Half-Life Storyline
Gordon Freeman rides a tram from his dormitory deep into the heart of the Black Mesa Facility, on his way to the Anomalous Materials Lab to begin his work. Upon arriving at the lab, front desk security guard informs him that a system crash has complicated communications between the Black Mesa scientists, and that Freeman must acquire his Hazardous Environment suit (or H.E.V suit) before proceeding to the test chamber. Freeman reports to the Anomalous Materials Lab, where he then meets up with Dr. Arne Magnusson and where he is tasked with pushing a “specimen” into the scanning beam for analysis. Following that, he inadvertently causes a fictional time-space catastrophe called a “resonance cascade,” opening a portal between Earth and a bizarre world called Xen. Freeman is sporadically teleported there and catches glimpses of various alien lifeforms, shortly before blacking out.
The story is presented through an instruction manual, scripted events and conversations during the game, and in-game cut scenes. The game begins as the Pillar of Autumn exits slip-space near a mysterious ring-shaped space station, called “Halo” by the Covenant. A Covenant fleet attacks and heavily damages the Pillar of Autumn. Jacob Keyes initiates “The Cole Protocol”, a procedure designed to prevent the Covenant from learning the location of Earth. While Keyes prepares to land the ship on Halo, the Master Chief and Cortana escape via an escape pod, which crash lands on the ring.
The player takes the role of a nameless space marine (referred to as “Doomguy” by many fans), “one of Earth’s toughest, hardened in combat and trained for action”, who has been deported to Mars for assaulting a senior officer when ordered to kill unarmed civilians. He is forced to work for the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), a military-industrial conglomerate that is performing secret experiments with teleportation between the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. The Marine may have been forced into a security or unimportant staff position according to the manual, stating “with no action for fifty million miles, your day consisted of suckin’ dust and watchin’ restricted flicks in the rec room.” Suddenly, something goes wrong and creatures from Hell come out of the teleportation gates, or “Gateways”. A defensive response from base security fails to halt the invasion, and the bases quickly get overrun by demons; all personnel are killed or turned into zombies. At the same time, Deimos vanishes entirely. A UAC team from Mars is sent to Phobos to investigate the incident, but soon radio contact ceases and only one human is left alive — the player, whose task is to make it out as such.
The story begins with Kratos on the tallest cliff in Greece, lamenting that the gods have abandoned him; hopeless, he consigns himself to the waves below. The story then rewinds three weeks into the past; as the game progresses, it also relates Kratos’ past through numerous flashbacks. For reasons of simplicity, this summary covers all of these events in chronological order.
The story of F.E.A.R. is presented in such a way that only a few minor plot elements are presented in the game’s beginning, thus allowing players to experience the adventure as “the hero[es] in [their] own spine-tingling epic of action, tension and terror.”The manual briefly mentions the player character’s recent induction as “Point man” to the F.E.A.R., a secret special operations group of the U.S. government specialized in dealing with paranormal threats. The character’s extraordinarily reactive reflexes are described as well, hinting that the government is interested in his abilities.When the game begins, the player witnesses a man named Paxton Fettel taking command of a battalion of telepathically controlled clone supersoldiers, seizing control of the Armacham Technology Corporation (ATC) structure and killing all its occupants.
Jack Carver has left his mysterious and bitter past behind him and dropped out of society to run a boat-charter business in the South Pacific. He is hired by Valerie Constantine to take her secretly to an uncharted island in Micronesia. After Val is safely delivered to the island, Jack’s boat is suddenly attacked by mercenaries. Jack manages to escape but is stranded thousands of miles away from home. With his only friend lost somewhere in the depths of the jungle, he must now find his way back to civilization.
Gears of War takes place on Sera, a planet inhabited by humans, who have warred over a phosphorescent, low-viscosity fluid known as “Imulsion”. Over several decades, the Pendulum Wars took place between various human countries, and ended with the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) taking control of the planet. The war quickly came to an end on “Emergence Day”, when a ravenous force known as the Locust Horde bursts from underneath major human cities using a network of underground tunnels.
StarCraft takes place in the distant future. Human exiles fight for survival on the edge of the galaxy, and a unified Terran government has formed through espionage, deceit and military might. In the midst of these events, the Zerg have begun an invasion of the Terran worlds, along with the war against the Protoss.