At 9/20/09 10:42 PM, burrito15 wrote:
At 9/20/09 07:45 PM, Rape-bot wrote:
And let's not forget Portal, which is set somewhere between the end of Half Life 1 and the end of Half Life 2: Episode 2.
Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Portal has something to do with Half-Life?!
It takes place in the same universe and hints that the laboratory complex it takes place in was being run by Black Mesa's major competitor and rival in the development of new technologies.
Most government contracts, it seems, where given to both companies, Black Mesa and Aperture Science Laboratories, with the companies intended to race to see who can make the better product faster. The difference is that Black Mesa would develop a realistic solution, while Aperture Science's answer would be far more whimisical, boardering on unchecked insanity. When they were contacted to create a method for defrosting Alaskan fuel lines, Black Mesa created a simple, sensible solution, while Aperture Science's project spiraled off into what resulted in a HAL 9000 - esque supercomputer AI named GLaDOS, under the logic that their product is superior to Black Mesa's effort because Black Mesa's "defrosts, and just that".
After the government presumably rejects their project in favor of Black Mesa's, Aperture Science installs GLaDOS in a large laboratory hidden in a forest somewhere in North America. They use her (the AI speaks with the voice of a woman) to help run tests on the development of their newest endevour, another race with Black Mesa to develop a usable teleporter.
At this point, Half Life 1 begins, with Gordan Freeman, a young Ph.D, arriving at the Black Mesa research to begin work on their almost complete teleportation chamber, however a malfunction causes a dimensional portal to open up, leading to an alien invasion. In Half Life 1, you fight off this invasion, however the transdimensional activity attracts an even more powerful race (calling themselves The Combine) to invade Earth and take over completely.
Life soon after the overthrow of Earth's governments, and the eventual revolution, in the basis of all of the Half Life 2 games.
Sometime before the invasion of The Combine, however, Aperture Science held a "bring your daughter to work day" at their super secret research base somewhere in the forests of North America, and Chell (the daughter of one of the employees) is brought with her father. This day is also the day that GLaDOS malfunctions and murders the entire staff of the complex, but saves Chell, and puts her in a stasis chamber for several years.
While she is in stasis, The Combine take over, apparently overlooking the complex in the forest (as it is within driving distance of the rest of society), possibly due to the fact that it appeared abandoned and offered them no useful purpose (which wouldn't make sense, considering The Combine's strategy of seeking out and absorbing all the most advanced technologies of the planets they conquer, but it's possible that GLaDOS simply hid or played dead during that time), although it is also possible that the hugely paranoid Aperture Science Laboratories hid the facility so well that it was never found in the first place, and considering The Combine was based in Eastern Europe, there's a very good chance that they had a looser control over the North American region, or didn't run it as strictly.
For whatever reason, the facility remained untouched throughout the invasion, and sometime in the near future, GLaDOS wakes Chell up, intending to toy with her by having her run through the dangerous and sadistic training exercises for the use of Aperture Sciences literal answer to the "weaponized teleporter" question, the portal gun.
And that's the setup to Portal.
In case I explained something wrong, or in a bad way, go ahead and check around on Wikipedia.
