The Untold Story of The Combine Invasion | Cut Slideshow Briefing | FULL Half-Life Lore 

Rise and shine.

Game has been out for nearly two decades and this guy is still pulling out unseen content.

I think some things that killed the slideshow idea were "Who took these photos" and "How did Eli get them" and "Maybe we should show, not tell"

The ideas of the Xen creatures appearing at random everywhere is so scary. The icthyosaur in the pool while children were swimming is brutal like something I would expect from Prey 2006.

Personally I like how Valve did things in retail as opposed to the slideshow presentation. While we didn't get as much detail compared to having the slideshow, I appreciated the contextual and in-world bits detailing what had happened even if it didn't include the full story. A slideshow presentation where they sit the player down and simply explain everything is not as engaging to me personally compared to seeing pictures and newspapers that detail certain major events that happened in between games. It also leaves Valve free to come up with new ideas that facilitate future stories they can tell such as HL Alyx. Learning more about the lore and story in a more engaging way to me is always the way to go.

A slideshow would have been disastrous. Half Life heavily relies on "Show, don't tell". This would have broken this rule. It would have been very immersion-breaking lore-dumping.

I remember reading a while ago that a lot dialogue and downtime with friendly characters was cut out of the game because beta testers disliked noncombat segments and started getting restless. You were supposed to spend a lot more time in Black Mesa east and get filled in on a lot of lore originally. I like beta testing for games, as that is a great way to stomp out bugs or make certain areas more engaging. But on this occasion, I feel like Valve took away too much lore.

Honestly, I would kill for a Half Life mini campaign based during the 7 hours war.

Raising the Bar is a very fascinating book that's packed with lore. I enjoy reading it quite often. The story about the character faces that were used in the game is one of my favorites. The "Your face in a game" ad was funny.

I've been a subscriber of your channel for your lore videos for a while now, and I wanted to thank you for your amazing videos. You continue to show us details about these games that are completely new to us, even now!

I've always wanted somebody to animate or paint what the slideshow briefing couldve looked like, i think its a pretty interesting piece of HL lore that couldve probably fit the retail game but im happy nonetheless! Thank you for the video!

Something shows up in my living room unannounced, I'm feeding it 9mm until I can get to the heavy artillery in the safe room. Whatever's outside can take its chances. Cool piece of video. The ins and outs of this game's lore never ceases to amaze me. Nice work!

You know, the 7 hour war and the time between Half Life and Half life 2 really is the most interesting nerve cluster of events. It really deserves more attention! Thanks for making this video, I had no clue about the slide show and wholeheartedly agree! We could've gotten something like that in Kleiner's lab or Black Mesa East! I do think that they developed that time a little more and, while I do like the idea of having these wonderful images of the nightmarish quality of the first hours and days of the alien attacks, I think I prefer the imagery of the portal storms, the initial days of humanity trying to survive in cities while under siege by aliens, only to suddenly have the portal storms grow more dire and the combine to invade through portals in the sky. Plus, as interesting as the air exchange is, I think the birth suppression fields and Nova Prospect are more compelling. The heart of the combine really is just stripping earth of it's resources, and finding the most optimal way to convert humanity into another tool in the Combine armada. I love the little expansion we got on the Combine's development and experimentation with humans during HL:A. I really hope we get a new Half Life story from Valve soon! I really badly want to play through some kind of extended 7 hour war story. Starting off with the Black Mesa resonance cascade, the portal storms. Surviving through that only to have to team up with a proto-resistance to secure Ravenholm as a stronghold against the invading Combine.

Your editing is awesome man. The b roll you create is so well done. Thanks for the vid!

The ideas of the Xen creatures appearing at random everywhere, even inside buildings, is nightmare fuel. Love this video. Just a question, where did you get the "gameplay footage" of the seven hour war and post black mesa incident in cities?

It's clear a lot of work goes into these. Again, thankyou :)

"all you can do is flee" Welcome to America. My .45 is to get me to my crowbar in the garage. That bullsquid is in deep shit.

They probably cut the slideshow since it was basically a cutscene, and one of Half-Life's core philosophies was to never do cutscenes that take control away from the player. A slideshow feels like it would be a way to skirt that rule, rather than properly honoring it.

