EP2 Ending Discussion (spoilers)

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Eagle156

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That was the best ending in a video game I've ever seen, definitely the best one in the HL series. It's also one of the few endings that actually pulled off an emotional ending.:eek: But I have to wonder, how did the brain suckers get in the base without any alarm? Wouldn't the vortiguants be able to heal Eli anyway? And why doesn't he want the lost ship to be used?

BTW, IDK why everyone has so much trouble with the strider battle. I figured out that the hunters could blow up the sticky bombs if you get it on the strider so I just ran them over and then planted the bombs. I didn't die once there.
 
Well the advisors are pretty new creatures...and its not like all there abilities have been explored. they may be teleporters...or maybe its just one of there pysc abilities to go unseen.

They probably cant do much to help pops cause he had his brain stabbed out. wasnt like alyx who had some serious injury but at most it woulda hit her kidneys not her heart or brain.

The ship...well they are making it sound like to me that the ship was experimenting with something at least as risky as black mesa was. or even that eli knew that whatever was going on on that ship had something to do with G-man. Since we now know that eli was working with g-man...AND that apparently hes been working for him since because g-man pulled him and his daughter out of black mesa before the final boom (at the end of HL1 but before the 7 day war)....well he probably thinks that either another portal could be opened from the ship, or something just as bad could happen as a result of the project on the ship.
 
I was very impressed by the ending. What impressed me more was the commentary that I listened to and how much process and discussion went into the final scene. This is the reason why I come back to HL over and over again. Its great story line that is supported by a staff that is a private company.

I don't have much time to play games, I have a family and two children but its like a new dan brown book that comes out every year. Yes we all waited, but I'm really glad it was as good as I expected it to be.

Goodnight.
 
You sucked out his brain, you bloody baboon!
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By the way, it was sucked out, not stabbed out. What is the difference? Well the advisors now know everything that was in his brain, naturally. They know all about the resistance so now it is really going to hit the fan.

What a great game.
 
Blackstone said:
By the way, it was sucked out, not stabbed out. What is the difference? Well the advisors now know everything that was in his brain, naturally. They know all about the resistance so now it is really going to hit the fan.

What a great game.
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starship troopers?
 
Yeah, that was a really emotional ending, but I saw it coming... well, not Eli having his brain sucked out by the Advisors, but Eli dying.

Just before the Combine portal was destroyed and Eli told me that we'll talk when I get back, I just KNEW he was going to die soon.
Either way, it was emotional...
What really shocked me, though, was the fact that that was it. I mean, I just checked my Steam Community times and it says 5.4 hours for Episode 2. What? What happened to "double the length of Episode 1" or whatever Valve was promising us? IIRC, Episode 1 took me just as long.
Blah.

Anyway, it was still a great game, don't get me wrong. Here's hoping Valve drops Episode 3 on us in less than a year and 6 months (or whatever it was).

Oh, and the Aperture thing. When Kleiner said they disappeared off the map, do you think they meant Portal's ending??
 
i loved ep2 and portal. that ending was crazy. those mother brain things are assholes! I don't even know where to start so i'm not going to.

Can't wait to use the portal gun in episode 3 and finish the hl2 storyline finally.
 
Yeah when Eli said "we'll talk later" I knew they were going to obliterate him. Valve probably tried to write that talk where Eli explains everything and when they realized how hard it is to explain the story of Half-Life they said, "to hell with it, let's just suck his brain out instead!"
 
The ending... well, it pissed me off, just like the last two Half Life 2 endings.

"Gordon, we're about to sit you down and tell you everything you want to know-- OH NO! Something terrible has happened and now you'll have to wait for another game. Shucks."

The story elements are becoming too predictable
 
The18thLetter said:
Oh, and the Aperture thing. When Kleiner said they disappeared off the map, do you think they meant Portal's ending??
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Maybe. Since GLaDOS is still alive and you're presumably going to have something to do with the Borealis in Episode Three, you might be facing off against it in one way or another.
borealis_plans_01.jpg
 
can someone fraps everything after the strider fight? I have no intention of finishing the game, but would like to know what happens at the end so I can play Ep3 and continue the story.
 
