Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26285493-20151018222543

The Unknown Hatred

There have been theories about what happened between the first and second game of the half life series. Valve did give small details of what happened between the game with the seven hour war for an example. Most people have not thought about what did happen to the people of earth during that time. But the torrented version of Half Life 2 that I downloaded did show me what happens when someone leaves without helping people that are in desperate need of help.

Before I played the torrent, something much worse had happened to my family and me. I was living in Detroit at the time with my family which consisted of my father, mother, sister, and myself. A few days before the event had happened, I was at school sitting in history class bored out of my mind and felt a light tap on my left shoulder. I look over and it's my friend David wanting to give me a note. I took the note and it read “I am nearly done torrenting Halo 2 for the personal computer. Once I am done torrenting my version of Halo 2. I can give you a version as well and we can play together. Sound good? Circle yes or no”. I circle yes because I am wanting to play Halo 2 with him. I look back at him and he is making hand gesture wanting me to flip the paper. I flip the paper and it read “I found a good torrent of Half Life 2. I will tell you more about after class.”. After we get out of class, he starts talking about what we are going to do in Halo 2. Me and him completely forgot about the torrent of Half Life 2. During my next class, English. My class had to write a one page paper on recent news stories. I was not paying much attention to the news stories until someone mentioned break in’s. None of the other news stories were local news stories like this one. The classmate got into some detail about the break in’s. This shocked me from the standpoint of him going into detail about the news because we are in school and why would he pick this topic. But this did inform me and made me aware of what was happening in Detroit.

When I got home, I told my parents about the news that I had heard. They both looked at each other and both had worried looks on their faces. They looked at me and my father said that they never told me this news because they did not want me to freak out about it. But since I learned of it of they told me everything that was left out of the school version. They told me of the murders that have occurred during some of the break in’s. I asked my father if he was doing any to help secure our house. He said that he had ordered a few window locks and better door locks and once they arrived he would install them.

About a week after I learned of the news. I was walking home from school and I was 3 houses away from my house. I saw a guy in dark clothing running toward me from my house, but he was really running toward a parked car on the street. As he was running toward the car, I saw blood on his hands and the edge of his sleeves as well. I was staring widely at his hands when he jumped into the car and drove off. After he drove off, I sprinted to my house and saw the front door open and a window broken on the side of the house. I did not go into the house because I was scared and called 911. When the police arrived and started to look over the damage and what was stolen. They questioned me on what I saw, I told them about the man in the dark clothing and the license plate of the car. A police officer came out of the house with a depressed look on his face and walked over to me and told me that my sister and mother were killed by the burglar or now killer. I broke down and sobbed, a police officer pulled me away and set me in cop car. I did not know what to, my life fell apart. After that event,  I was in therapy for 2 months.

I was going to the same school for about month before me and father moved to ann arbor. While I was still in the same school, other than the pity from my classmates. My friends would do anything and everything to help me have fun for a long time. It was a friday, and school was over for the week. Me and friend David went back to his house and we started playing Halo 2, this was his version trying to cheer me up. We were playing the first level of the campaign on the Legendary difficulty and I had died several times before I let out a loud annoyed moan. David looked at me and then an idea popped into his head and he smiled. “Let's play the torrent of Half Life 2 that I found a while back”. I nodded and he loaded up the Half Life 2 torrent. I have played have Half Life 2 before and thought this would be an easy run of Half Life 2. He said that we would go back on forth on each death or when we got to a new chapter.