Ok fine. Ill subscribe! Damn I love Half Life lore and this channel is just a ... *chefs kiss*

I feel a slideshow might've been a bit repetitive in multiple runs of the game but if, perhaps, the information was spread throughout Eli's scrapyard for the inquiring explorer, I think that would've benefitted more. Imagine newspaper slips revealing what would've been covered in the slideshow, arrayed in a sort of timeline pinned to a board. Hell, maybe this way they could add in tidbits of lore for other parts of the world, implying Eli and those who passed through his Scrapyard have been to or come from countless locations. A report on the appearance of a Citadel where the houses of parliament were in the UK, with a similar news report for, say, Rio de Janeiro but written in Brazillian. Valve likes environmental storytelling, and I'd say this is very much environmental storytelling. Though, I suppose with the technology of the time, they couldn't have had these as actual textures that could be easily read; you'd either need a scope to be just about able to read it, or it would have to be done someway else, such as just popping the text on screen or something, which I doubt Valve would do.

Hey thanks man, on your last video I almost asked exactly for this, keep up the good work!

please don´t stop with these videos, i´ll support every single one of them. I even have a Resistance Grafitti and a combine tattooed :D HL is amazing! thank you for ur amazing work good sir!

Man, I'm currently going through your playlist "The Lore behind the Half-Life & Portal Universe" and I just came here (one of your latest videos) to thank you. I listen to you while working, and I have to say, you're the best "companion" ever. What I really like is that I can enjoy your videos on my second monitor AND on my first monitor. Usually, RU-vid content are best suited for one or the other, but not yours: Both are equally good. It's just great. I did miss the g-man easter eggs, though. I guess I'm gonna have to rewatch everything on my first monitor when I get the time. Anyway, thank you. It means a lot to me that they are people out there that can help me get through the tediousness of a 3D artist job. I love my job! But it sure gets tedious sometimes.

i love how gordon just sits looking incredibly unimpressed and annoyed lol

Sky I’ve been watching your half life lore vids for so long and they really helped me when I was at my lowest a while back Thanks for all your dedication you are the goat

Love your videos man love half life 2used to play it with my older brother as a kid and only just found a copy of it! Your videos have been a daily thing for me while I waited for it to show up in the mail

ohhhh boy! That is going to be fun to watch! I'll bring the popcorn 🔥🚀🔥💯💯

Horriffic facts: ichthyosaurs might be able to crawl on land Bullsquids would either eat or r@pe their prey Houndeyes would be stunning victims as packmates rushed in and clawed them to death Theres early gameplay footage in hl1 of a barnacle not having a fully extended tongue making it even hadder to notice.

Although it was cut I had always presumed this had happened, though made up more of Combine forces than Houndeyes and Bullsquids.

I don't even have to watch the whole thing this is great job . Just when we thought you couldnt surprise us anymore

Personally I feel like this sequence if it were told in its entirety would be a bit of a sloppy lore dump. Why would the resistance have an introductory slideshow prepared for an event they have all lived through? What would have been better if they had to include this sequence would have been footage from a single source, perhaps the camera footage of someone who perished around the time it was all kicking off. That way you could show the Xen aliens appearing on Earth and the Combine invasion in a more brief and believable way.

Speculation if any valve half life games come out where we fight the combine: City 17 is occupied by the well known civil protection soldiers and combine soldiers which come in variety standards cause they suit the protection to the city. Before city 17 was finished on its construction, it was occupied by the standard qz stabalization teams for that time due to them being meant for quarantined areas being sealed off and cleaned. This further speculates that maybe in other cities or before city 17 was finished, there were dozens of other varients of soldiers or synthetics that occupy specific parts of the city inside it or outside. Maybe there arent that many varients in hl2 because the combine choose not to put that manu recources into protecting the cuty using only liminial amount of recources on purpose.

Holy hell that was a great video

Another great video brother.

8:13 "You hearin bro rn?"

There are a lot of Orwellian elements in 'Half-Life 2'. The slideshow kind of makes me think of Winston Smith reading the book that O'Brien had given him.

I'm so happy they cut this! The whole mystery of the combine and trying to piece together what happened added so much to the game for me.

The problem is... This goes against how Half life shows VS tells. In the base game we see what the combine has done by seeing the draining seas and such. It also helps the mystery this way.

Keep up the good work.

Dude, this is a masterpiece

THANK YOU FOR THIS

The "Beta," setting was if Gordon was in stasis for 35 years instead of 10.

