Half-Life 3: Return to Black Mesa



Half-Life 3: Return to Black Mesa is the fourth main installment in the Half-Life series, following Half-Life, Half-Life: Alyx and Half-Life 2.

Synopsis
Dr. Arne Magnusson and Eli Vance realise that the only way to get rid of the G-Man is to go back and time and prevent the resonance cascade from occurring. Gordon Freeman, Barney Calhoun and a deaf woman named Sarah Lawson go on a trip to the Borealis, where a captured Alyx Vance - now working for the G-Man - is being sent to. Sarah is revealed to be the daughter of Wallace Breen and wanting revenge for his death, and shows that he is now a baby grub. Sarah is killed and Freeman hijacks the Borealis and travels back in time, where he is back in the Black Mesa Hazard Course.

Racing through the Hazard Course the G-Man attempts to stop him by setting up deadly traps, but Freeman makes it to the tram. He arrives earlier for work and attempts to reverse the Black Mesa Incident, only to find that Judith Mossman is now in Gordon's place as being responsible for pushing the sample into the beam. This triggers the resonance cascade and Freeman is caught in a blast. G-Man communicates with Freeman, revealing that he had "nudged" time again which has placed Mossman in Freeman's place, although G-Man has no further use for her. He states that his employees "plans" must always go ahead. G-Man stashes Freeman aboard an osprey which is located outside of time and space, and is residence to Adrian Shephard.

Freeman and Shephard manage to escape through G-Man's portal and back to Black Mesa. They avert G-Man destroying the facility and discover the Borealis. They fly it into Xen and then into the future, where the Combine are still in control of earth. Guiding it to the Combine Overworld, they plan to plunge it into their main base of operations. But Freeman and Shephard discover that the Combine have multiple dyson spheres, thus proving that the Combine is way too big for them. They decide to use the Borealis anyway, but Freeman gets plucked out by the vortigaunts and Shephard is left to die.

Freeman wakes up in the distant future, where he is trapped on an island and wonders if their struggle against the Combine actually meant anything in the end.

In a post-credit scene, obese security guard Otis Laurey manages to climb out of Black Mesa, and makes his way to an uncertain future.

Television spin-off
In Half-Life: Lost Truth is a sequel television series starring Bryan Cranston as Gordon Freeman. He travels to Washington DC and sets up a task force dealing with the alien threats in the world, whilst being pursued by the G-Man, real name Frank Spencer. Eli Vance played by Jeffrey Wright is an alcoholic who mourns the loss of Alyx Vance, until she comes back as a human/vortigaunt hybrid and is part of a Vortigaunt welfare charity.

Sequels
Half-Life: Otis is a planned simulator in which Otis must defend a mall from marines that are sent to assassinate him.

Half-Life 4 sees Gordon Freeman fighting against the G-Man's employers.

Half-Life 7: Revenge of the Race X is the quasi grand finale of the main series, although is followed by Half-Life: Reality, which is a massive multiplayer simulation virtual reality game in which the users brains are downloaded into a large simulation based on the Half-Life universe, overseen by Lord Gabe Newell, the real benefactor and employer of The G-Man. This will be released in 2098 on the 100th anniversary of Half-Life.