Before we started the game, David was adjusting a few settings to help maximize the frame rate so we did not get angry from poor frames and since we would be talking throughout the game he enabled subtitles so if one of us wanted to hear the conversation then whoever would not get mad according to him. The game started normally and the Half Life 2 Logo popped up and Gman started talking about its Gordon’s time again. If you do not know the Half Life series, Gman or government man is this mysterious man that follows you around in the first and second game. At the end of the first game, Gman “gives” Gordon a fake choice of working for him or leaving, which is really death (Sorry for Spoilers). When Gordon chooses to work for him, Gman puts him into some type of sleep like state. Going back to beginning of the second game when Gman is talking, during his speech, during the middle of his speech it sounded like the audio for Gman talking just bugged out and I looked back at David and he just shrugged and said that it's just a weird bug. At the end of the normal subtitles, it just said “why”. I thought it was strange but I did not care, I just wanted to enjoy the game. I was walking past the citizens in the train station and some at first would have a surprised look and then it turned to angry. They would say nothing and just stare. It made me a bit uneasy because I have never seen them do that before. I look back at David again and he says that he never had seen that before either. I kept playing and the game continued normally. But when I got to the apartments and the citizens were supposed to help Gordon get to the roof and escaped the civil protection or the combine.

The combine are an alien race that had taken over worlds for their resources. The combine took over earth for its resources after the alien invasion from zen started. The Alien invasion started when a experiment went wrong at a research development complex black mesa. The event opened portals around the world that were connected to a space called zen. When I ran through the door going to the roof, a citizen is supposed to hold the door closed while you ran to the roof. But instead the citizen was just standing in the middle of the room with an angry face. The citizen did not say anything but mouth some words that appeared in the subtitles that read “why did you not do anything to stop this!”. I was a bit unnerved by this and from the look that David gave as well, he was too. Shortly after I got across the rooftops. When I got to the room where a girl named Alyx saves Gordon from the civil protection combine. Alyx is the daughter of Eli Vance which was a scientist from black mesa. Normally after you wake up after being knocked out the civil protection officers, you are greeted by a smile from Alyx. But instead I got a angry or really a pissed off look from Alyx. Her dialogue came with an angry tone as well. After her normal dialogue, she was still mouthing words and the subtitles were “why didn't you help my father escape from black mesa or help to save my mother!”. I was in shock, I had never seen alyx so upset. The mention of her mother made me feel guilty about not doing anything about the man killed my mother. I should have done something about the man, I should have stopped him.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I let David play because I needed time to think. David was going through the game normally in the water hazard chapter. He let me play again when he got to black mesa east. I walked into the cleaning chamber where Mossman and a citizen where on duty waiting for Gordon. Mossman is another scientist from black mesa. After Gordon got out of the cleaning chamber, him and Mossman were walking into the elevator. Mossman was about to start talking once more once Gordon and her were in the elevator. But the dialogue bugged out like Gman’s speech and she was just mouthing words. In the middle of her mouthing words, I paused the game and looked back at David. He was messing with his knuckles and looked up at me and I asked “Was the game bugging like this when you originally played it”. He said “No it was normal when I played it awhile back, it's probably just the game bugging out. Just restart the game.”. I restarted the game and loaded the last automatic save point.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The game started normally and thought that bugs may have been fixed from the restart. I got back to the same point as last time and everything was normal. But I noticed at the end of her speech in the subtitles it said “why didn’t you do anything after black mesa.”. I thought about what happened to Gordon after the first game, Gman put him a sleep like state and he in a way, disappeared. This did not match her conversation at all like it was just thrown in. This did give me the idea that whoever did create this torrent did try to add dialogue and other events but failed. This did creep me out a bit because who knows what else this person added. When I got to the lab with Eli, everything was normal until Alyx walked into the room with an angry face again for a few seconds when she looked at me and then went back to normal. That did freak me out a bit and from David's look, it freaked him out too. We both looked at each other and we must have had the same thought. “What the hell is going with this game.”. I did not want to play for a bit because I was creeped out and the messages brought guilt upon me because the similar messages to what I have thought before on what I should have done to stop the killer.