I think this sequence would have been far too exposition-heavy. The photo descriptions beckon 'why were they filming?' And how did they get such perfect camera angles of tragedy? Furthermore, I think a big part of the horror of half life 2 is that you have no idea whats going on. You don't understand the scale, and as far as you know city 17 is the largest, safest city left. You're in the same shoes as most resistance members; you're in the dark.

Damn skyrionn be getting every drop of half life lore Amazing job

one day, theres going to be a Fan Game that will show us the 7 Hour War

bro, you are to under rated.

*If 2003 half-life 2 beta didn't leaked by german hacker, Game would be: Horror-science fiction-Action.*

Hot take: l think the retail version is way darker then beta version

Loved it

So much story in HL. It would be interesting if they made a tv show.

It's still one of the best hits of the 90ties..!

Rise and shine...is that what Zeus said to Helios, everyday at 5 am?

From the sounds of it I'm glad they cut it. It sounds like it'd end up being a 20 minute exposition dump which would slow the game to a standstill. The newspaper clippings do enough I feel for those who are exploring the environments.

Can’t wait to watch this

After learning about this Slideshow Briefing and the Air Changer (aka. Nova Prospect)I have two Questions: Why was the Slideshow kicked Out and why was Nova Prospect changed so much? The Slideshow seemed to me (as you already pointed out) as a good way of telling about the Things that we're going in between the Games. And Nova Prospect... well I never really liked that Level very much so I really would like to See what they had planned in the Beta. I somehow Like the concept of the Air Changer being the Main threat.

3:47 audio name?

The legend says, that Eli's original slideshow speech was: "Life on the Earth was bright and shiny until that one day, when the Aliens invaded. The Combine put the Citadel in the middle of New York. We shot the Citadel, but it didn't die... The creator of Black Mesa surrendered Earth under 7 minutes. Now they have filled our streets with dark air and gritty skies. You must fight them, Gordon."

Hi, can you pls do lore on Elite unit 3650 aka Bad Cop

I wish a recap was put at the beginning of Half Life 2 because half the time I was wondering what the hell happened?

I never really questioned a lot about the world of HL. HL2 was the first game in the series i played. I never had a PC growing up or access to the internet but while I was working at a Game X Change i heard the guys i worked with saying something about the cake being a lie. I didn't get it. While I worked there though I got a PS3 and with it i added internet to the cable and was finally able to browse the web for the first time ever. I found out what memes were and all sorts of stuff like that. This was in the late 00's and I was in my 20's. After some time a copy of The Orange Box came into the store and i bought it just so that I could play Portal. HL2 and the episodes seemed interesting to me but I didn't touch them for months because I felt like a shooter would be really difficult to play and very scary. After a long time though curiosity won out and I tried HL2. It was quite interesting since before that my experience with shooters had been games on the PS1 like MoH and Doom. TBH i didn't really pay attention to the story or the environment until much much later on when appreciating game worlds became a kind of hobby for me.

1:07 - isn't that a building of Moscow State University (minus the statues and obelisks)?

The fact we've never gotten a solid game or mod based in the 7 hour war is such missed potential. The setting is perfect for a super challenging survival horror mod.

Rise and shine, bae, Skyrionn just dropped a new banger!

I hope some cut content might be added in Half Life RTX. It probably wont, but given how they are re-doing models to look proper in RTX, come cut content reimplementation would be cool

The thumbnail says slideshow, I am curious to know does that translate to a tonal shift in this video making? I guess I will have to watch and see 🍻

Has anyone asked themselves why Barney turned up right after Gordon’s arrival?

Dear Skyrionn, i do have a real crowbar near my door entrance 😀.

And Gordon has usual be like: 👁🤐👁

Gordon Freeman reminds me of an alternate universe version of Walter White from Breaking Bad... The former is a genius in Physics, the latter is one in Chemistry. 😂😂😂 I myself am not smart enough for protagonist syndrome 😅😅

Ngl i think the slideshow was meant to be a placeholder in the script rather than an actual method of exposition

Hope to god we get a proper sequel to HL2 I know we have Alyx but it’s not the same

Meanwhile, at the Apature Enrichment Center - testing continues and is not at all interrupted by any of these events lol

Not gonna lie i think the combine empire or the universal union as they called was resembling the humanity's ego and ignorance and our own worst dictators we had throughout the history..... Well anyways its nice you still always do half life series documentary just hope we still around when half life 3 come out 💀

