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thienvaldram · 2 months

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Half Life – Residual Saga – Timeline Analysis

Introduction

The Residual Saga consists of three mods, plus a few older drafts that don’t fit into this analysis. The three covered specifically are Residual Point (From RL 2.05), Residual Life (2.05) and Residual Agent (Test Version 4). Despite their sheer scope and the almost unprecedented density of the lore of these mods, they are absurdly poorly documented in English in any capacity.

I’m not in any place to confidently relay anything to do with the more pertinent lore points like the weird temporal reboot between RP and RL, the whole Lautrec/Talisman and Sun Eater/Tiny Dwarf thing, the connections with Gadget and Third Force and whatnot. But what I can do is take all three temporally at face value, map out their timeframes, and try to map that onto the events of Half Life 1 as, whilst it is unclear whether or not the mods take place in the exact same setting as the events of the original game (or one another), it is worth taking a more thorough crack at it than the others who have tried as part of larger sync walkthroughs.

Addendum (If you want to play it yourself)

If you intend to play this version of Residual Point or Residual Life I recommend downloading the ‘FunGuy’ version on ModDB for… reasons that will become obvious if you read the comments of both versions.

Residual Point

RP begins with Jack Sohn heading into work at the Biodome Complex, seemingly working on those teleporters we see in Opposing Force when Shephard traverses the area. It can be reasonably assumed that the experiment malfunctions due to the Resonance Cascade and that the event takes place around the same time as it does in Half Life 1.

We then get a brief sequence in Xen, ending with the voice line from Half Life Blue Shift from Rosenberg encouraging Barney to return from Xen.

Now would be a good time to bring up the weighting in which voice lines can be given. RP, RL and RA are mods made by a Korean Mod developer who, whilst not speaking no English, does not speak full English either. With multiple recurrences of some lines, it is more reasonable to assume that the lines are a stand in for ‘generic chatter’ in at least some instances.

Residual Point’s Chapters are as Follows

Intro (Unnamed) – Morning

Insecurity – Morning

Incoming – Morning before incident, Unknown afterwards

Among the Ruins – Daytime (Black Ops Zombie appears)

Office Facility – Unknown

Obscure True – Daytime – Military First Appear

Residue Pit – Unknown

Bombing Surface – Evening (Or early Morning)

Recession – Unknown (ZECU First Appear, Black Ops First Appear)

Distortion – Unknown (Before Teleport/KO), Night (afterwards)

Upper Yard – Morning/Evening, then Night

Course to Lambda – Night

Into the Portal – Lambda Teleporter, then Xen

Dread Plot – Xen

Residual Point – Day (Portal Storms)

Going by that timeframe, we know the Black Mesa Incident of Half Life takes place over three days, the first consisting of Black Mesa Inbound through to On A Rail, the second beginning in Apprehension and lasting for the rest of Half Life 1, but for Shephard beginning with Welcome to Black Mesa and ending at We Are Not Alone. A second night is never shown in Opposing Force, but with the nuclear detonation taking place during the Day, one can assume the nuke didn’t detonate until the third day, with Opposing Force’s latter half, from Foxtrot Uniform to World’s Collide being the morning of Day 3 and Crush Depth to Pitworm’s Nest taking place over the second night. So by that timeframe we have…

Day 1

Intro (Unnamed) – Morning

Insecurity – Morning

Incoming – Morning (Resonance Cascade)

Among the Ruins – Daytime

Office Facility – Daytime

Obscure True – Daytime

Residue Pit – Daytime to Evening

Bombing Surface – Evening (We’ve Got Hostiles era Bombing run)

Recession – Night (HL1 Rocket Launch, then Black Ops Arrive, then ZECU first appear)

Distortion – Night

Day 2

Upper Yard – Morning, then Day and Evening whilst Underground, then Night once resurfaced. (Black Ops turn on HECU here)

Course to Lambda – Night (Same time as Lambda Core)

Into the Portal – Night (Lambda Core ending, then Sohn goes into Xen)

Dread Plot – Xen

Day 3

Dread Plot – Xen (cont into Day 3 Morning on Earth)

Residual Point – Day (After Gene Worm Defeat from OP4, before Nuke)

Nuclear Detonation (From Opposing Force)

This does result in oddities, namely that the Upper Yard Chapter takes Jack Sohn an entire day to complete, as long an amount of time as all of the previous approximately three hours of gameplay in a span of 20 minutes of gameplay. But that concession really must be made regardless on if one intends to fit Residual Point into HL1s timeline or not as it forces the Night -> Day -> Night mapping thing, were it not night after the unconsciousness in Distortion, that would allow for a teleporter break timeskip to the end of Day 2 or at the very least to extend the Recession chapter into Day 2 but with the current skyboxes this is the only real option.

Notably this placement also keeps consistency with most of the major events of Half Life 1, with early Pit Drone cameos being escapes from the Biodome (Can’t really explain that one Black Ops Headcrab Zombie in the earlier chapters which’d indicate a Day 2 placement but a Day 2 placement is impossible without fudging the skyboxes of either Distortion or Upper Yard. Either way, the Black Ops still arrive at some point between the Day 1 night time On a Rail Rocket Launch and the Day 2 morning at the end of Apprehension when Gordon is captured. As well as constraining the arrival of the ZECU to the night time of Day 1. Obviously the ZECU are not seen in Half Life proper, but one can assume the Nihilanth (or Residual Life Xen Route Boss) targeted them into specific areas of Black Mesa at specific times, and Gordon, Adrian, Barney, Gina and Colette never directly intersected those areas of Black Mesa in that timeframe. After all by the same metric, Gordon never encountered Race X during Forget About Freeman or Lambda Core despite them very much being at least somewhat active in that period.

