MINERVA - read-only archives

As promised.

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Minerva: In-Depth Analysis
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I’m going to start by skipping all the usual preamble and introduction. If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you have a pretty good idea of what’s going on here. All statements here have been carefully researched and referenced from official Minerva materials – Someplace Else, Metastasis, the Minerva website, or various interviews or media releases from Adam Foster. I’m not going to site each individual statement, because if I did, my bibliography would be longer than this document itself.

Now, I’m not trying to be egotistical (that position is best left to the lovely Minerva herself), but I personally think this theory is pretty good. Naturally, I’m sure there will be suggestions, critiques, and omissions posed by my fellow acolytes, but as far as actual reference goes within the Minerva universe(s), this is probably pretty close to the ne plus ultra for now.

So then, down to business; who is Minerva? Short answer: she’s an egotistical posthuman entity, that is, she was once human, but, like the protagonist from Metastasis, has been made something quite different. She despises the Combine, and will do whatever she can to injure them – she even admits to keeping us alive partially just for the sake of insulting our “former Combine mastersâ€

Well, first of all I want to wish a merry Christmas to everyone, since I'm confident that wishing good will do no harm to any human being, regardless of his/her beliefs.

Enough for the OT, back in-topic.
I must say that I like this dissertation, and especially like your ways of investigating, Terrapin.

I hypothesized something similar to your theory in a post of mine, previously in this topic, but you have put it all together with almost flawless consistency.
Every text message from our goddess, even the one from the MINERVA main page, even the from the archive do actually fit.
Except for one, single piece, that I've been unable to correlate with the others, not even now: that is the land beyond the portal, or "Lux Aeterna", the "eternal light", as it should maybe be called.
This place, as you will surely agree, is (or better, has been) known to Minerva but unknown to the Combine and it also has something to do with the alien device found in SE.
Now, how can we explain, by your theory, that Minerva knows very well something that her combine former masters didn't know?
That is the main and only issue I can find, in what would otherwise be, as you correctly said, a simple, "elegant and most of all working theory".

Hmm... an interesting point. Here's an idea: we know that Xen exists as a boarder world. But it is never stated exactly how many other universes it boarders.

We know that at one point, Minerva was in Xen against her will. What this means, essentially, is that she does not want to be in Xen, and/or that she wants to be someplace else (no pun intended). Let's suppose that she escaped from the Combine, and managed to get to Lux Aeterna (henceforth, LA). But she knew that if the Combine ever followed her there, it would put all sentient life in a very bad situation, as that world somehow related to apocalyptic events. Thus, she fled to Xen, which boarders, by my reckoning, "our" universe, the LA universe, and at least one other universe from which the Vortigaunts, refugee Xenians, and indeed the Combine came from. From there, she jumps back to Earth, via an old teleporter, and is now in the position we find her in, having just interfaced with a presumably human network.

So that works in two ways - it clears up a potential hole, and covers LA, giving Minerva two reasons to fight. I'm still interested, though, in what exactly LA is, and why the normally unshakably confident Minerva goes to pieces at the thought of the Combine finding it. Ah well, that's another theory. Thanks for the contribution![/url]

Like you said, I really doubt that Minerva, or any human for that matter, has ever been to the Combine Overworld. The security risks are simply too great. Think about it - in a war, prisoners aren't taken back to the country that captured them because, should they somehow get a communication out, they could tell their allies exactly where to strike. Besides, even if Minerva was taken to the Combine Overworld at one point, I doubt she could have represented its "location" in any meaningful way, given how far research had to progress just to get a stable portal to Xen open.

And as for those machines in LA... we know they were built by some now-dead species, who died of something unrelated to the Combine. However, what is undeniably most important is that one of the structures is (or at least very closely resembles) a human truss-beam, such as those found in bridges or dams. Perhaps a failed human settlement in another universe, dead to some plague or other misfortune. Or a world distant not in space, but in time; a future version of the Earth, where human and Combine alike are both dead to some unfathomable catastrophe.