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">David started to play for me and he quickly got to Ravenholm. Ravenholm is a town that is now full of zombies because the combine shelled the town with head crab shells which can be used to make zombies. Head crabs are alien creatures that can take over humans and make them like zombies after killing them. David was going through Ravenholm with no problem and meets father Grigori. Father Grigori is priest that has gone a little bit crazy and made dangerous traps for the zombies, but still wants to help the living. Father Grigori went on his rant and David walked past as he finished his rant, but as he finished he said with dialogue, not just subtitles “you should have help us.”. He looked back at me and said “we should stop playing for now.”. I nodded and we saved and exited the game. Me and him were trying to guess what was going on with game and our most optimistic guess was we were tired and our minds were playing tricks on us. That's what we hoped instead of a hacked torrent that had some unnerving things in it. I went home for the day and slept the rest of the day away.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Since it was Saturday and I planned to hangout with David. Me and him went back to playing Half Life 2, to see if it was still having odd issues. I started playing first and everything was normal and I was breezing past the Ravenholm areas easily and got the exit of the mines. I made my way through the industrial area and got to the car. I wasn’t really wanting drive the car and I wanted to give David a chance to play anyway.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I started to relax and thought that our guess was true or so I thought. David made it to the lighthouse when you have to fend off combine forces trying to attack. When one of the rebels spoke about what was about to occur at the lighthouse, out of the corner of his view he noticed a female rebel medic that was dead up against the house. There are no dead rebels before the attack. I thought that the rebel npc glitched out and died. The rebel mentioned in the subtitles that a combine scouting party found them and had killed there several others because they were low on supplies fending them off, so they had to be careful. I have never seen that happen before. It reminded me of my mother. She was nurse at the Detroit medical center, she took care of me and sister when we were sick with great care. I did nothing to stop the man that killed me mother and sister, I just stood there and watched. He had trouble fending off the combine because of no medic and the supply crates did not have enough medkits to keep him alive with a decent amount health. He was able to get through the sandtraps area easily enough and was able to breeze through the first part of Nova Prospekt until the actual chapter started. Once he got to the chapter then he let me play.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-indent:36pt;"><span style="font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">I was going through the prison with ease and got to the next chapter with Alyx. The chapter was continuing normally and the weird bugs that kept occurring with Alyx finally stopped. Once Alyx moved her father to the interrogation room, we were moving toward that room to talk to him and find a way to escape Nova Prospekt. We got to the room and when the pod opened with her father or Eli Vance. He had a depressed look on his face like he was fighting emotions within himself like he was upset about his daughter and wife. He looked at Gordon and gave him a angry look like it was his fault. It's like my father, when he learned of my mother and sister’s deaths. He blamed himself for their deaths and went into a depression. He blamed me as well for not doing anything when I had seen the man. I did not know until it was too late. His depression affected more than just his personal life. It affected his work and he was fired from his job, that’s the reason we had to move.

<span style="font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);white-space:pre-wrap; color:#FFFFFF">I finished the rest of the chapter and let David play. He said to just sit back and relax because he knew that my depression was coming back and the game was causing it. David saved the game and said “ let's go back to playing Halo 2 or something. I know that some of the messages from the game are reminding you of the what happened to your mother and sister. If you do not want to play anymore, then that's fine because I don’t you to become even more depressed. I want to help you get out of this depression.”. I nodded and we went to play something else for the time being. But I wanted to overcome this anger and frustration so I told that I wanted to go back and finish the game. He looked at me with a confused look, but he did understand that I wanted to overcome this so we got back on. I loaded up the save and started to play again. I went through the anti citizen chapter with little effort and got to the citadel. I let David play again and he was able to get through the chapter with no problems. He made it to the final chapter let me finish the game. I made it through the final chapter with ease and right before the end of the game, Gman spoke to Gordon before the credits rolled. His dialogue was normal, but at the end of his speech in the subtitles he said “why did allow this happen, you could fought or at least struggled to let me release you and let you fight.”. It made sense to me that fear held me back and I let it take control of me. I did nothing to help when I should have and now they hate me for it. <ac_metadata title="The Unknown Hatred (Not Reviewed)"> </ac_metadata>