Episode 2 took me only 3 hours 45 minutes to finish. Episode 1 took me 3 hours 30 mins. I went at the same pace on both. They obviously lied about double the time.

lopoetve said:
can someone fraps everything after the strider fight? I have no intention of finishing the game, but would like to know what happens at the end so I can play Ep3 and continue the story.
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Just finish the strider fight and the game is done. That is it for combat.
 
Crucible1001 said:
Episode 2 took me only 3 hours 45 minutes to finish. Episode 1 took me 3 hours 30 mins. I went at the same pace on both. They obviously lied about double the time.
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EP2 took me 5.2 hours and EP1 took me 3 hours. I don't understand how you can possibly finish it in 3.5 hours unless you rushed through everything. Anyway, I found the quality of game much higher with EP2 than EP1, perhaps even higher than HL2.
 
I went from Portal to EP2, so the final EP2 fight kinda disappointed me at first. I had some difficulty with the striders because I was trying to kill the hunters instead of running them over. Now that I look back on it, it was a pretty decent fight, if only I'd realized some things earlier.
The rest of the ending definitely rocked. It was so sad listening to Alyx when the screen went black.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
I
The rest of the ending definitely rocked. It was so sad listening to Alyx when the screen went black.
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QFT. This was better acting than most movies these days.

My other thoughts.... I thought the whole ending had a, kind of, Empire Strikes Back vibe. Its an easy comparison to make, being the middle of a trilogy, but once I got into the white forest base and you see the hustle and bustle of everyone, sense the excitement and purpose in the atmosphere, even the visuals seemed to evoke the Hoth base to me a little bit (minus the ice & snow & stuff). You've got an epic battle against giant walkers. You've got the loss of a beloved character (a la Han Solo in carbonite).

Kind of a stretch but whatever the case I thought that this was fabulously well done. I hope episode three is this good.
 
Crucible1001 said:
Just finish the strider fight and the game is done. That is it for combat.
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I know that's. I have no interest in finishing the fight. That would be like taking a screwdriver and jamming it into my toe: I really, really don't want to ever run that program again. I want to see the end so I know what happens going into Ep3, and then delete the thing off of my drive to free up space for other things. I've been bored with it for all but maybe 30 seconds of the entire time I've been playing, and this final fight is the capstone of said boredom.

I LOVED HL2 and Ep1, played both at least 5 times through. But I have no intention of every playing Ep2 again. It's a sad joke compared to the other two, in my humble opinion. Like Valve was laughing at us :(
 
lopoetve said:
I know that's. I have no interest in finishing the fight. That would be like taking a screwdriver and jamming it into my toe: I really, really don't want to ever run that program again. I want to see the end so I know what happens going into Ep3, and then delete the thing off of my drive to free up space for other things. I've been bored with it for all but maybe 30 seconds of the entire time I've been playing, and this final fight is the capstone of said boredom.

I LOVED HL2 and Ep1, played both at least 5 times through. But I have no intention of every playing Ep2 again. It's a sad joke compared to the other two, in my humble opinion. Like Valve was laughing at us :(
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This is flame bait and you know it. I'll take it.

You want to see the end, finish your own fucking game. Are you like the next link in the evolution of sloth? Actually, you are the capstone of said sloth. :eek:
 
Blackstone said:
This is flame bait and you know it. I'll take it.

You want to see the end, finish your own fucking game. Are you like the next link in the evolution of sloth? Actually, you are the capstone of said sloth. :eek:
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No, it's not flamebait, and was never intended as such. I honestly hated episode 2: It's one of the worst games I've played all year. However, I loved the half-life series up till this point, so I'd like to know what happens so I can play Episode 3, which may very well be better, and not feel totally lost. I almost never cheat, unless I get totally stuck (STALKER got me to at one point), hell, I completed COD2 on the hardest difficulty legally (took me a month). But this... was honestly so boring, I just don't want to touch it anymore, and that's sad since the rest of Orange Box is awesome.

Someone has uploaded the final end to youtube since I posted my post. I now know what happens... and my personal feelings about the end fit the rest of the game: Mediocre at best. Killing eli, fine. That makes sense, in the storyline, but the brain bugs are such a cop out steal from ST it's not even funny, especially since once again, they pulled the "here, know it all! OOPS!" ending style. This whole episode felt like a cop out. Milking the cash cow and not adding anything.

