Angus Young said:
I have a quick Half Life 2 question. I've been playing through Half Life 2 and never played the first. I played util i got to the mines under ravenholm and am wondering what did the combine do to the city because that place got Fucked up? Why? and Was it in the First one?
Half-Life 1 is set entirely in an underground research facility called Black Mesa, except for a section in an alien dimension called Xen. In that game, the facility is overrun by a variety of aliens, including the Vortigaunts, who were enslaved at the time, and headcrab zombies. Gordon Freeman stops the invasion and, in the Opposing Force expansion, a marine named Adrian Shepard closes the dimensional rift.
Half-Life 2 is set twenty years later, after a different alien race (the Combine) re-opened the dimensional portal and conquered the Earth.
Raveholm was a hold-out for members of the human resistance. The Combine discovered it and shelled it heavily with mortars filled with headcrabs, who completely overran the town. Physically, it's actually mostly intact; the jury-rigged traps and walkways were constructed since the town was overrun by zombies by the lone surviving human, Father Grigori. Gordon Freeman happens to go through it at night-time; presumably it would be less creepy during the day.