I can see why the slide show was scrapped, it's an exposition dump and lousy storytelling in any visual medium. This breaks the “Show don’t Tell” rule even though it's a slide show showing what happened. You (the player) are still being told a lot of information about what happened through a third party. This also would have slowed down the game's pacing during this part and taken away too much of the urgency. After arriving at Elie’s lab you’re already given a big info dump as the characters build game and story tension with their interactions and tell you what the next objective is. Then you go into the training space with Dog and Alex, which is a very important part in my opinion. Not only does it teach you how to use your new weapon (which is one of the strongest/coolest weapons in the game) but it builds up your (the player) relationship with not just Alex but also Dog. That’s why her almost fatal death later is so impactful and Elie's death is also so heart-breathing. Your time with Alex is more important. Would it be nice for us the players to know what happened, yes. Is this something Gorden would most likely want to know, yes. Is this something we or Gorden need to know in order to motivate us to achieve the next objective, no. Through our experience up to this point in the game, it is firmly established that “Combine is BAD” and needs to be defeated. All this exposition dump does is reestablish what we already know, “Combine is BAD!” It's nice to know but could be explored more in a spin-off game like Blue Shift, where we follow Barny after he escaped from Black Masa. Also, it would have taken control of Gordon away from the player something Valve has a rule against in the Half-Life games. The only time you are unable to move as Gordon is when G-man or the advisors stop him. This builds an impression of helplessness that G-man/the advisors have power over you/Gordon. It shows how formidable they can be.

I'm happy the slideshow was removed from the final version. It's direct exposition. And everytime direct exposition happens a kitty dies somewhere. Plus, there's no reason for Eli to explain things to Gordon. He doesn't know Gordon hasn't been in the world the last 10 years. Great narrative is that one that is not verbalized. If half life lore is so fascinating is precisely because it's ambiguous, dark and unclear.

I am really glad the slideshow was cut. Exposition of that type makes not for a good story let alone a passively told one.

*13:07** Also Speak About Kids: Half Life 2 Beta you can see kids.*

Your explanation of how the Citadels were constructed goes against previous videos you've made.

Dark and gritty 🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔊🔊🔊

I love it

darg and gribby

The was could make a good episode in itself.

What could've been...

I beat you to it, i already liked this video before you asked!

They should've kept this lore.

Im glad they scrapped slideshow idea. Whole sequence just feels redundant, lame and over the top at the same time. Like imagine you boot up the game and there is gman monologue, and then you walk for 10 minutes and then out of nowhere Eli shows up with his 39 slides lore dump pptx. Valve made a right desicion to stick with enviromental storytelling.

So these are canon events?

I can see why they removed this, it eoulf have just been the player sat in a room as a character info dumos, for a lot of people it would bave been borin to them

I thought beta Eli was Eli maxwell and looked completely different you should probably clarify that this is about the beta storyline and isn't canon to the main timeline

time doctor freeman

While I absolutely love your coverage on this, I've got to disagree with you on "The Slideshow" being a good way to fill in the gaps between HL and HL2. Valve's storytelling has always been about showing information rather than explicitly telling the audience what is happening, and this sequence would have been the antithesis of that philosophy. Best example I can think of, what hits harder: being told that The Combine have drained the oceans, or seeing beaches which go off far into the distance with beached ships littering the landscape, and working it out yourself through the level design? It's definitely a personal choice thing, but I really like the mystery behind Half Life's universe being one which the player can piece together just by paying attention to the world around them rather than having everything spelled out for them.

Ironically, The problem was the players. All of this stuff got cut out of the game because players did not care about the lore at the time. They only cared about the gameplay. Everyone besides me that had the beta was bitching about all of the so called “cut scenes”. I was one of the few that really enjoyed the story.

42 k views 71k likes. Not bad

A slideshow full of exposition would have been a really bad way to handle the backstory. Show, don't tell.

Even united Capitalist exploiters lackey armies didnt match the power of Combine.

Deleted Scenes Revealed

America is gone but can we see what happened there? How it's now? We don't know

Bro I got a P226 .40SW next to my bed. A bullsquid teleports in here (or anything else for that matter), it's going to have a pretty bad day. Haha Edit: 'Murica

scary

this is not lore-accurate, the military was doing good, they were killing the aliens with no problem until the more coordinated Combine force arrived.