Half-Life 2

by Valve

Half-Life 2 drops Gordon Freeman into City 17, a dystopian European city controlled by the Combine — an interdimensional empire that conquered Earth in the Seven Hour War. Armed with the Gravity Gun and aided by resistance fighters like Alyx Vance and Eli Vance, Gordon fights through urban warfare, zombie-infested ruins, and alien-occupied coastlines. Widely considered one of the greatest games ever made, HL2 tells its story entirely through first-person gameplay with no cutscenes.

45 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Alyx Vance — The heart of the resistance — a brilliant engineer and fighter whose warmth and courage hold together a rebellion that should have broken long ago.
• Antlions — Xen's insectoid swarm — territorial, relentless, and controllable by anyone brave enough to hold a pheropod.
• Barney Calhoun — A resistance fighter hiding in plain sight — a former Black Mesa security guard who infiltrated Civil Protection and never lost his sense of humor.
• Civil Protection — City 17's human police force — volunteers who traded their humanity for better rations and a mask to hide behind.
• Colonel Odessa Cubbage — A self-appointed resistance colonel at Lighthouse Point — brave enough to fight but honest enough to hand the rocket launcher to someone else.
• Combine Advisors — The true rulers of the Combine on Earth — enormous grub-like psychics who float in life-support pods and consider humanity a resource to be processed.
• Combine Overwatch — The Combine's transhuman soldiers — once human volunteers, now surgically modified, memory-wiped, and chemically loyal killing machines.
• Dog — Alyx's two-ton robotic guardian — a scrappy AI in a gorilla-sized chassis who plays fetch with cars and fights Striders with his bare hands.
• Dr. Arne Magnusson — White Forest's cantankerous chief scientist — a brilliant, petty, grudge-holding physicist who has never forgiven Gordon for microwaving his casserole
• Dr. Isaac Kleiner — The resistance's absent-minded genius — a brilliant physicist who treats the apocalypse like an inconvenient interruption to his research.
• Dr. Judith Mossman — A resistance scientist whose loyalties fold like origami — she betrayed Eli to Breen, then betrayed Breen to save him, and no one is sure which side s
• Dr. Wallace Breen — Earth's collaborator-in-chief — the former Black Mesa administrator who negotiated humanity's surrender and now governs City 17 as the Combine's puppe
• Eli Vance — The father of the resistance — a former Black Mesa scientist who lost his leg, his wife, and his world, but never his hope or his laugh.
• Father Grigori — The last living soul in Ravenholm — a half-mad priest who tends his flock of zombies with a shotgun and an unshakeable faith.
• Gordon Freeman — The One Free Man — a theoretical physicist who never says a word, yet the entire Combine empire trembles at his name.
• Headcrabs — Xen's most successful parasite — small, tenacious, and responsible for more nightmares than the entire Combine army.
• Hunters — The Combine's nimble synth escorts — fast, smart, and fiercely protective of their Strider charges.
• Lamarr — Dr. Kleiner's debeaked pet headcrab — proof that even in the apocalypse, scientists will adopt the wildlife.
• Striders — The Combine's towering war machines — three-legged synths that stalk through cities like nightmares on stilts, their warp cannons leveling buildings w
• The Combine — A transdimensional empire that conquered Earth in seven hours — not out of malice, but because it collects civilizations the way entomologists collect
• The G-Man — The man in the blue suit — an enigmatic figure who exists outside normal spacetime, manipulating events and people for employers he has never named.
• The Vortigaunts — An ancient alien species enslaved first by the Nihilanth and then by the Combine — now free, they see in Gordon Freeman something close to prophecy.

Locations

• Black Mesa East — The resistance's hidden research base — a repurposed hydroelectric facility where Eli Vance built a teleporter and Alyx raised a robot.
• Black Mesa Research Facility — Where it all started — the underground research complex in New Mexico where a routine experiment tore open the fabric of reality.
• City 17 — The Combine's administrative capital on Earth — a European city buried under alien infrastructure, where humanity lives under the boot and the broadca
• City 17 Canals — The underside of City 17 — a network of drainage canals and waterways that the resistance uses as an escape route and the Combine uses as a killing gr
• City 17 Train Station — Where it begins — the concrete arrival hall where citizens are processed, luggage is confiscated, and Gordon Freeman steps off the train.
• Dr. Kleiner's Lab — A hidden teleporter lab inside City 17 — cramped, cluttered, and one escaped headcrab away from catastrophe.
• Highway 17 — The coastal road between City 17 and Nova Prospekt — a crumbling highway through antlion-infested beaches and Combine checkpoints.
• Lighthouse Point — A resistance outpost on the coast — a lighthouse turned forward operating base, perpetually under Combine gunship attack.
• Nova Prospekt — The Combine's prison and conversion facility — where troublesome citizens go in as humans and come out as Overwatch soldiers.
• Ravenholm — We don't go to Ravenholm — a former resistance hideout shelled with headcrab canisters, now a zombie-infested nightmare with one surviving resident.
• The Borealis — Aperture Science's missing research vessel — vanished with its entire dry dock during a teleportation experiment, now frozen in the Arctic and contain
• The Citadel — The Combine's fortress-reactor at the heart of City 17 — a dark metal spire miles high that houses their administration, their army, and a dark energy
• The Outlands — The wilderness beyond City 17 — dense forest, abandoned infrastructure, and the road to White Forest through Combine-infested territory.
• Victory Mine — An abandoned mine system infested with antlions — beneath it, Vortigaunt healers harvest the extract that saves Alyx's life.
• White Forest — The resistance's last stronghold — a decommissioned Cold War missile base repurposed to launch humanity's most important rocket.
• White Forest Rocket Silo — The launch facility that holds humanity's last hope — a Cold War missile silo repurposed to fire a satellite that can close the Combine superportal.

Items

• Airboat — The resistance's improvised canal escape vehicle — a flat-bottomed fan boat that handles like a shopping cart and somehow outruns Combine gunships.
• Crowbar — The most famous melee weapon in gaming — a simple red crowbar that became the symbol of one man's impossible resistance.
• Dark Energy Core — The heart of the Citadel — a contained sphere of dark energy that powers the Combine's Earth operations and nearly tears a hole between dimensions whe
• HEV Suit — The Hazardous Environment Suit — Mark V — a full-body powered armor that keeps Gordon Freeman alive through radiation, bullets, and the end of the wor
• Magnusson Device — A sticky bomb that clings to Striders and detonates — Dr. Magnusson's petty genius turned into the weapon that saves White Forest.
• Scout Car — The resistance's coastal vehicle — a rusted dune buggy with a tau cannon mounted on top, perfect for running antlion gauntlets on Highway 17.
• Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator — The gravity gun — a physics-bending tool that turns the entire environment into ammunition and rewrote the rules of first-person shooters.

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