The Slideshow Briefing

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The Slideshow Briefing is a short story written by series writer Marc Laidlaw early in Half-Life 2's development and later featured in the book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar as well as its uncorrected proof. Although it did spell out the historical background of the events occurring before Half-Life 2, Laidlaw considered this to be a clunky way of delivering exposition and was happy to lose it. He had hoped by describing these scenes that Valve artist Dhabih Eng might illustrate them.

Synopsis

This section is in the middle of an expansion or major revamping.

Story

The following is a reproduction of the original text of the story.

Eli powers up the slide projector. A white image flashes on the wall of his room, where he has hung a white sheet. ELI Let's see now...where does this start? The following images appear as he speaks: Aerial view of Black Mesa Inbound train Test Chamber ELI Black Mesa. Let's not dwell on that. Nobody's blaming you. We all have to accept some responsibility...what matters is what we do next. I'll get to that. After the disaster, well...let's just say, the ripples kept spreading. The next few scenes have the feel of Norman Rockwell in Hell: Headcrabs leaping onto shoppers from supermarket shelves Bullsquids chasing a family from a suburban house; pack of houndeyes roaming down Elm Street Gargantua overturning a tractor as a farmer flees across a Nebraska field Ichthyosaur materializing in a public pool, right under a nose-pinching kid who just jumped off the high-dive ELI The countryside, the suburbs, all those hard-to-patrol places, got pretty much uninhabitable. People started crowding into cities for protection. People clustered at a cyclone fence topped with razor wire, city skyline rising behind them; cops stand tensely on guard towers, blasting away at headcrab zombies outside the perimeter. ELI There was an illusion of safety, for a time. And then the Citadels appeared. It happened in a split second, all over the world. A chunk would disappear from the center of a city, to be replaced an instant later by one of these...headquarters for the Combine. Invasion Central. City-center completely cored, buildings sheared off, an enormous pit appearing out of nowhere, and people falling into it The same view, with a Citadel now towering at the center of all ELI Say hello to your new masters. Cremators, striders, Combine machines pouring out of the Citadel into the city. Combine dropships tearing through the air. ELI Oh, we resisted. Tanks, soldiers, human army advancing on the Citadel The same troops reduced to ashes, completely obliterated ELI Earth put up a fight that lasted all of seven hours. A smoldering Pentagon-shaped pile of ashes ELI And then, one man who had seized all the power one man can seize in a crisis, used that power to arrange our surrender. The Consul, at the foot of the Radio Tower, wearing a headset, hands raised high to the dropships as he proclaims Earth's surrender ELI They call him the Consul now. It worked out fine for him. He speaks for the Combine; he shares in their power. As for the rest of us... Views of City 17, citizens slouching along Air Exchange belching black fumes Drained seabed with beached ships, whale bones ELI Well, you've seen the state of things. They're replacing the air with something we can hardly breathe. They're draining the ocean. We don't know if they're preparing the planet for new residents, or just stripping it of every possible resource. All we know is that we have to stop them. And that's where you come in, Mr. Freeman. It's up to you to.... The projector goes dark.

Gallery

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  The Slideshow Briefing.