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

How long he had slept—how he had even managed to sleep—Gordon was unsure. The sound of the tracks clattering somewhere underneath the boxcar must have lulled him. And he had been moving nonstop for so long now; no wonder exhaustion had finally claimed him. But suddenly the pitch of things changed. must have been some hint of it, reaching into his dreamless sleep like a premonition, for he woke a moment before there was any overt reason to awake. He was still alone in the munitions car, hidden among the crates and canisters, all of it gently shuddering from side to side, the smell of machine oil and the stink of diesel filling the air He was hungry, with his meal at Eli's now many hours behind him, and it was cold, as if the suit's regulators were not functioning properly. He was beginning to develop a dread that the HEV suit might crap out at any moment, leaving him stranded, with its mnemoflex joints frozen into a rigid state, its autolocks dead. Here he would lie, awaiting the arrival of the guards like the rest of the cold unmoving crates in the car.   But the dread had little time to develop, as the explosion cut it short.   The train rolled sideways, flung from the track. The crates that had shielded him now flew away from him, and he curled into a ball to let the suit protect as much of him as possible from the heavy containers. Even several of the cases strapped to the walls or bolted to the floors tore loose in the moment, the Immense torque shearing steel bolts clean off. Gordon came to rest as an alarm whistle shrilled; he had managed to land on top of a cabinet the size of a refrigerator. He could hear shouts, gunfire, more explosions in the distance. He stood up on the cabinet, reaching for the side loading door which was now directly overhead; he could barely reach it, and knew there was little chance that it would budge, even with better purchase.   Suddenly bootsteps clamored across the door. Paused. He imagined soldiers up above, swarming to protect their shipment. Something clanked down on the thick metal with a maddeningly familiar sound. Where had he heard it before?   The faint high-pitched whine of an activated detonator brought the memory into clear focus.   Gordon leapt for the farthest corner of the car, sheltered by the cases that had nearly killed him, hoping that now they would save his life. The blast came the instant he hit metal. Shrapnel seared the back of his head; there was an acrid tang that sent him up coughing. It was partially from the open air, partially from the explosive. He rose up involuntarily, wracked with fumes, and saw the night sky above him. The current ceiling (once wall) of the boxcar gaped inward like a scorched metal flower. There was a pair of legs dangling in past the sharpened petals. Legs sheathed in black, heavy boots swinging back and forth as if the wearer had just dropped down at the edge of a pond to fish. But instead of a fishing pole, there was a gun trained down on him, its laser sight picking him out in the smoldering dark. He shaded his eyes from the red beam, and heard a soft voice whisper something like, "Check him, Snitch."   Gordon gasped as a thing hopped down into the car and came toward him, hopping from crate to crate as it sniffed him out. It looked wet, permanently; the colors were of a toxic brilliance; he couldn't find the eyes, but it had far too many teeth. It crouched above him, flicked its tongue out for a taste, and he felt an acid welt begin to rise across his cheek.   "Don't move," said the person above him. "One bite and you'll be dead by your next breath."   Then he heard a thud, and the figure dropped in. He knew instantly—even with the heavy black gear, the belts of ammo, the goggles and the short-cropped hair—that it was a woman. She crept up until she was next to her pet. She made a click with her tongue, as if gentling a horse, and the thing wound around and flowed onto her shoulder, settling itself there like a glistening stole.   A light clicked on, blinding him. And she gasped.   "You!" she said. "What're you—"   At that moment they both heard footsteps outside—grinding through cinders, it sounded like. She switched off the light and he felt a gloved hand over his mouth. As if he needed silencing. The steps were coming closer, but there were no voices; they must have had a way of communicating silently. He had no doubt the car was being surrounded.   "All right" she whispered, "I'm going to trust you. I can use some help carrying stuff anyway. Take this, and come on up."   She unhooked something from her belt; Gordon felt a weapon pushed into his hand. He wasn't sure what it was, but he found a trigger, and that was enough to get started. She gave him her hand and he scrambled up onto the box as quietly as he could. She hooked her fingers over the edge of the blasted opening hauled herself up, knelt there in silhouette on the top of the car. As Gordon started up, she began yanking grenades from her belt and lobbing them down into the shadows around wherever the car had come to rest. The explosions were mixed with the sound of metal tearing and ragged screams. Gordon rose up beside her, firing down at the figures moving below. The faint light that pervaded the open tracts of wasteland gleamed on metal, but he couldn't be sure they weren't men as well. It was over in a few moments; she had an uncanny accuracy with the grenades that didn't seem to be entirely related to their advantage of height.   "More on the way," she said. "Big ones. Let's stock up and get out of here."   She ducked back into the boxcar. He heard a muffled explosion as she blasted open a container down below, then she started tossing smaller cases up to him. A moment later she was up again.   "Oh, I'm Alyx," she said, stuffing the cases into random pockets on her outfit. "l already know who you are. And I think I can probably guess where you're going."   She pointed out a mounded shape, just visible through the enveloping smog; it looked like the shell of a vast slumbering beetle; a streamlined mountain of corroded metal. From the density of the fumes, the stink in the air and the burning in his eyes, he suspected he had arrived at what Eli had called, "The Air Conditioner."   Alyx tensed and got to her feet, swinging her gun down into her hand. Something was coming. Out on the horizon, jaunting through the fog with a long-legged gait, more than one of them. He squinted, making out what looked like an enormous tripod, surmounted with a huge body, a faint sheen of lenses. He thought of Dog, briefly; one of Dog's cousins, at the height of its powers. There was a sullen flash deep in the eye of the distant thing, and suddenly he and Alyx were flung from the roof of the car. He came down hard in the cinders, lay there dazed for a moment, wondering where he was, until suddenly he felt tiny needles biting into his ear.   He came back to himself, pushing her little beast, Snitch, away from his head. The cub darted back, licking its jaws, baring the hypodermic teeth.   "She just gave you an adrenaline injection," Alyx said, holding out her arm as the thing climbed back up to her shoulder. "l didn't think you'd mind. Right now, we're going to need to run."   From the far side of the boxcar, the first of the tripods rose up and trained its eye upon them. The eye began to warm again, cycling up for another burst. Alyx had already scrambled away Gordon was on his feet and running an instant before the thought of flight crossed his mind.   The landscape was coated in a poisonous residue, cinnabar and sulfur and whatever other precipitates came sifting down from the Combine's atmospheric reprocessor. Caustic particles drifted in a steady snow. Gordon clambered up a slope that crumbled into greenish powder under his gloves. Alyx was firing at something from the top of the ridge, then she leapt down into a culvert holding a thin stream of acid. Gordon splashed in after her, thinking he saw silhouetted figures on the far side—wondering if they had seen him. Alyx moved quietly up the gulley, but as Gordon followed he heard movement behind them. Tall shapes, gleaming armor, bristling with weapons, appeared on the edge of the ravine. So much for the advantage of height. Alyx noticed them at the same time he did.   "Shit," she whispered. "Combine Elite."   They looked like metal, but their movements were muffled, almost silent Gordon never heard the squad that had dropped into the culvert ahead of them. All he knew was that suddenly they were surrounded....

Direct Images

Now Arriving: City 17

Weather Control Vignette

Train to City 17 Introduction

In the Ant Lions Den

Old Friends

Scrapland