The new Half-Life game has been a long time coming, and thankfully, the general consensus in reviews has been pretty darn positive. In order to understand the endgame of Alyx, let’s walk through the events leading up to it, along with some context from previous games, seeing as Alyx is actually a prequel taking place roughly five years before the events of Half-Life 2.
RELATED: Teacher Uses Half-Life: Alyx for Creative Math Lesson
The Story So Far
The endgame of Half-Life: Alyx follows as such: Alyx is on her way to find a massive structure hovering above City 17, kept in place by a mass of cables, simply known as “The Vault” by the Combine, who are supposedly hiding a superweapon of sorts there. While en route, Alyx overhears some chatter about The Vault and gets a major hint about its contents: according to the chatter, someone who caused a lot of trouble during the Black Mesa Incident is locked inside–and this suggests that the “superweapon” is actually Gordon Freeman, the protagonist of Half-Life and Half-Life 2.
So Alyx enters a scary apartment area where time stands still, gravity is all over the place, and the building itself eventually splits into two: reality and a sort of mirror-world version. By entering the mirror world, Alyx is able to reach The Vault and see its contents for herself, leading to a major twist in the story: it’s not Gordon, it’s G-Man. The Combine had been dampening his powers with The Vault, but with Alyx’s intervention, G-Man is able to open up a doorway to another dimension and pull both Alyx and himself through.
G-Man deems Alyx “useful” and decides to reward her for saving him, though the reward is quite unique. She initially asks for the Combine to be removed from Earth, but that’s beyond G-Man’s power, so he offers an alternative. He’s able to actually show Alyx the future, namely the key moment in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 where her father Eli is killed by a Combine Advisor. And in so doing, G-Man also presents Alyx with the power to change her father’s fate.
She agrees, taking G-Man’s offer and effectively reversing that moment in Half-Life 2, saving Eli Vance’s life. Then G-Man more or less hires Alyx and puts her in stasis for a “future assignment,” ending her story for the moment. But then, after the credits roll, there’s a bonus scene. The game fast-forwards five years and once again players are looking at the end of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 through the eyes of Gordon Freeman, but things are different: Eli is alive, Alyx has vanished before their eyes, and Eli is angrily exclaiming that G-Man took her.
Eli resolves to kill G-Man and get Alyx back just as her robot dog arrives with a crowbar. Eli hands it to Gordon and grimly proclaims “we’ve got work to do,” before the game ends once and for all.
RELATED: Valve Working on a New VR Headset with Microsoft and HP
What it Means for the Series
Half-Life: Alyx is a prequel, so even though players aren’t any further along in the story than they were by the end of Half-Life 2, some fairly significant gaps have been filled in. Not only has Eli’s death been reversed, likely changing the direction of the game’s story a whopping 13 years after that cliffhanger ending first shook Half-Life 2 fans, but one of G-Man’s warnings has now been fully explained.
When G-Man snatches Alyx from the current timeline after helping her to save her father, he talks about how a “previous hire has been unable or unwilling to perform the tasks laid before him,” and thus Alyx’s abilities are required. That explains the events in Half-Life 2 when G-Man tries to take Gordon back after the Citadel explosion and is stopped by the Vortigaunts; he’s frustrated by this, and now it’s clear that Gordon’s “unwillingness,” opened up the job, so to speak, for Alyx.
G-Man also reveals in Half-Life 2 that he saved Alyx’s life during the Black Mesa Incident when she was a child, stating that “she was worth far more than the initial appraisal.” He also charges Gordon with getting Alyx to the facility seen at the end of Episode 2 (where her father is killed, and so on). G-Man’s reasoning for getting her there was never explained in that game, but now it’s clear he wanted her there so that their exchange at the end of Half-Life: Alyx could be possible.
Additionally, in the post-credits scene, Eli yells out “son of a bitch and his unforeseen consequences,” referencing a scene in Episode 2 where G-Man communicates through Alyx to Eli, telling them both to “prepare for unforeseen consequences.” Eli explains that G-Man said those words to him long ago, just before the incident, and that he’s the one who caused the incident (and thus the Combine invasion) in the first place. In correlation, the chapter of the first Half-Life where the Black Mesa Incident takes place is also called “Unforeseen Consequences.”
Thus, G-Man’s long-term meaning when he spoke of unforeseen consequences has now been made clear through the events and ending of Half-Life: Alyx.
Setting Up Half-Life 3
The ending to Half-Life: Alyx has also created a nice little setup for a proper Half-Life 3. Alyx is in the clutches of G-Man, Eli is most definitely alive and well, and players appear are all set to reprise their role as Gordon Freeman. It seems like a no-brainer that Gordon would once again be the protagonist for an eventual sequel and after Alyx and G-Man’s alterations, it’s looking like Half-Life 3 will pick up right at the now-changed ending of Half-Life 2.
Half-Life: Alyx was certainly a lot to absorb, but at the end of the day one of its main functions was building a sturdy bridge between Half-Life 2 and the sequel that one would hope Valve will eventually release.
Half-Life: Alyx is out now.
MORE: Half Life: Alyx Players Are Turning the Opening Scene Into a Meme
