Orange Box Guide Story Info *possible spoilers*

[operative lm]

Since I haven't seen anything on this yet, I decided to make a thread for it; a place where all the new info can be viewed. I'll start first with the Characters section then move on to the Enemies. I remember reading something about the new info being written by Marc Laidlaw, so I'm pretty sure everything's nice and canon-ized or whatever you want to call it.

Now, I'll only be listing the new info the guide gives (for the characters, it's mostly just a paragraph tacked onto the end). The other stuff can be found in the vanilla HL2 guide.

The Combine
From further infiltration into a Citadel, it appears that the armies of the Combine are governed by giant, slug-like beings known as Combine Advisors, although it isn't known how many it takes to command a Citadel Spire. The heroic actions of one Gordon Freeman and the bravery of many of humanity's resistance forces seem to have turned the tide against these oppressors. Combine forces are currently in disarray throughout the City, and their monument is critically unstable.

Needs moar after-Citadel-explody info.

Gordon Freeman
An epic struggle lasting days pitted Gordon against the increasingly alarming and tactical forces of the Combine on a journey across the blasted countryside, eventually through City 17 itself, and into the Citadel. With the help of colleagues both old and new, Gordon was able to bring about a chain of events that opened the possibility of the complete destruction of eldritch forces in the area. Except of course, for the bond Gordon unwillingly shares with the G-Man.

The G-Man
Now keenly aware of Gordon Freeman's abilities, the so-called "G-Man" seeks to utilize his servant's powers, until that time comes when he learns that sometimes, you can't always have what you want.

Wallace Breen
After a career dive of epic proportions, the Combine's servant on Earth pleaded with his alien masters to deliver him away from the planet; a request that was duly carried out. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Breen lives rofl?

Barney Calhoun
After helping to lead the resistance forces during the Street Wars, Barney has been rounding up City 17's remaining inhabitants and battling remaining Combine forces to the city's train stations in a valiant attempt to evacuate the area.

No mention of his Ep2 whereabouts here, unfortunately. Must've found a real nice place to nap if the guide can't find him. :d

Alyx Vance
With Mossman making a sacrifice to Alyx's father and most of humanity, Alyx has tempered her attitude to her, and instead is keenly focused on the complete destruction of the Combine forces. Although never actively seeking the role of freedom fighter, her skills with computers and firearms, coupled with her level-headed nature, make her a true companion.

Professor Isaac Kleiner
Pulling back from his laboratory in City 17, Kleiner appears to have retreated back to Black Mesa East to join his more level-headed colleague, Eli. Although unenthusiastic about a new role as "face of the resistance" (a reluctance shared by many of those in the resistance), Kleiner has hacked into the Combine's public address systems (also known as "BreenScreens") to further the public's knowledge as the tide turns against the Combine, before retreating to a Forest Base to work on a variety of ways to combat the Combine.

Doctor Eli Vance
Currently Eli Vance has stayed in the secretive lair known as Black Mesa East to help control operations and worry about the safety of his only daughter, before moving into the Outlands to a secondary base known as White Forest.

Doctor Judith Mossman
After making a supreme sacrifice in the face of mounting pressure to help the forces of humanity, Mossman fled the Citadel with resistance forces, and is currently in parts unknown, although there is some speculation she is being helpd north of the Outlands, near a vessel named the Borealis.

Vortigaunt Allies
It is interesting to note that the true power of the Vortigaunts hasn't been witnessed; their abilities to warp and astrally converge, and a group droning sound they utter as a preamble to their more impressive abilities may be used during times of near-hopelessness.

DOG
Dog proved himself invaluable during the Street Wars assault on City 17, working with Resistance forces under the control of Officer Barney Calhoun. Although unable to be firmly controlled by anyone except his mistress Alyx, Dog seems to be self-aware to the extent that he helps rather than hinders. He is currently located somewhere deep within the White Forest.

