Why is it called The Orange Box and...

[Ed Rattlehead]

let's face it, AC is the same level repeated over and over again. The Half Life series is probably the best single player experience ever. Throw in Portal and Team Fortress, and the Orange Box is the absolute tits.

[w00ties]

Originally Posted by fiddolbrfrho

your mates are a bunch of fucking morons. HL2 is the best FPS ever made. anyone who would call it "crap" has no business playing games, and should probably go do something else.

Agreed

[FeliX450]

Originally Posted by ProjectCamaro

I prefer AC myself. I stopped playing Half Life half way through Ep. One because I just got so bored with it.

It's really to bad because the original Half Life for PC was one of the best games ever made.

in my eyes i just do not see how the hell thats possible

When i bought the orange box for PC the day it came out, i got hooked and played for something like 10 hours or so straight. Then i got it for PS3 to enjoy it on big screen . I went through the orange box about 4 times if not more and not once i got bored. Few weeks ago Target had sale on AC for 38 bucks so i thought i'd give it a shoot. After about 2 hours playing i got very sick of the game, and switched to a defferent game. Next day i thought id give it another try and maybe somehow it will get more interesting but unfortuantley it didnt. I tried to force myself and beat but that did not work either because it was doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again . So i took it to gamestop and traded it in for Reisistance(which is an awesome game btw). In half life series every chapter is different. there is always new places, and you never experience the same thing(except enemies). you get to drive boats, cars, buggies etc etc etc. the game experience is just unbeatable.

The day i got my 360(2 days ago) i rented Bioshock. I like it. Its defentley an awesome game, i just dont seem to get it. I think there is way to many different things to comprehend and do at the same time and too many different features. Im in Arcadia right now and still confused about the story. what my mission is etc. Its still a cool and kinda creepy game, i just hope i can beat it by friday, because i dont see myslef buying anytime soon.

[ninjaitk]

wow i cant belive nobody has said this yet. okay im not sure how true this is but apperently there might be a HLE3. which( brace yourself for this one) would include the portal gun! in the begining (i asume) alyx explains to gordan that the lab that she got the gun from was somehow destroyed. well thats all i know. i think the portal gun was actually transported to them.
i suppose that would explain why Portal would be in the orange box.

[ninjaitk]

also in the ending theme GLaDOS mentions Black Mesa. i just started playing half life 2 without playing 1 so i have no idea what black mesa is but im pretty sure it has something to do with Half Life. plz do enlighten me.

[xJWDx]

I'm loving TOB so far, I only got it 2 hours ago!

[OmegaTreeFish]

also in the ending theme GLaDOS mentions Black Mesa. i just started playing half life 2 without playing 1 so i have no idea what black mesa is but im pretty sure it has something to do with Half Life. plz do enlighten me.

black mesa is from the first half life. It is some sorta science place (in competiction with the place the portal gun is from (Apature?) as learned from portal the game. Black mesa went a wee bit wrong and something opened a portal to another world and aliens flooded in. You basically spend the whole game trying to escape. The portal that opens is (i think) what caused the combine to appear and take over earth and set up the scene for HL2. At the end of HL1 g-man puts you in status to use you in the future (you see him watching you through out HL1 as you do in HL2 as well).

oh and its called the orange box because HL1 and 2 boxes were orange as are many thing about this game. The orange box itself is also orange. There for the orange box is literaly just an orange box.

edit:

ok after a bit of research the combine arnt from Xen (the place the aliens came from in HL1) but portal storms caused by the main bady in HL1 attracted them and they enslaved the human race

[w00ties]

Originally Posted by ninjaitk

also in the ending theme GLaDOS mentions Black Mesa. i just started playing half life 2 without playing 1 so i have no idea what black mesa is but im pretty sure it has something to do with Half Life. plz do enlighten me.

Originally Posted by OmegaTreeFish

black mesa is from the first half life. It is some sorta science place (in competiction with the place the portal gun is from (Apature?) as learned from portal the game. Black mesa went a wee bit wrong and something opened a portal to another world and aliens flooded in. You basically spend the whole game trying to escape. The portal that opens is (i think) what caused the combine to appear and take over earth and set up the scene for HL2. At the end of HL1 g-man puts you in status to use you in the future (you see him watching you through out HL1 as you do in HL2 as well).

oh and its called the orange box because HL1 and 2 boxes were orange as are many thing about this game. The orange box itself is also orange. There for the orange box is literaly just an orange box.

edit:

ok after a bit of research the combine arnt from Xen (the place the aliens came from in HL1) but portal storms caused by the main bady in HL1 attracted them and they enslaved the human race

More or less what he said.

Black Mesa was the research facility that Gordon Freeman worked at prior to the portal/invasion incident. Aperture Science and Black Mesa were the two major (and possibly only) competing research facilities in the field of portal technology. Aperture Science was more advanced than Black Mesa (as we can tell, as AS already had a portal gun, and BM was still trying to figure out basic portals), so thats probably why Black Mesa took the unidentified crystal from Xen (a very strong sample that caused the incident due to an overload of the BM systems) in an attempt to get ahead of AS.

This attempt to beat out AS by using the crystal caused a major portal to open (linking Xen and Earth). Aliens stuck on Xen (the 'subway' station of the universe) were trying to outrun the Combine (as the Combine are trying to take over the universe, hence all the aliens running - using Earth as an escape route). The Combine noticed this portal and followed all the different races of aliens to earth, where the Combine discovered good resources and planned to strip earth of all the natural resources (making their forces stronger) and leave.

Since the destruction of Black Mesa (in HL1, the military nuked the BM research facility to try to cover up the incident), people have been making theories that in one game we'll return to BM. So GLaDos joke was implying that theres a fat chance they'll be returning to BM to see what happened even prior to the incident (or after).

Now, as Im sure you can tell, you're trying to close the last portal (that the Combine are holding open) by defeating the Combine. This will stop any more aliens or combine coming to Earth allowing the humans to repair the planet to the state it was at prior to this huge invasion.

As for the color of the box, I think I explained it here:

Originally Posted by w00ties

Well, originally they intended to release "The Black Box" and "The Orange Box". The Black Box would have just the new releases (HL2: Ep2, Portal, TF2) while the Orange Box would be a complete package (HL2, HL2 Ep1, HL2 Ep2, Portal, TF2), there was a small price difference but they decided to dump the Black Box and focus on the Orange Box (I believe making it cheaper - providing the full experience of Half Life2 in the process, a better choice in my opinion because now everybody will be up to speed with HL).

As for their choice of Orange, Valve has always sported the color orange. It has always been the color of their logo and its also the color of the lambda symbol in the HL series. Its a perfect color to make their perfect package.

[Goblin]

Originally Posted by Pez

the half-life games can get boring because you have to think really carefully and it does get confusing.

Oh dear god. HL games confuse you? I take it you never played anything that makes you actually think. Like Penumbra.

In HL everything is as obvious as it can possibly be. Ok that's not true they haven't put big neon arrows to help you solve the puzzles yet.