What is behind the Borealis?

[1marcos6]

So, the Borealis, an Aperture Science research vessel built WAY underground in a dry dock within the Aperture facilities during the 70's, is now somewhere in the Arctic. The transmission Mossman sent was decrypted in HL2:EP2 and it showed the actual Borealis. Now, I know that Aperture did portal technologies, but why did they build it in the first place?

Here's some videos to watch, I just want a discussion about why its so important.

Wiki

 

[Omnomnick]

This is actually a pretty interesting thread. While I don't believe some of the details in the second video, the first one is really fascinating. For some reason, I never thought to look into Rattmann's ramblings. I'm not sure all of the subtitles are accurate, but there's definitely some truth in most of them.

 

[1marcos6]

This is actually a pretty interesting thread. While I don't believe some of the details in the second video, the first one is really fascinating. For some reason, I never thought to look into Rattmann's ramblings. I'm not sure all of the subtitles are accurate, but there's definitely some truth in most of them.

What got me interested with the first video is how the ship was stolen, and unlike most of it, I actually interpreted the audio as that.

 

[Sidedraft]

"but why did they build it in the first place?"


To quote the head of aperture, Cave Johnson:
"Science isn't about why? - it's about why not?!!!"
So there you go. the answer is quite literally: Why not.

But no seriously you're asking "Hey aperture, Why did you build a boat?"
When you're completely glossing over the fact this is the same company that:

- Made a handheld portal device
- Repulsion Gel
- Propulsion Gel
- Injected praying mantis DNA into people
- Did a control group on repulsion gel (Broke every bone in his legs, Tragic -yet informative)
- Gave tumors to you via chairs, just incase you didn't have any
- Intentionally used asbesto despite knowing of it's health risks
- Put Fluorescent Calcium inside your brain through free coffee
- Implants Tiny microchips inside peoples skulls
- made astronauts go missing
- Offered to "take (your body) apart, put some science stuff in ya, and put ya back together good as new"
- Bought 70 million dollars worth of moon rocks despite not being able to afford 7 millions worth
- ceo decided that he should then consume those moon rocks
- Shoots people with lasers to turn their blood into pure gasoline
- has made it's product testers have bowel movements consisting of coal
- Shot a super conducter, full blast, at you with the intent of "No idea what it will do"
- man this list just keeps going....
- turned you blood into peanut water
- Tried to get the human water percentage down to 20-30 percent
- had a teleportation experiment that doesn't work with all skin types

(Not even going to get into Perpetual Testing Initiative)

Other than for plot in future games, I don't think we can really ask why aperture does anything anymore

 

[Wheaties-Of-Doom]

When Rattman says the ship is stolen, I have to wonder; was it actually stolen? Or is he assuming that Black Mesa took it by some unknown means?
More and more questions...

 

[1marcos6]

When Rattman says the ship is stolen, I have to wonder; was it actually stolen? Or is he assuming that Black Mesa took it by some unknown means?
More and more questions...

I didn't think about Black Mesa stealing it, I thought about maybe the Combine attempting to steal it and accidentally moving it to the wrong place. Or Rattman is confused.

 

[Sidedraft]

I don't believe some of the details in the second video, the first one is really fascinating.

What details and why?

 

[bluechirri]

The second video kind of makes some leaps in logic - "handheld" doesn't necessarily imply a larger version of something, especially when you're talking about something named by Aperture Science, which likes to cram in as many long and unnecessary words as possible when naming their products. It's one of the most prominent running jokes in the Portal series. So to use a word in the full name of the portal gun as evidence for the existence of a larger and more powerful version of the device is a little brash, and even though it seems more than possible that the Borealis device does have something to do with portals, I think it's probably a little more complicated than "here's a larger portal device that doesn't need moon rock walls".

Besides, it could just mean that the entire device can be held in your hand and you don't have to wear a massive generator on your back, which is what we know the portal guns from the fifties looked like.

It's also wrong to say that the Combine "don't know how to teleport". They do, they've just fallen behind human scientists when it comes to developing local teleportation, which we know from some of Kleiner and Mossman's lines in HL2. It's teleporting within a single dimension and for short distances that the Combine struggle with, and even then they can still do it, just not as smoothly or efficiently as human teleporters can. The kind of teleportation that the video claims they would want the Borealis device for - large-scale teleportation into different universes and across lightyears - is the kind that they're good at, or at least the kind that they know how to do well if they have the means for it.

