Journal

3/31/2025: HALF-LIFE 2

Finished Half-Life 2 Ep 2 yesterday so now I've played the entire franchise (not including HL:Alyx bc I don't have any way to play a VR game) and now I don't know what to do with my time except wait for Half Life 3 (delusional moment)... However I plan on playing both portal games, since aperture science was mentioned in ep 2 so now I have to learn the portal lore, as well as some of the fangames/mods that I've heard good things about! Tomorrow I need to talk more about Half-Life 2 and the absolutely heartbreaking cliffhanger that just??? never gets elaborated on for 20 years??! Hoping there's more lore development in HL: Alyx that I'll get to learn about and that we'll eventually finally get Half-Life 3 :)

I would love to finally get an ending or at least some more info on what happens to the characters of Judith and Barney(my fav guy) bc neither of them appear in Ep 2 which was kinda a down side to that ep, although it was super great otherwise! They even built up the story of the Borealis and Alyx and Gordon going out to destroy(?) it, as well as potentially reconnect with Judith who, while not my favorite character, is really interesting to me! I would've loved to see her reaction to the news of what happened at the end of Ep 2, as well as continued development of her character and relationships with other characters like Alyx, the other scientists, and even Gordon. Now... Barney... I would've enjoyed it even if he only showed up briefly in Episode 2 like how he did in Episode 1. For example, he could've been the person who welcomed you to White Forest instead of just a random rebel! I would've even further connected the events of the two episodes as that would've implied that the train that Barney as well as all those rebels/civilians were on heading out of City 17 made it to White Forest as intended! It's so weird how Alyx and Gordon who went through a lot of side quests and obstacles somehow made it to White Forest before Barney did, meaning that either that train actually was heading to a completely different rebel base that just wasn't named, or something happened to it... meaning something bad happened to Barney :( ... or I guess he could've just been there in the background and just never showed up? Which would've been strange considering he's a main character? Or at least I always considered him to be one.