Doctor Arne Magnusson
Another survivor of Black Mesa, the gruff Magnusson has an egotistic and domineering personality, which manifests itself most sharply in his interactions with Kleiner. A driven man whose last ten years have been devoted to a rocket project with little hope of getting off the ground, Magnusson's sense of self-importance has not diminished even in the face of devastating setbacks. He believes that whatever task he takes on, he can do it better than anyone else. Fortunately, his first priority is to drive out the Combine and ensure humanity's survival.

Griggs and Sheckley
Think post-Holocaust Abbott and Costello. Griggs isn't green, he's as war-scarred as any of them--but he hasn't lost his naivet?. Maybe it's because he's a little thick. He's not afraid to state the obvious or ask dumb questions, or drive his bluff companion Sheckley up the wall. Sheckley is a no-nonsense type, although he takes quite a lot of nonsense from Griggs. He has infinite patience when it comes to his partner, although under pressure he's not above screaming at his buddy. They're a team through thick and thin--and Griggs can be pretty thick.

Meh, nothing we didn't already know.

Uriah
"Uriah" is Magnusson's pet name for his Vortigaunt assistant (known more affectionately to other White Forest personnel as "Labby"). Vortigaunts, of course, are a race of hive-minded creatures with no specific individuality. This bothers Magnusson sufficiently that he has begun to give the Vortigaunts around him nicknames. Apparently Labby's obsequious pose initially struck a sour note with Magnusson, who dubbed him "Heepish," in honor of a servile Dickens character. Even so, Labby's continual praise of Magnusson means this Vortigaunt and Magnusson get along famously.

Nice to see they tied the real-world naming of Uriah into the game's story. =P

Now for whatever enemy info I think is interesting and new:

Antlion, Worker (aka Acid Lion)
Workers in the larval chambers, and a genetic mutation of the Antlion, Worker Antlions are rumored to have burrowed near the many toxic waste dumps scattered across the countryside. The resulting beast is a luminous animal with antlike features and less-developed mandibles. What it lacks in close assault power, it makes up for with a devastating poisonous spit attack and extreme speed. If this mixture of secretions and bile hits you, expect sizable damage and a slight poisoning.

At least we know they aren't "natural."

Combine Escape Pod
Although it is only conjecture to label these floating airships as Escape Pods, they appear during the final stages of a Combine Citadel core meltdown. It is thought that these vessels, which stream from a doomed Citadel spire, are container pods that house Combine Advisors, although this theory is yet to be proved. The Combine Escape Pod shares many similarities with the Dropship and Gunship, but doesn't carry exterior payloads or have armaments that have been spotted. They remain an enigma.

Combine Advisor (aka Overseer)
Behold the real face of the Combine. A giant, green, sluglike entity with the gift of telekinesis appears for the briefest of moments on Breen's computer monitors within the Citadel. One known attack pattern Advisor's seem to employ (although this hasn't been independently verified) is a powerful psychic blast that causes headaches and hallucinations. If this occurs, vacate the area. Recent combat has indicated that Advisors are extremely dangerous. Advisors use scenery to shield themselves, and their telekinesis is incredible: Advisors can immobilize multiple human-sized objects against their will before "feeding" on their memories, courtesy of a brain-stem savaging that is too disgusting to contemplate.

zomg stole Eli's knowledge.

Hunter
The unknown entity that attacked Dr. Mossman has now revealed itself to be the latest Combine creation: a mutated Strider bred for closer assault work and assassination missions, as well as bodyguard duties. [The rest of the entry lists it's attacks and what weapons to use against them]

Mutated Strider > Mutated Houndeye


Also of random interest:

-I've seen a couple instances of Eli being "apparently" dead. Well, he's dead. Book says so.
-Also, book has another G-Man sighting I haven't seen reported here yet. [Screen]

[On the Portal side of things...]

