we had not worked out any particulars beforehand. You might recall that Half-Life 2 went through a number of design iterations before we managed to solidify its narrative. You say that the consensus is that our silence regarding Episode Three is due to our inability or difficulty in writing up a suitable story for the game? I admit I find that rather perplexing. When we had completed the final story for Half-Life 2, and when we decided to under-take the prospect of delivering episodic content to our audience, we knew that moving the story along in denser packages called for a more refined process. Issues needed to be addressed. Questions needed to be addressed. Answers needed to be given. We began writing a rough draft for the Episodes in very early 2005. We had a direction we wanted to take, an overarching story we wanted to tell, and very specific questions we wanted to resolve. Telling a story in context with the gameplay we want to explore does not always work. Our medium has a great deal many more restrictions than, say, a book or a film. Books, for example, have no such external variables. With a game, you need a perfect equilibrium between the story you are telling and the gameplay you are offering. That is a complicated and constantly evolving task for us. We have a Bible of sorts. We know now all about the most important things in our story. So, no, in that sense I suppose we do not make it up as we go along. As I said, however, the story does not always bode well with what we want to deliver in terms of gameplay. The uncertainty is in our ability to move the greater story along in relation to that. That is where the difficulties lie. Your fears about our ability to write and deliver the final chapter of the story for the arc are unfounded. We have had this particular story fleshed out since before Episode One was released. Our ‘silence' as you have opted to call it has nothing to do with the story we have written. Now, your next question. I believe I answered this before through an email. I am not certain whether that was you or not. Perhaps I am wrong. You can sort of get lost in the countless emails that arrive daily badgering you for information you just cannot divulge. Half-Life 1 is very much a part of this singular over-arching story that we are currently telling. However, I can see why a number of people may feel differently. Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 are two very different games fundamentally. There is a drastic difference in setting, characters, and technology. But they are very much directly and prominently related, and I hope that will become clearer for you as time goes on. In the end, does making such a distinction really matter? I suppose it depends on those people whose opinions on this matter are preferable to them. If people wish to see Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 as being separate story-arcs than I see very little reason to discredit them because it is ultimately irrelevant in the context of the games. As to your third question. I am sorry, Brad, but I cannot talk about Episode Three, I am afraid. Nor do I wish to cause any confusion among the fans. We tend to confine explaining these things within the actual games as opposed to emails. In the end, they have to speak for themselves. Rest assured, however, that Episode Three is bringing to a close a great many aspects of the story that has been lingering on for the past - oh, I don't know – decade or so. I sincerely hope that it will be worth it for you. Until then, hang on tight. I hope I have been able to calm some of your overly stimulated craniums. In the meantime, this is where I get off. Best wishes. Marc Laidlaw.	”
	– Source

On the expansion packs

“	Dear Bradley, I don't really need to see or comment on comments or opinions of this sort...there's just too much of it out there to get involved in. However, as I've said in the past, Gearbox got its initial concept for OpFor from us (Gabe suggested the parallel story as a way to prevent them from having to build new resources, and because there's something cool about the Rashomon approach). Gearbox disagreed with us on some major elements (for instance, it felt important that they make Adrian and his squad "good guys" by forcing a confrontation early on with the "bad guy" soldiers who've been killing everyone in HL). Randy felt this was unnecessary. So they really took over the story for themselves, while hitting on a few key moments that seemed like a good idea at the time. (Nuking Black Mesa for instance.) By the time they got to Blue Shift, we trusted them enough to have a freer hand with the materials and we waited to see what they came up with--I remember being thoroughly delighted with it. Decay was another one where they just played around, and the only conversation I had with Randy about it was whether it would be okay to show the trash compactor sequence. As I recall, they wanted to do this as an homage, and I was a bit worried they were wearing out people's interest by reworking on HL material, but as long as they didn't introduce any outright conflicts, then I didn't object. Basically, we trusted them to be good game designers, and gave them a lot of freedom without worrying about how we were going to make sense of this later. We did not have anything like the final version of HL2 worked out in our minds at the time, so we couldn't exactly say "You can't do that because that makes no sense to the Combine timeline we have planned." We didn't have a Combine timeline. Finally, there was to have been yet another parallel story told from the point of view of a "Junior G-Man," which was partly prototyped by a crew that later formed the core of Infinity Ward. This turned into a game where you went through Black Mesa with the Team Fortress characters as sidekicks. The fact that we treated this idea seriously should give you a pretty good sense of how little we worried about canon or consistency at the time. It does not make sense to try and retrofit any kind of consistency on those older games except insofar as they give us interesting fodder for making new games. For what it's worth, the only thing I wrote in OpFor (insisted on writing) is the G-Man's dialog. I wish this would end it here, but I'm sure I will get an almost identical email tomorrow from someone who did not read your post! Well, it's all fun. I'm happy people can still get worked up about these completely fabricated characters and events. Yours, Marc	”
	– Source