The bottom line: speculation about Lux Aeterna is entertaining, but unlike theories regarding Minerva herself, which we know for certain that we have the information to solve (or perhaps we've already solved it?), we just don't know enough about LA. So far we have:

1) Minerva knows about it, and has been there at one point.
2) The Combine are only just beginning to explore it, via an ancient, almost certainly alien device they have unearthed.
3) Even Minerva cannot fathom the secrets that land holds.
4) It has something to do with an/the apocalypse.
5) The fact that the Combine are there is enough to make even Minerva practically break down into hysterics.
6) Human construction seems to be present.
7) There are antlions there.
8) Minerva considers it her home.

So that tells us very little about LA, but a great deal about Minerva. Please note that I am in no way implying that Minerva is in LA at the time of Metastasis. This is simply not possible, for many reasons. Minerva simply considers LA her home - she values it more than she does Earth. This is likely because LA is where she was taken after she was liberated from the Combine, and thus where she was "born". Remember that she no longer considers herself fully human, and thus, this world, likely inhabited, at least at one time, by her oft-mentioned "Adopted Forefathers" is now her true home, according to her values.

In summary: we don't know enough about LA to make a fully supported theory about what exactly it is; we know just enough about it to discern it's relevance to Minerva, and ergo reinforce our theories.


By the way, Kenny, regarding your signature: Minerva on hard is insane. I've done it, but I probably died forty or fifty times. Then again, I'm not very good. ;-)

Could we have a clarification from Adam that the ant lions were supposed to be in LA, and not just the nearest convenient model that looked like an alien life form. After all, we weren't supposed to get a close view of LA, just what could be seen through the portal, any information gathered through noclip should be considered suspect until proven otherwise.

I don't think it really matters whether they were intended to actually be antlions - LA has alien life on it, plain and simple. Still, if you'd like confirmation to help with your own theories, it's a good idea. Although, I do remember quite clearly identifying "them" as antlions on my first play-through - if Adam didn't want us to think of them as antlions, and just as some generic alien life form, he would certainly have done a better job of making it so.

In any case, the nature of LA's inhabitants is not really relevant to who Minerva is - she once lived there, thinks it so valuable she now considers it her home world, and considers its continued existence more important than almost anything else, her own safety included. This tells us a great deal about her, perhaps that under all of that tough-as-nails cool, she really and truly cares about the fate of humanity, or of all life in general. Her genuine fear at learning of the Combine exploring "her" world is proof positive, to me at least, that she is still somewhat human. Heck, in chapter 4, she practically admits to liking us. Awww... ;-)

I have some things to say... some details, maybe not useful...

About Lux Aeterna... we see some old pseudo-structures similar to the alien building we see in SE... There's no doubt that they were not made by vortigaunts, the combine or contemporanean humans, but by another alien race ("adopted forefathers"?) probably extinct (or not?).

Through the portal is possible to see alien creatures (antlions). Remember that most Xenian life are not indigenous, because it is a borderworld; so LA could be the homeworld of the antlions or probably they just got there, the same as Earth and Xen (portal storms was just a only-Earth-local catastrophe?).

The combine got access to Xen and to Earth after the Nihilant was killed (he was keeping portals between Xen and Vortiworld/Overworld closed somehow), that is how they gained the ability to go to Earth and LA.


Someplace Else is before or after the Resonance Cascade of Hal-Life 1?
There are corpses of HECU soldiers, but did they went there? Why they aren't just HEV scientist, if Mineva came to Earth before the BMRC/OBMI?

And one last thing... Adam is considering Opposing Force as canon? Remember we have a 3rd Party (more likely a 4th/5th party) here, the Race X...

Adam has no choice about wether to consider Op4 canon or not... valve considers it canon, therefore it IS canon. Having said that, I'd love to see a real sequel to Op4, involving Sheppard or Race X, and I'm not including the mod "Awakening". It just doesn't make sense.

Sorry for going off topic... but in order to say that I went on it at least a little, I doubt Race X has anything to do with anything in the MINERVA series. Then again, you never know.