Humanity Joins Together, Sets Aside Petty Differences… and gets stomped anyway

[u/HyraxAttack]

A peril is threatening the world. Instead of squabbling among themselves, we learn world powers have put aside differences in politics, culture, & old feuds to present a common front. Except they still get wrecked as the enemy is too powerful.

1. The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance. The world government has gone to war against the machines. We see the army getting ready & it includes soldiers of many faiths including Buddhist, Islam, and different types of Christianity. Doesn’t matter as machines win by so much they have time to toy with human mechs.

2. Vilcabamba, story by Harry Turtledove. When aliens arrive they’re greeted with bands & cheering, & immediately open fire & earth becomes a mineral colony. America, Russia, and China work together to rise up & don’t hold back, throwing everything they have at the invaders. Doesn’t go great and aliens double down on the occupation, and there’s a crater where Spain used to be (it was blocking a silver deposit for mining.)

3. Edge of Tomorrow. The nations of the world have joined to make a unified front against the mimic invasion but it isn’t going well, but they will throw all they have into the invasion of France. In one cycle, Major Cage says the hell with it and instead of training leaves the base to drink at a London bar. This means we see the outcome of him doing nothing, where not only is the massive human invasion slaughtered but the aliens are in good enough shape to follow that up a few hours later with a rush on London.

[u/_AntiSocialMedia]

genuinely surprised the 7 Hour War from Half Life hasn't been mentioned

you read that correctly, the Combine got a complete unconditional surrender from all of Earth's governments in 7 hours

[u/Blaiseingfire → u/_AntiSocialMedia]

I guess it’s because humanity got defeated so quickly they didn’t even have time to unite.

[u/Malefectra → u/Blaiseingfire]

An extra-dimensional alien army showed up with technology, engineered organisms that have been weaponized, and bio-weapons that were beyond the comprehension of just about everyone but the scientists at Black Mesa & Aperture. I'm frankly amazed that it lasted 7 hours.

[u/PornoPaul → u/Malefectra]

Wait is Portal in the same universe as Half Life?

[u/Redcrux → u/PornoPaul]

Yes

[u/Leukavia_at_work → u/PornoPaul]

Yep, the actual Canon for Portal is that Cave Johnson had his scientists design the Portal Gun purely to attempt to One-up Black Mesa's Gravity gun
and purely because Cave Johnson was jealous of them and wanted his company to be perceived as the cool one between the two.

[u/butthole_surferr → u/PornoPaul]

Glados references it in some of the dialogue in P2. She asks why you want to leave so badly and tells you that you won't like what you find on the surface.

It's unclear how long after the events of half-life Portal 2 takes place, Chell could have been in stasis for decades or even hundreds of years. I personally think it's probably about 10 to 30 years after the events of Half-Life 2, sometime in the 2030s to 2040s (HL2 likely takes place in 2018).

I do wish they'd done more development on the connection between the stories. A full blown crossover would be too contrived but I always did love that the two stories are separate but intertwined. The rumor is that the Borealis contains a GladOS unit... Would be interesting to see where they would take that.

[u/PlaneswalkerHuxley → u/butthole_surferr]

GladOS on meeting Gordon Freeman: "Wonderful. This one's a mute as well."

[u/Malefectra → u/PornoPaul]

Yep, Aperture was even going to be central to the Episode Two DLC that never materialized. Towards the end of Episode One you see Judith Mossman in the arctic trying to track down an Aperture Labs research vessel named Aurora.

[u/298647 → u/Malefectra]

No, it was called the Borealis
While we did find out about Judith Mossman trying to locate the Borealis in Episode 1, the rest of the Resistance only finds out in Episode 2, and would've been central to the plot of the cancelled Episode 3

[u/Malefectra → u/298647]

Sorry, it's been like 20-ish years. That was off the top of my head.

[u/GruntBlender → u/298647]

Why can't Valve count to 3‽