OK, I'll admit it -- I never finished the first Half-Life.

But I'm currently playing Half-Life 2, I was wondering about the plot. I know that in the first game Freeman was part of a research team that unleashed something. But what was it exactly -- they opened a portal to another dimension or something?

When the first game ended, was the alien threat still out there, thus leading to this Nazi-esque takeover of the human race? And there's the man-in-black, and that former associate of Gordon who is now the head of the new Orwelian puppet government. Oh yeah, and those big-headed aliens are our allies, but were apparently an enemy in the first game?



I apologize profusley for all these questions, but I'm enjoying HL2 so much I can't stop and play the first one. Perhaps someone could link me to a plot synopsis somewhere, kind of like what someone did for Resident Evil? (http://boards.ign.com/Resident_Evil/b5234/52956027/?100)

Hmmm, I may have answered some of my own questions:

http://fragfiles.org/~hlstory//timeline.htm


But I'm open to anything that's not covered by that site.

Well, I've got nothing to offer you, but thanks for providing that. I'm someone who never really played the first Half Life either, just the beginning a few times, so I had no idea what was going on in part 2. I understood the in game plot, but thanks for the link...now I know what all was going on. I might go back and play 1 then 2 again now.