Half-Life 2: Timeline

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Oct 17, 2007

Filed under: Game Reviews 14 comments

I did this same thing for Final Fantasy X a while ago. How long (as measured by in-game days) was Half-Life 2?

(Spoilers ahead, if you’re worried about spoiling a three year old game.)

At the opening, the lighting seems to suggest morning. You arrive at the train station and manage to get arrested by Barney, sent towards Kliener’s lab, jumped by Metrocops, and rescued by Alyx. Then the teleport goes wrong and you have to flee the city through the canals, and ride the boat to the dam. Fight the helecopter and then arrive at Black Mesa East near sunset. You meet Judith and Eli, and as it gets dark you learn how to use the Gravity Gun. End of day 1.

The Combine invade the compound and you have to take The Bad Way. You spend the night in Ravenholm and then move on to the mines. You emerge at dawn. You make your way along the tracks and intervene as the combine are attacking the first outpost. They give you the “car”, and you begin the long journey along Highway 17, all the way to the lighthouse. Help defend the lighthouse, and then navigate the sand traps in late afternoon. You have been awake for about 36 hours now, but you must still be feeling peppy because you move on to assault the Combine outpost without resting. End of day 2.

Antlions in tow, you penetrate the Combine defenses and assault Nova Prospect during the night. You fight waves of Combine, and then battle another huge antlion beast. You can only see a little slice of sky when you meet up with Alyx again, so it’s tough to judge the time of day. It’s overcast and dark, but not night. Let’s call it early dawn. You assault the place with Alyx and endure a couple of Combine assaults with the help of the auto-turrets. You find Eli and discover Judith’s betrayal. She steals Eli back and you teleport out of there.

The teleport sends you a week into the future, although it looks like you arrive at roughly the same time of day. It’s morning again when you emerge and Kliener explains about the revolt. You’ve been awake for 48 hours now, give or take. Time for rest? Nah. Let’s assault the Citadel! The battle to get there is long and intense. It takes all day, so that it’s sunset again when you face off against Dr. Breen. End of Day 3.

After three days of non-stop combat and exertion without food or sleep, Gordon at last gets a little rest. Wow. Theoretical Physicists are unbelievable badasses.

Episode One spoiler:

After a night of sleep underneath a pile or rubble at the base of the Citadel, Gordon wakes up and begins Episode One. It seems to end late in the afternoon that same day.

 


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14 thoughts on “Half-Life 2: Timeline

  1. Corsair says:

    Well, it’s not like they have roadside hotels in the wastelands of Post-Apocalyptic Earth.

  2. Phlux says:

    From gordon’s perspective, you’re probably about right about it being around 3 days, but in game-world time it was around 9-10 days, because there is about a 1 week span between when gordon enters the teleporter and when he re-appears.

    It passes for him instantaneously, but in his absense the resistance spends a week in uprise against the combine forces in city 17, which is party why the city is in such bad shape and barricaded like a warzone rather than an occupation center.

    Also, one could speculate regarding the properties of the HEV suit and/or the medkits that Gordon is constantly pounding. The suit has the power to heal him from poisons and administer morphine when injured, so I suppose IV hydration and nutrients aren’t out of the question.

  3. Lain says:

    I think, Gordon have a chinese beackground. Chinese heroes in their movies always can suck up 20 and more bullets without dying, can fight with that samll flesh wounds for hours in the fastest, most excruciating ways without taking a sweat, take a deep breath and then go to the more intens finale of the movie.

    Before Movie part 2 begins, which direct begins after the ending of the first one.

    Yeah, he must be chinese, minimum one part of his parents…

  4. mos says:

    Can I just say that I think the helicopter chase is one of the few perfect scenes in videogaming history? I mean, there’s this one part where, due to the twists and turns of the track, it’s clear you must go left after leaving a tunnel. However, as soon as you leave the tunnel and look left, the helicopter is hovering right there and so the sensible thing to do is turn right and head for the hills only uh-oh! there’s a dead-end, so you’ve got to turn back around and go under the helicopter at top speed, hoping not to get swiss-cheesed. All this happens in about three seconds, and it’s intense.

    I love this game, I think I’m going to play through it, and the two episodes, again.

  5. Zerotime says:

    I always thought that his suit had a built-in Modafinil drip (or futuristic eastern-European equivalent).

    Oh, and the helicopter chase in Episode 2 is approximately awesome times better than the one in HL2.

  6. Avaz says:

    I haven’t played any of the Half Life games, but Zerotime’s “Oh, and the helicopter chase in Episode 2 is approximately awesome times better than the one in HL2.” made me lawl a lot. :D

  7. Dovienya says:

    I always assumed that Gordon had had enough sleep between Half-Life and Half-Life 2 to last him the next twenty years or so. Then again, whether that can be called “sleep” rather than “time spent frozen in nothingness” is up for debate.

    And thanks for again giving me the overwhelming urge shell out money I don’t have on Episode 2. :(

  8. Daemian_Lucifer says:

    “After three days of non-stop combat and exertion without food or sleep, Gordon at last gets a little rest. Wow. Theoretical Physicists are unbelievable badasses.”

    Ah,but gordon didnt age as well,so I doubt he is human,if alive,anymore.Who knows what the G-man did to him while he was in stasis.

  9. Gahaz says:

    By and by, if you dig into the specs (and you have to be really nerdy to want to find the mechanations and built in systems of a non exsisting suit) the suit does supply him with the hydration needed and proper stimulants to keep him running beyond normal circumstances. It even deals with his urine, and in 3 days time you would not need to eat (though you would be hungry) and you would not need to make a bowel movement (though you would be thinkin about it).

  10. DmL (Davey) says:

    If you look in the GCFs for the game you’ll see the main narrative maps are labeled:
    d1_*
    d2_*
    d3_*
    and then some extra ones, which possibly puts the final stuff just beyond the 3 day mark.

  11. Kris says:

    Hey, some of us scientists are lucky if we get a night’s sleep at all! You learn to cope with it during your PhD candidature…or og insane.

  12. bloopy says:

    have you seen the page with screenshots of the dude who went thru episode 2 holding a gnome?. . .

    http://www.kfj.f2s.com/index.php/2007-10-15-gnome-quest

  13. Phlux says:

    I did the gnome thing last night. It’s actually not really very difficult. You get an achievement on Steam for doing it (and I assume on the 360 as well).

    Once you’ve beaten the game once you can rush through it very quickly on a second pass.

    If you utilize the developer commentary, some of those things seem to make you invulnerable, which is a nice way to bypass tricky bits.

    The only hard part is getting him to stay in the car. The gnome behaves differently than other objects you pick up…it always turns to face you (creepy) rather than maintaining its orientation. This makes it difficult to jam into crevases, so he will occasionally fall out of the car on big bumps or turns.

  14. Jeff says:

    I’d just like to say I love it when you do timelines, they just amuse me so.

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