Now, Alyx is old enough to help the Resistance out, but she's also not risking her life. Her robot companion, Dog, was created by her father using Combine tech when she was young. We know Alyx was too young to remember life before the incident and was not old enough to fight during the Seven Hour War. Half-Life: Alyx takes place quite a while after that. Wallace Breen, the administrator of Black Mesa at the time of the incident, negotiates humanity's terms of surrender to the Combine and becomes the empire's chief human representative on Earth.

The invasion is short and decisive, and comes to be known as the Seven Hour War. Not long after the events of the original Half-Life, the Combine open a portal to our dimension and assault the planet. The more complicated answer needs to account for all the time that's passed between the Black Mesa Incident and the moment Alyx Vance opens her eyes in City 17, staring right at the enormous Citadel that's rapidly being constructed by the Combine. The simple answer, as Half-Life: Alyx says in its intro, is five years before the death of Eli Vance at the end of Half-Life 2: Episode Two. If any prominent theories or new information from the game come to light, we'll do our best to update this guide accordingly.

Here's what Half-Life Alyx's ending is really all aboutįor the most part, we'll walk through the events of Half-Life: Alyx in chronological order here, peppering in context from earlier games and hopping around the Half-Life timeline where necessary.

How does this impact the events of Half-Life 2 and the Episodes?.

What about those Unforeseen Consequences?.

Who is the real prisoner inside the Vault?.

What is going on with the building inside the Vault?.

Why are the Combine imprisoning Vortigaunts?.

How does the Vortigaunt oracle see the future?.

What happened to the rest of the world?.

What are Eli and Russell looking for in City 17?.

The following guide contains spoilers for the plot of Half-Life: Alyx. Here, we'll explain what we can and piece together theories about the story, backstory, lore, and ending of Half-Life: Alyx. 19-year-old Alyx Vance doesn't know it at the start, but her 'ordinary' day of surveilling the Combine forces occupying Earth ends up being another important development in the Half-Life series.

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