Consider this, too: the entire purpose of the superportal that the Combine used the Citadel to make in Episode 1 and that the resistance shut down in Episode 2 was to send a transmission packet to their homeworld that requested backup, but that also contained clues to the location of the Borealis and Mossman's intercepted message to the resistance. If obtaining the Borealis device was just about opening a portal to the Combine homeworld, why on earth would the Combine purposely destroy their own command center in order to, you know, open a portal to their homeworld to tell their superiors about it? They have to want it for some other purpose, because otherwise that would be like deliberately crashing a brand-new 2014 model convertible so that you can buy an old pickup truck from the sixties that might break down while you're using it.

 

[Wheaties-Of-Doom]

I didn't think about Black Mesa stealing it, I thought about maybe the Combine attempting to steal it and accidentally moving it to the wrong place. Or Rattman is confused.

I'm not saying they did steal it, just that Doug might have thought they did.

even though it seems more than possible that the Borealis device does have something to do with portals, I think it's probably a little more complicated than "here's a larger portal device that doesn't need moon rock walls".

Hmm... at a guess, I'd say that if the Borealis does have portal related technology on board, it's secondary to whatever the Combine are racing to get a hold of. When someone says "Aperture Laboratories" most people think "Portal Technology". Narrative-ly speaking, most people expect the Borealis MacGuffin to be something related to portals or teleportation; so if it actually were one of those things, there would be no surprise. I suspect portal tech is just a red herring. Whatever is on the Borealis is going to be unexpected (I hope).

 

[bluechirri]

Hmm... at a guess, I'd say that if the Borealis does have portal related technology on board, it's secondary to whatever the Combine are racing to get a hold of. When someone says "Aperture Laboratories" most people think "Portal Technology". Narrative-ly speaking, most people expect the Borealis MacGuffin to be something related to portals or teleportation; so if it actually were one of those things, there would be no surprise. I suspect portal tech is just a red herring. Whatever is on the Borealis is going to be unexpected (I hope).

My going theory is that whatever the Borealis device is - be it a weapon, a teleporter, a power source, an AI, even a goddamn invisible time machine considering the Borealis may have been partially based on the Philadelphia Experiment - it has the potential to open a tear in the fabric of reality itself if misused, causing an event much like the Resonance Cascade but involving the warping of time and space instead of randomly teleporting in headcrabs and bullsquids. The Gman serves as either the herald of a sect of eldritch beings who want to use this tear to gain access to our universe, or as a sort of reality police agent working to prevent it - either he's been trying to make it happen or he's been trying to stop it, but either way it's the reason that he's been pulling all these strings for so many years and guiding Gordon and Alyx to where he wants them to be. And either way, it's guaranteed to happen sometime in Half Life 3, since the event itself has been so built up in the storyline so far and because warped time and space could make for some fascinating gameplay potential.

It might seem a little fantastical for the series at first glance, but it's not like Half Life is the hardest of science fiction to begin with, and there's been a subtle thread of reality manipulation running through the story from the beginning - the Resonance Cascade, the Gman and his strange abilities, the Vortigaunts and their mysterious Vortessence that allows them to challenge the Gman on his own grounds and displace Alyx and Gordon in time and space to save them from the explosion atop the Citadel, Gordon's period of stasis and/or unaware time travel that jumped him forward twenty years into the future without aging a day, Chell's period of stasis that ended with her waking up anywhere from 20 to 200 years into the future without aging either, even the overall theme of teleportation and tears between worlds and spaces that makes up the heart and soul of both Half Life and Portal... when you step back and take a good look at the universe of these games, it becomes apparent that time and space have been fragile concepts from the very beginning, and I can easily see a break in reality itself as the climatic event of what was supposed to be Episode 3 and what will now be a major turning point partway through Half Life 3.

This would also justify why the concept of a Half Life "canon" is one that Laidlaw has been reluctant to go into detail on over the past few years - if you've been planning to have your story center around a tear in space and time since 2006, of course you're going to be hesitant to clearly define what it means for something to be canon to this universe.