"NIHILANTH" by Marc Laidlaw

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Published on September 17, 2020 2:18:30 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u95jP_io_aI

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This vignette is one of two found on an old floppy disc by Marc Laidlaw a few months after his retirement. It was one of two released together, the other being a more detailed play-by-play of a concept for the battle itself. As he says, "These are not necessarily things that might have been, these were just sketches I wrote and threw out there to see if any of the ideas might stick." This one is from 7/21/1998, and deals mostly with the themes of the game as a whole, and ideas for the future of the series. A lot of it is contradicted by Half-Life 2, but it's a very interesting read nonetheless. Marc describes it as follows:

"This one seems more like an attempt to sum up the ending thematically, and also it was an attempt at whipping up some marketing. Not sure who the audience was for this piece. Was it intended only for internal consumption? Were we trying to explain the story to others? I see in this (at this remove) the first hint that we were starting to look beyond HL1 at what the next threat might be. It was nothing as coherent as the Combine, and in fact for a while we threw all kinds of aliens at the problem before settling on a unified force."

For the sake of turning this into an entertaining video, I used footage from most of the series, some beta things, and other unrelated sci-fi works linked below. I tried to tie things from this concept to the sequels, but they don't line up perfectly. Hope you enjoy it!

Both vignettes can be found here: www.marclaidlaw.com/mathoms-lambda-files-c-1998/

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