Anyway, back to the portal advanced levels. :)
 
I think the ship was the attempt for aperature to over take black mesa with gov. contracts, with all the hinting it seems aperature was behind the market and wasn't able to make ends meet. With a final desperational act they made the ship to beat BM with the final portal that would take them to the other world, it went wacky and took the ship as well as most of the dock with them to the other world which then sometime later made its way back, with the project finally ending aperature as a company and leaving BM by themselves.

So, I'm just guessing the ship is going to be an Event Horizon where it went to another world and made its way back, only this time its going to be a double edged sword to use against BM to stop their domination, and possibly something the g-man intended to grab in the first place.
 
Interesting, I thought Episode 2 was on par with, if not better than, Episode 1. It definitely had a much better ending. I'm sure I'll play though it again shortly before Episode 3 hits Steam, to refresh my memory.
 
yea i didn't much care for the ending either. Too much starship troopers for me, and where did dog go anyhow? presumably to attack the "brain bugs." but a little late I guess. I agree about the event horizon notion about aperture.

Also anybody notice the g-man walking across the bridge when you are about to get the car, while you are up by the sniper rifle? I just zoomed in and got a big grin when I saw him strolling down the bridge.
 
At a guess it's some sort of floating laboratory which cruises through the neutral zones of the oceans so that it's not bound by law, same kinda thing as Doom3's UAC station on Mars. Doing test experiments on all sorts of things and no doubt refining the portal technology.

It's interesting to think what might happen in Ep3, I forsee a lot of it being faught on the ship and in a snowy wasteland that you see through the videos on the TV monitors throughout HL2 and Ep1. It seems unlikely to me that you'll run into Chell from Portal since she surfaced somewhere which appears to be well away from the antarctic.

I would love to see freeman return to black mesa sometime in Ep3 but I doubt that will happen, a decent climactic ending would be to have freeman go back to black mesa and confront the bad guys on the soil where it all started.
 
lopoetve said:
No, it's not flamebait, and was never intended as such. I honestly hated episode 2: It's one of the worst games I've played all year. However, I loved the half-life series up till this point, so I'd like to know what happens so I can play Episode 3, which may very well be better, and not feel totally lost. I almost never cheat, unless I get totally stuck (STALKER got me to at one point), hell, I completed COD2 on the hardest difficulty legally (took me a month). But this... was honestly so boring, I just don't want to touch it anymore, and that's sad since the rest of Orange Box is awesome.

Someone has uploaded the final end to youtube since I posted my post. I now know what happens... and my personal feelings about the end fit the rest of the game: Mediocre at best. Killing eli, fine. That makes sense, in the storyline, but the brain bugs are such a cop out steal from ST it's not even funny, especially since once again, they pulled the "here, know it all! OOPS!" ending style. This whole episode felt like a cop out. Milking the cash cow and not adding anything.

Anyway, back to the portal advanced levels. :)
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Clearly you are a member of the Combine posing as a Freeman supporter.

Sorry but I cant understand your 'bordom' . There was lots of new stuff... You just arent appriciating the technical aspects of it.

I saw someone else comment that the graphics havent changed since HL2...thats so wrong. Some people just arent taking the time to appriciate the improvements...like alyx's movements, her AI, the vorts new moves, the lighting effects. Episode 2 was admittedly more of the same with a little extra tacked on, but if you loved HL2 as much as you claim, that should be enough to get your excited. The Hunters are friggin crazy cool enemies.
 
I remeber reading somewhere that EP3 will take place up in the arctic and will end with a huge epic "Final" battle
 
Azith said:
Clearly you are a member of the Combine posing as a Freeman supporter.

Sorry but I cant understand your 'bordom' . There was lots of new stuff... You just arent appriciating the technical aspects of it.

I saw someone else comment that the graphics havent changed since HL2...thats so wrong. Some people just arent taking the time to appriciate the improvements...like alyx's movements, her AI, the vorts new moves, the lighting effects. Episode 2 was admittedly more of the same with a little extra tacked on, but if you loved HL2 as much as you claim, that should be enough to get your excited. The Hunters are friggin crazy cool enemies.
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New stuff? Same enemies, same guns, same AI, same story. Dialog is worse, transitions are worse, and many things (puzzles) have been repeated enough to be totally boring at this point. Oh yay, a tilting board. Looks like a gravity puzzle!

