Half-Life's Extraordinary Lost Episode | Epistle 3 | Full Half-Life Lore

Should The Borealis return in the next potential Half-Life game?

Be sure to share, comment, like or dislike to please the algorithm gods ☺
Subscribe for more Half-Life content!

I like the idea of Gordon returning to the Black Mesa tram, keeping his memories of the combibe and being able to stop the experiment. It really hammers home the idea of how impossibly powerful the combine are, that the only way humanity could beat them is to never encounter them at all.

Alyx: "Dammit Judith, we're gonna kamikaze this ship into the Combine's homeworld and destroy them!"
Judith: "No we should study it!"
Gordon: "..."
Alyx: Shoots Judith "Gordon, we've got to honor my father's dying wish, we're gonna sacrifice ourselves to stop the Combine and destroy the ship!"
Gordon: "..."
Gman: appears "come with me now..."
Alyx: "K bye lol"
Gordon: "..."

Always felt like the Borealis would need a wacky funny Aperture AI on board to really make it feel like a piece of Aperture technology

It's not just that the Combine had built a dyson sphere, but since there were no other stars to be seen, it's assumed they'd built spheres around EVERY star.

imagine that ending of half-life 3.
gordon getting ported back to the tram and it's all like the beginning of Half-Life.
you go into the break room but this time you turn the microwave off taking out the food and hand it to the scientist therefore prevent the combine timeline from happening.

it was all the time about the microwave that in an butterfly effect triggered the resonance cascade and players knew it!

Gordon after arriving back on the tram platform in Half Life: “You will NOT BELIEVE the day I’ve had”

I like to imagine Gordan keeps his memories but has to keep doing the same thing over making the speed runs canon.

I feel so sorry for Gordon. Everyone just left him.

I love how Gordon's in an invisible chair during the thirdperson Eli death cutscene, that's smarts

Alyx going along with G-Man and leaving Gordon to die alone without saying a word seems at least to me very unlikely and out of character.

I remember reading the letter back when he posted it and feeling such emotion at the end. But, like you, closure was the main thing I took away from it, at least we had an answer, which lots of us had been waiting for by then. So, I was able to move on, after years of waiting for something, anything really. And that was that.

~ Half-Life Alyx spoilers ~

The similarities between the HL:A ending and Epistle 3 are interesting. They both achieve a similar outcome, with Alyx taken by the Gman and Gordon acting independently. It's also interesting to compare the Gman's timeline manipulations with the supposed time-related powers of the Borealis.

The time loop would've been an amazing ending.

Gordan rides the tram back through like he did all those years ago, but just before the chamber, he grabs his crowbar from a toolbox left out and goes to the anti-mass spectrometer.
From the observation room above, G-Man smirks and tells Eli those famous words "Prepare for unforeseen consequences."
Then a scientist, probably Kleiner, asks what Gordan has in his hand.
G-Man and Eli turn to the window, and G-man's smirk turns into shock.
Gordan stands with a smirk and his crowbar next to the Xen crystal, which he promptly smashes once he knows G-man sees him.
The science team's outraged, but their combined anger can only measure an infidecimal fraction compared to G-man's.
He promptly goes to the door, but turns around to personally give his parting words to Gordan over the intercom.
"This changes nothing...*Mr* Freeman."
With a glare and a tie straightening, he leaves without another word.
The science team's spitting out predictions of firing, retraining, and worst of all, budget cuts.
Eli looks back down at Gordan, but feels a strange mix of confusion and relief.
Gordan looks back down at the half-broken crystal, and stabs it with the crowbar, looking a bit like Excalibur.
Gordan turns to leave, victorious, but the game camera focuses back on the crystal and the crowbar, which from a certain angle looks like the lambda logo.
Cue credits.

20:35
So that's what it is. The whole timeline regarding Marc Laidlaw's "dimensional war" and the whole essence of Black Mesa is just Gordon living this pattern over and over again. He can't stop it properly, otherwise G-man arrives and keeps it going forcefully. We know that alternative timelines and dimensions occur through the use of manipulation either artificially or through means beyond comprehension.

Remember, this is the same formulae for the choice at the end of Half Life - You choose to work with G-Man, or you don't and suffer what ever perilous consequences that happen afterward.

The Nihilanth specifically states we'll never know the truth before its demise.

i guess Marc's real dream would be either:
--- 1. Gordon goes through Black Mesa, still late to his job, passes Barney, starts his abysmal journey down the facility, gets his HEV and shoves the Crystal into the machine. As soon as he gets teleported via the Cascade's energies - boom, the credits start rolling for the end of the game.

--- 2. Gordon does the same above, but he does the more simple thing... he doesn't touch the crystal. He physically stands statue inside the insertion point, being heckled by the science team to shove the crystal in, but Freeman refuses to move. Eli Vance immediately cancels the experiment after a slight argument behind the science team since the machine starts to malfunction because it's working past its threshold. It destroys itself without causing a great Resonance Cascade. That may unlock a secret ending where the events of Half Life can no longer take place as the destruction of the Spectrometer is the breaking point to which this was made to happen... but I'm not sure, since the G-Man is basically god and will try to force its acceleration.

Whether that will be the case is up for debate regarding Marc's ideas, but the question is what was Laidlaw's intention with the G-Man at the end. Will he have directed him by attempting to interfere? Though I merely speculate, I believe this to be Marc's truest intention that he never, ever got to see with his own eyes. And that in the end hurt, maybe broke him.

I read Epistle 3 recently and was quite shocked. The ending kinda overwhelms you with uncertainty. It was so sad that Alyx simply... left him alone to self destruct and G-Man just ignored him. He didn't deserve being treated like that and I didn't really like Alyx's action in this. It was a very interesting story and another great video.

I think Gordon deserves a happier ending than the original epistle 3 or the proposed time loop. He's been through as nearly as possible to a literal Hell. Looping him back to Black Mesa seems cruel, memories intact or not.

Wow, Alyx straight up says “let’s kill ourselves”. Gets cold feet and abandons Gordon to a fate SHE caused and gets to live. Thank god this isn’t cannon I would’ve been furious.

I would have felt compassion for this Breengrub. First af all, he wasn't the true Breen anyway, so this creature wasn't even responsible for Breen's actions, and secondly, Breen had no choice. If he didn't do what the Combine told him, they would have just killed him and chosen someone else.

Hearing the hl music in the background and having a visualization of what could happen rather than animating everything in your mind is just so relaxing. Please make more.