Well the only thing Valve has said about the plot, is that Episode 3 will merely mark the end of the episodic stage of Half-Life.
My guess is that the end of Episode 3 will merely be the wrap up of the story between alyx, eli vance and gordon.  They could through in a curve ball and cause story to cease to exist on Earth. Think about what they could do with separate worlds for Half-LIfe 3?  We have never seen the Combine world and personally I think the third game in the half-life series will see some type of offense instead of always having to cut off the combine after they have done damage.  Also, there are other citadels all over the planet. It's possible that the plot twists will reveal trying to save those other citadels.

Valve also said that they will update the graphics and physics engines when they become truly outdated. Proabably after Episode 3, since it would give them time to work on new engines after some groundbreaking revelations that the story writers have made.

They have to. We were about to ride de choppah to the borealis at the end of ep2, remember? I doubt Gordon's just going to give up just because Eli died.

Yes, I know that Aperture science was mentioned in episode 2. I finished the game a fucking long time ago, and 3bam knows this because I had a discussion with him about it. Don't be dicks.

What I was saying is that I wonder if aperture science will somehow be implicated in the greater plot of the half life series, not mentioned as a side note, much as black mesa was merely seen in a slide show and put into the joke of a song at the end of the game.

Basically, I meant what I wrote, if you didn't understand here it is again, but with the other words removed:

sheesh

/troll

They said Judith went there to look for something that could help them fight the combine. I'm sure she didn't go there in search of shower curtains or the reverse heimlich manoever. They said the Borealis "disappeared" and since it's been found it's pretty reasonable to assume that the borealis contains information on or actual portal technology.

Delta, try visiting the valve forums at some point. This shit has been discussed by fanboys in great detail ever since the orange box came out.

I don't know what's going on; I never played and therefore never beat any of the original Half-Life games or episodes. But yay HL2:E3.

The sun will die first.

Next thousand years??  I'm banking on it in my lifetime!

To be more serious, I highly doubt it'll take 1000 years for humans to achieve "immortality."  We're already working on technology about regrowing organs, repairing degenerative damage to the brain, and other life prolonging techniques.  The entire purpose of the medical industry is the preservation and extension of life.  Combine that with efforts being made to simulate the actual neurons of the brain (see Lab comes one step closer to building artificial human brain for a recent overview on the subject), and it's only a matter of time before an individual can be seen to never "die."  Once an entire brain can be simulated, the next step becomes simulating a person's ACTUAL neurons.  That simulation can either be run from within a machine (see Ghost In The Shell) or merely stored there and exported back out into biological neurons in a host body. Obviously we're nowhere near that kind of thing, but the fact that we can even conceptualize the direction of it means it won't take another millennium.

Taking the discussion to a deeper level, the prospect raises a host of spiritual questions as well, the nature and uncertain "portability" of the human soul among others.  If a human mind could be completely simulated and then transferred to a host body or run from within the machine and still be indistinguishable from the original mind, couldn't it be conceivably done multiple times?  And what does it say about what it means to be an "individual" if the same individual's mind/soul can be flawlessly replicated?

I'll conclude my commentary with another extension of the concept... If a human mind could be perfectly stored or simulated within a computer, would that simulated mind have the same rights as its biological version?  It would be a boon for the field of psychological research to be able to ethically simulated the reactions of an actual human mind.  At some point, wouldn't we want to hook up multiple computers and simulate multiple people?  At some point, wouldn't we be able to simulate a virtual version of an entire world, populated with completely flawlessly replicated human minds?

Where I'm going with this is something called the Simulation Argument.  In a nutshell, it considers this progression of technology to be inevitable (assuming we as a species survive that long) and concludes based on sound statistical theory that either societies at that level make the conscious choice not to simulate virtual worlds or WE are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.  The notion smacks a little sci-fi and a lot Matrix, but check out the site for a more persuasive argument that I think makes a lot of sense.


And yes, I know and am fully aware this post will be flamed and derided by some of the less erudite members of the forums, and I'll be lucky to get even a couple actual responses to the topic.  But to those who'd legitimately reply that it's a fine topic but just too off-topic, the WDFNews forums have sections for everything including videogames, art, movies, TV, music, advice, books, politics, food, sports and even drugs, but oddly enough nothing on metaphysical or biotech!  So forgive me, I hate it when threads stray too far, but Super Penguin inspired me.

Obviously.  Btw, am I supposed to see that as some kind of negative that you don't have the attention span to read five paragraphs, as though refusing to ingest more than one mouthful of information at a time is a virtue?