-Chell was indeed brought to Aperture during the "Aperture Science Bring-Your-Daughter-to-Work-Day." Looking around, most people have accepted that already, but I'm just restating it.
-Apparently, GLaDOS did indeed back herself up somewhere (again, just restating).
-And finally, "In what state will you find the world once you've mustered the energy to rise from your groggy repose?" suggests the Combine have already invaded, or at earliest the Portal Storms just started (once more, just restating).


That's enough forum space wasted. If anyone has a specific thing they want me to scan Ep2's walkthrough for, I will, though I don't think anything else of major importance is revealed there.

EDIT: Completely random, but I saw something on Wikipedia and had to check to see if it was true. During G-Man's speech, right after he says "nay-sayers", a distorted image of Breen appears in the static transitioning to the Arctic base image. Is it just a random image that was part of the static effect they used? Or was it intentional, implying Breen was one of whom G-Man referred to?

 

[xantir]

Nice!

The information on the Advisor is very interesting.

 

[Pesmerga]

Combine Advisor (aka Overseer)
Behold the real face of the Combine. A giant, green, sluglike entity with the gift of telekinesis appears for the briefest of moments on Breen's computer monitors within the Citadel. One known attack pattern Advisor's seem to employ (although this hasn't been independently verified) is a powerful psychic blast that causes headaches and hallucinations. If this occurs, vacate the area. Recent combat has indicated that Advisors are extremely dangerous. Advisors use scenery to shield themselves, and their telekinesis is incredible: Advisors can immobilize multiple human-sized objects against their will before "feeding" on their memories, courtesy of a brain-stem savaging that is too disgusting to contemplate.

So the Overseers do suck the memories out of its victims. This would mean that the Combine now possess the location of the Borealis and the intent of Alyx and Gordon.

 

[Orcone101]

Never mind.

 

[Avoidist]

So if the advisers do suck out knowledge, they also now know about G-man (if they didn't already).

 

[ranmafan]

I'm sorry for my seeming ignorance, but is the Orange Box Guide a separate guidebook like Raising the Bar or did it come with the Orange Box physical set? Just curious, because I bought mine through Steam (yeah! Valve gets almost all the money now!)...

 

[Acepilotf14]

I saw another sighting of G-man.. I'll have a screen up in a moment.
Ranm: I believe it's a seperate book, as I didn't get one with my OB. (physical)

 

[Ridge]

It looks like the OP put this together, which makes me happy...I was quite pissed when I thought this was an actual book or something found on Gamespy, as it gives no new information, makes tons of assumptions with no strength to hold them, and only speculates about things that are already well known...

 

[operative lm]

I'm sorry for my seeming ignorance, but is the Orange Box Guide a separate guidebook like Raising the Bar or did it come with the Orange Box physical set? Just curious, because I bought mine through Steam (yeah! Valve gets almost all the money now!)...

It's a separate guidebook by Prima.

And no, Ridge, all that stuff in the original post was copied from the book. I bring you scans of the pages that feature the Advisor and Breen as proof. If you want any other scans, feel free to ask me.

Apologies for the messed up angle. Kinda hard to scan from a semi-thick book such as this one.

 

[Nitre]

How much is it? Is it worth buying just for interest value?

 

[Pesmerga]

Illegal scans are illegal.

 

[Darkside55]

"Vortigaunts, of course, are a race of hive-minded creatures with no specific individuality." God, that is such bullshit. I'm tired of that getting printed. Listen, if you have things such as greatest poets, greatest philosophers, if you can do such things as agree and disagree amongst members of your own race, then you are not hiveminded. You possess an empathic link. Criminey.

And I don't like what it says about antlion workers not being natural. That's dumb. You figure, this is an animal whose whole ecology revolves around creating tunnels; why should it be a mutation? Also, the vortigaunts certainly know a lot about the antlion workers and their habits, but they never once mention that these are new traits. Considering that this was their ancestral practice, perhaps dating back hundreds or even thousands of years, I think they'd mention, "They did not always have that ability. It is a result of imbibing the toxic wastes buried beneath the surface."

These guides fail.

 

[Nitre]

These guides fail.

That answers my question i guess.

