Raising the bar Vignettes

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This page includes all the RTB story Vignettes transcribed and in picture format.

Proposed opening/Length: 2 pages/Date: June 2nd 2000

A proposed opening to Half-Life 2 by Marc Laidlaw. The intent being to show the 10 year timeskip between the first and second game. Famously used in most beta mods. The G-man and you sit on a green hill overlooking a meadow, as the game shifts and teleports you through time, turning the earth into the wasteland and then the rise of the citadel. At the end of the story you walk onto the train at the beginning of the game, and time places you into the current world.

Transcription

TIMELAPSE OPENING [Proposed 6/2/00]

The basic idea is to convey the passage of time between HL1 and HL2 visually, using our new terrain ans shader effects and the teleport tricks we used in the original Test Chamber Disaster sequence. It should be a direct continuation of the end of HL: You are still in the G-Man's custody and control, still basically suspended outside normal spacetime, which makes it fairly easy to say that 10 years have passed in what for you is the blink of an eye.

FADE IN:

EXT. WIDE GREEN MEADOWS

You fade in standing on a slight rise in the midst of beautiful rolling hills. The grass is green; at your feet is a small flowing brook; the hills are crowned with occasional willow. The sky is blue and fresh; birds are singing in the trees. In the distance, on the horizon, is a modern city. It's an idyllic scene. You can almost smell the fresh air. We show our terrain in all its splendor.

The G-MAN appears just behind you-or perhaps he has been standing there all along. You are still contained in his sphere of influence, meaning that you can turn and move in any direction, but only for a very short distance. You cannot leave the crown of the hill.

G-MAN: Hello again, Mr. Freeman. Sorry to keep you waiting. Not that the passage of time has had any meaning for you, but elsewhere it's a different story. I've been wondering how to explain what the world has become in your absence. I decided simply to show you.

There is an odd quickening, a sense of metamorphosis in the environment. The sky begins to darken ominously. The vivid green color begins to leach from the grass and leaves. The bird song is fading. The sound of wind begins to sweep up. The running water in the creek sinks into its bed. G-MAN: Don't blink or you will miss it. Sometimes everything can change overnight. There is a sudden flash. Suddenly everything has changed. The earth is brown; the sky is gray The streambed is dry and black. The trees are twisted skeletons now. The sound of birds has been replaced by the distant cries of houndeyes and bullsquids. A crow crouches in the black willows, cawing. On the horizon, the city appears grey, no longer lively. A pall hangs over it. In the sky, streaks of deadly light, dark aircraft. Explosions bloom on the horizon. Louder, louder, the explosions come closer, closer. A Combine dropship screams overhead and there is another explosion, surrounding you.

Throughout all the changes, the G-Man continues to talk calmly.

G-MAN: Don't be nervous, Mr. Freeman. We're not really here...not yet anyway.

ANother flash engulfs you, and as it fades you find the land has changed again. The earth is utterly blasted. The streambed is choked with ashes. The trees are gone. There is a new sound in the wasteland where you stand, an ugly insect chirring. The city is a blackened ruin, its surviving towers tilted and about to fall. The sky is choked with smoke. From the center of the city, an alien spire begins to rise, towering over the damaged human structures, A light flares out from the spire, like a beacon.

G-MAN: Ten years is a long time for most people-a lifetime for some. Long enough to heal the first scars of the whip. Long enough to forget the little things, like the taste of fresh air. But you remember, don't you, Mr. Freeman? It was no time at all, for you.

As he talks, a strip of shining rail begins to extentd across the land in front of you, pointing toward the city. In the distance, you begin to hear the sounds of a train. It gets louder and louder as he speaks.

G-MAN: I think that covers just about everything. All that remains is to put you in the picture.


The Wasteland Train appears, slicing into view like a rusted knife. It squeals to a halt directly in front of you, and sits there hissing and ticking as it cools. A door opens in the side of the rear car.

G-MAN: All aboard, Mr. Freeman. Time waits for one man.


You climb aboard the train. There are several passengers on the car, but they are frozen in their seats, caught in mid-motion, completely unaware of you.

The door hisses shut. A moment later the sounds of movement commence. The train begins to crawl forward. The G-Man slides out of sight on the blasted hill. And the other passengers slowly, then abruptly, lurch back into life.

One of them, Samuel, looks up at you sharply.

SAMUEL: Hey, you startled me!

Direct images

The Slideshow Briefing/Length:2 pages/Date: Unknown

A sequence in which Eli Maxwell subjects Gordon to a slideshow showing what has happened between HL1 and HL2. The first page cuts mid paragraph and there is most likely pages missing due to the next included page not continuing from the last.

Transcription

  • Eli powers up the slide projector. A white image flashes of his room, where he has hung up a white sheet.

ELI: Let's see mow...where does this start?

The following images appear as he speaks:

  • Areal view of Black Mesa
  • Inbound train
  • Test Chamber'

ELI: Black Mesa. Lets 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...lets 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; 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

MISSING PAGE(S?) ELI: Say hello to your new masters.

  • Creamators, 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 reuced 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 about all the power a 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: The 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
  • 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 do 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.

Direct Images

Alyx Vingtte/Length:2 pages/Date: Unknown

Gordon meets alyx

Transcription

Direct Images

Now Arriving: City 17

Weather Control Vignette

Train to City 17 Introduction

In the Ant Lions Den

Old Friends

Scrapland