The hunters were awesome for the first fight or two, but were way overdone for the final battle.

Sure, the graphics are a little bit better, but some things are far worse (oh lord the dialog. I shouldn't be laughing at Alex sobbing over her dad dying!). It got me excited, and then left me disappointed.
 
Anybody seen a movie called "Event Horizon"? The story behind Borealis looks exactly like the one in the movie, except in Event Horizon it was a space ship which disappeared "for a while". It's a cool movie by the way, watch it if you can.
 
lopoetve said:
New stuff? Same enemies, same guns, same AI, same story. Dialog is worse, transitions are worse, and many things (puzzles) have been repeated enough to be totally boring at this point. Oh yay, a tilting board. Looks like a gravity puzzle!

The hunters were awesome for the first fight or two, but were way overdone for the final battle.

Sure, the graphics are a little bit better, but some things are far worse (oh lord the dialog. I shouldn't be laughing at Alex sobbing over her dad dying!). It got me excited, and then left me disappointed.
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It's not a new game, you shouldn't expect everything to be new, dude.
It's an expansion; thus expanding on the story, the action, etc. etc.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Episode 1 more for some reason, though. I think it's because I loved the pitch black zombie fights as well as the Strider ones, taking them down with rockets, rather than having to take them down using the Magnussons.
 
I guess I'm a little confused.

Where did it say Advisors can suck someone's knowledge out of them?

BRAINS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!
 
The18thLetter said:
It's not a new game, you shouldn't expect everything to be new, dude.
It's an expansion; thus expanding on the story, the action, etc. etc.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Episode 1 more for some reason, though. I think it's because I loved the pitch black zombie fights as well as the Strider ones, taking them down with rockets, rather than having to take them down using the Magnussons.
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I didn't expect everything to be new, but I didn't expect a rehash of the worst parts of the prior games. I didn't find much of anything that was new.

I enjoyed Ep1 for the same reasons you did. I had a blast with that night fight, especially barely making it. Striders with sillymines and hunters are just, well, meh.
 
Suiseiseki said:
I guess I'm a little confused.

Where did it say Advisors can suck someone's knowledge out of them?

BRAINS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!
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Well while i agree in principle...and that they never specifically said thats what happen i think its largely suggested.

The first view of an advisor we get, the guy shows he can squish a big metal item into a small ball with his mind. Then he grabs the corpse and specifically turns it around and sticks its tentacle into the back of the head. If the advisor has as much power to do physical damage as we have seen, why bother with this brain suckage? They could have killed eli alyx and gordon very easily if that was there primary objective. They wanted something and its kinda hard to accept that it wasnt related to the method of death.
 
Suiseiseki said:
I guess I'm a little confused.

Where did it say Advisors can suck someone's knowledge out of them?

BRAINS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!
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You're absolutely right! I'm sure that the advisors just flew into the rebel base, incapacitated Alyx and Gordon, levitated Eli Vance, who just happens to know everything about the rebellion (and even conveniently mentions this to Gordon shortly beforehand) and sucked out his brain because it was probably a bit tasty.
 
fodder0 said:
referring to the guy who hated episode 2. :confused:
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yes, and? Your argument doesn't make sense, nor is it logical. Disliking one part of a series does not make one not a "real" fan of the series. Blind praise is pointless: Every company makes a less-than-perfect product from time to time.

COD3 was horrible, yet COD1 and COD2 were awesome games, and COD4 will probably be as well. does disliking COD3 somehow make me less a fan of the series?
 
lopoetve said:
yes, and? Your argument doesn't make sense, nor is it logical. Disliking one part of a series does not make one not a "real" fan of the series. Blind praise is pointless: Every company makes a less-than-perfect product from time to time.

COD3 was horrible, yet COD1 and COD2 were awesome games, and COD4 will probably be as well. does disliking COD3 somehow make me less a fan of the series?
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heh...just want to point out, Same team didn't make COD3 that made 1 and 2 :p

But I know what you're saying which is true
 
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