 

[Asknoone]

The guides are good. I'm picking up the Orange Box strat; there's certainly errors, but Laidlaw also wrote most of the character sections and story details. This guide in particular apparently contains a lot of new artwork on the games.

 

[Narvi]

Yeah, mutant antlions are retarded. Very B-movish. I wouldn't mind it in Duke Nukem, but Half-Life?

I suppose the character things are canon though.

 

[Reginald]

These guides are co-written by Laidlaw.

Fixed.

 

[Darkside55]

Then Laidlaw doesn't know what hivemind is. There, I said it. It's crap, because if you're hiveminded, you have literally no personality whatsoever. You can't even agree with anything anyone says, because to agree is to imply you have an opinion. If you were hiveminded, you would not HAVE an opinion, therefore you could not agree. And considering one vortigaunt says, "We need the extract" and three others start nodding their heads and saying, "Yes, the extract," "agreed," "I agree, the extract," that right there says they're not hiveminded. It implies that, y'know, if one vortigaunt really didn't give a shit about Alyx Vance he could say, "Screw the extract, let the Freeman handle it. We must hunt Shu'ulathoi." He could essentially DISAGREE.

And again, if Laidlaw wrote that stuff about mutant antlions, he obviously has a bad grasp on biology and the ecology of Xen, which HE AND VALVE CREATED! Seriously, it's stupid. Like I said in my previous post, if you have a tunneling animal, and it is established in previous canon that these creatures burrow through rock and make giant caverns, and they've been going about it this way for millenia, but all of a sudden it's an Earth-specific mutation that antlions developed the ability to spit acid, WHICH TOTALLY BENEFITS THEM. Heaven forbid they consume radioactive waste and, I dunno, DIE. Nope, they eat the acid and gain an awesome evolutionary super power. "Antlion drone eats radioactive waste. Antlion drone evolved to antlion worker! Antlion worker gains Acid Spit!" :thumbs:

If (when) I get the chance to meet Marc Laidlaw he and I are gonna have a talk.

 

[Narvi]

I do believe you can have a hivemind like Gaia from the Foundation series and still have opinions.

But the vortigaunts are obviously more emphatic than anything else. They wouldn't have a language otherwise, they'd just commune with each other.

 

[Ridge]

They are definately not hivemind...the Borg are hivemind..the Combine are more hivemind than the Vorts...

 

[Darkside55]

Indeed. When I think of hiveminds, I think of the Borg, or the Zerg, or the Formics from Ender's Game. Collective conciousness is different from a hivemind. You can be linked together and think each other's thoughts and experience each other's feelings, but in a hivemind you have none of that. Your personality is erased.

 

[Apocalypse89]

I'm more worried about the whole "Advisors suck vicitims' thoughts/memories out" thing. Sounds very lame IMO.

 

[Reginald]

I'm more worried about the whole "Advisors suck vicitims' thoughts/memories out" thing. Sounds very lame IMO.

They're telekinetic. They can cause headaches. Should work, yes?

 

[Darkside55]

Memories are tasty.

 

[Operational]

Agree with Darkside completly (even about memories being tasty, yum!!). Hive mind Vortigunts, Antlion Workers are mutant Antlions - this can't be Laidlaw/Valve Offical facts. It's probably just crap filler the author pulled out of nowhere - like 99% of the content in these guides, although any sections written by Laidlaw might be worth a look.

Pulling back from his laboratory in City 17, Kleiner appears to have retreated back to Black Mesa East to join his more level-headed colleague, Eli.
...
Kleiner has hacked into the Combine's public address systems (also known as "BreenScreens") to further the public's knowledge as the tide turns against the Combine, before retreating to a Forest Base to work on a variety of ways to combat the Combine.

Black Mesa East was attacked by the Combine, why would Kliener go there?

 

[Ridge]

Yeah...seems like the battle and the collapses wouldve ruined the base, causing the rebels to abandon it, likely with most of them heading to White Forest eventually...