Residual Life

Residual Life is far longer, more narratively involved and arguably more interesting than its predecessor. RL begins with Sora Kim waking up in her dorm and heading to work in the Lambda Complex, entering an elevator just after the Resonance Cascade. The elevator drops and Sora is knocked out. Waking up an undetermined amount of time later to get to the surface. Seems straightforward enough until you pay attention to the details on the surface, at first glance it seems like it’s the time of the We’ve Got Hostiles aerial bombardment but a closer inspection reveals it is in fact more likely to be that of Forget About Freeman. This is notable due to the presence of Black Operations who, in both RP and HL1 do not appear until the night of Day 1, after the timeframe it would have to be for that skybox to appear.

That at least narrows it down to either Day 2 morning or Day 2 evening. Similarly the yard chapters, No Way Out and Countdown seem to at first glance support a ‘Day 2 Daytime’ placement, around the time of Residue Processing – Surface Tension. But between the Black Ops killing the marines, something that only begins in Day 2 afternoon as per Opposing Force, and then most crucially the Nuke detonation which occurs in both Route 1 and Route 2, being the backing driving force behind the entire Countdown chapter through announcements that specifically refer to it as ‘Charlie Bravo’, concluding in it detonating whilst you try to disarm it in Route 1 or detonating as you flee underground in Route 2 indicating that the events of the daytime chapters actually take place after the ending of Opposing Force, during the era between the Gene Worm’s defeat and the nuclear destruction of Black Mesa, implying there were in fact multiple nukes shipped into Black Mesa rather than just the one we see in Opposing Force, with Route 2 implying large parts of the facility even persists after the detonations.

The Timeframe of Residual Life is then as follows

Day 1

Impossibility Dream – Morning

Black Mesa Inbound – Morning

Routine Work – Morning (Resonance Cascade)

Day 2

State of Emergency – Daytime

Legal Defence – Evening

“One is All, All in One” – Evening

Ground Zero – Evening

Between Worlds and Chaos – Xen

Day 3 – Route 1

No Way Out – Daytime

Countdown – Daytime (Nuclear Detonation)

Nuclear Portal – Xen

Ruins of Chronos – Xen

Ashes of Lautrec – Xen

Altar of Sacrifice – Xen

Impossibility Dream – Spatial Isolation

Epilogue – Night

Day 3 – Route 2

No Way Out – Daytime

Countdown – Daytime (Nuclear Detonation)

Chaotic Blue – Daytime

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust – Evening

Heart of Nightmare – Evening

The Centre of All Things – Evening

The Sun Eaters Pillar – Sun Eaters Pillar

Chosin Reservoir – Evening (confirmed to be a real BMRF location in Residual Agent)

The Sun Eaters Pillar (Part 2) – Sun Eaters Pillar

The Tiny Dwarf – Sun Eaters Pillar

The Sun Eaters Pillar (Part 3) – Sun Eaters Pillar

Impossibility Dream – Spatial Isolation

Epilogue – Night

Addendum, Double Nuke Theory

When doing a multi-mod timeline with a bunch of other mods, the timing of the nuke often becomes an issue. The premiere instance of this being Half Life Echoes, which shows the nuke as happening during the night despite Opposing Force’s nuke being during the day. Taking RL into account, it becomes clear that the initial nuke(s) in OP4 (And RL Countdown) fail to destroy large parts of the facility, opening up the possibility that a second, higher yield nuke was detonated the following night after the first barrage failed to stop the Portal Storms that by the time of Day 3 would probably already be ravaging the United States, hence the attempt to contain the disaster by nuking Black Mesa.

Thus the nuke shown in Echoes is not the first nuke but in fact a final ICBM that truly destroys Black Mesa, matching up with the implication in the HL2 era that Black Mesa is utterly gone. Sora’s final escape in the Epilogue would therefore (if real) be shortly prior to the final nuclear detonation.

Residual Agent

I had not played Residual Agent prior to this, nor to be entirely honest have many people. The developer of RP and RL only ever officially hosted RA on their personal Naver blog, making it prohibitively difficult, but not impossible, to access. Unlike RP and RL, RA is also a spinoff of Half Life Zombie Edition and is currently unfinished with far less gameplay than RP or RL. Its less-linear nature and tendency to loop back on itself makes skybox analysis much more difficult too but there’s still a few things we can glean.

For instance

The Black Ops are present

The Black Ops and HECU are working together

The skyboxes are morning/evening.

3 means it has to be one of the following

Day 1 Evening (We’ve Got Hostiles era)

Day 2 Morning (Apprehension era)

Day 2 Evening (Forget About Freeman/“We Are Pulling Out” era)

Day 3 Morning (Foxtrot Uniform Era)

Day 3 Evening (Post-Nuke, Chosin Reservoir Era)

Day 3 Evening can be ruled out right off the bat as the combatants don’t match that of Chosin Reservoir in RL, plus that’d drastically increase the likelihood Rezina-rhagithor 3320 (The headcrab protagonist of Residual Agent) and Sora Kim met which didn’t happen in either game.

Number 1 rules out a Day 1 time, since the Black Ops only arrive on the night of Day 1, number 2 meanwhile rules out Day 2 evening (Which is explicitly when the Black Ops turn on the HECU) and Day 3, meaning the most viable setting as of the current demo is Day 2 morning. This means that Rezina passes through RLs areas before Sora which tracks with the fact the ‘Circle of Death’ secret from RL is not yet unlocked in RA.

So we have

Intro (Chiola Breeding Citadel, Xen)

Field of Blood (Possibly Day 1 Night)

Reign of Blood (Day 1 Morning)

Lake of Blood (Day 1 Morning)

Path of Blood (Day 1 Morning)

To Be Continued…