On the choice in Half-Life

“	Thanks for writing, Brad. It's an interesting question because it's not something that I have elected to dwell on. Understand that the ending we wrote for Half-Life 1 was something that we thought at the time to be self-contained. Any details whatsoever that we had of doing a sequel were hazy at the very best because, you know, we were caught up in developing and shipping our very first game ever. So when we shipped Half-Life 1 with that ending, there were never any clear ideas of where we were going to take it because we didn't feel as if we were going to take it anywhere in the first place. As such, the choice was arbitrary. It didn't matter what you chose because we never intended to follow up on it. Looking back on it now, however, having done Half-Life 2 and two of its subsequent episodes, that stance can no longer holds its own, can it? So, in answer to your question, I'm going to have to say that the choice the G-Man offered you at the end of Half-Life 1 was not a choice. It was an ultimatum that had only one inevitable outcome; you work for him. It was never about the G-Man giving Gordon one last test to prove his worth, and if he were to fail that test G-Man would, almost literally I suppose, throw him to the wolves. Gordon had already passed the 'test'. He had survived Black Mesa, he had become a hero, and he became the tool the G-Man wanted. You don't just throw away that opportunity because he may pick the wrong choice. That's not practical. That's not what we know of the G-Man. Take Alyx, for example. There was no choice for her. Nor did she really exemplify any kind of usefulness to the G-Man. She was only a girl at the time she was taken. But he still took her and ultimately that's what it comes down to. I also seem to recall a certain line from Half-Life 2 where the G-Man talks about free choice being an illusion. Yes, that sounds about right. Half-Life 2, nevertheless, sees you working for him. The choice – whatever choice, that is – that you made in Half-Life 1 ultimately becomes obsolete. It's meaningless. Half-Life 2 follows no other avenue. There is no alternative. So any choice he may have offered you was a ploy. A trick. You would have worked for him anyway. Best Wishes, Marc Laidlaw	”
	– Source

On Eli in Half-Life and Half-Life 2

“	No, Brad, the scientist arguing with the G-Man was certainly not Eli Vance. Eli was, as you pointed out correctly, the chap who first told you to reach the surface and seek aid. I'm pretty sure we made that explicitly clear in Half-Life 2, unless I'm very much mistaken. Any plot holes that people have supposedly identified are not holes – merely gaps that we have intentionally refused to clarify until such an appropriate time comes along that it can be done so in the games when it's relevant. I understand that a certain level of confusion may arise in regards to the aspects you highlighted but, as I have mentioned to you before in previous emails, it isn't worth scuttling over. Half-Life 1 may have started on a whim and ended on a whim, but it led to a whole series of sequels. And although elements from those sequels were certainly not conceived at the time the original game was shipped, they were ultimately constructed in a logical manner that did not disrupt ‘continuity', and I use that term lightly because I'm not particularly comfortable with labeling things as such. I certainly understand your frustration. We get a lot of those questions daily. Best Wishes. Marc Laidlaw	”
	– Source

See also

• References:Marc Laidlaw emails