MINERVA - read-only archives

Make a map, of course. The thread is meant to be a collection of story ideas for those who wanted to make MINERVA, but got beaten to it by A. Foster. The ideas can be serious, tongue-in-cheek or completely delirious.
The only suggestion is to be imaginative.
Discrete moustachioed physicists with Weapon Proficiency (all) and orange suits have been featured in a truckload of maps, and, for the purpose of this thread only, suggesting a story with the aforementioned physicist in the lead role is equivalent to .

The inspiration for the thread is 's post about an unknown alien race who'd wanted revenge on the Combine.

(Obviously)

Payback

Background
The Combine have tread on many toes and destroyed many worlds. A small group of vortigaunts deep in space have hatched a cunning plan to disrupt the Combine's activities.

Player
The hero is a young vort with a killer smile.

Story summary
Part 1
The hero is dropped in the vicinity of a small Combine base on a dried up planet. The mission is to plant an electronic bug within the base, allowing his group to spy on the Combine's communications.

Part 2
Thanks to the information intercepted by the bug, the group has learned the location of the Combine assimilation facility ("Nova Prospekt" on an asteroid). The hero is dispatched to the facility to organize a rebellion.

Part 3
With the help of the former prisoners, the group takes over a half-finished Citadel and flies it into the heart of the Combine Empire.

Feasibility
Part 1 requires at least new Combine models (based on vortigaunts or created from scratch). The planet and the installations can be pilfered from the existing props and entities.

Part 2 requires brand new alien models.

Part 3 is an effing space opera.:-)

[edit: pedantry]

The now-dropped map between Metastasis and Out of Time was going to be set on a , complete with attacks from gunships and who knows what - any takers for a completely non-canon rebuild? ;-)

Hah. Perhaps I could change some things around in one of my works, but at the moment it's just two islands. One shaped creepily like a fetus.

I had this idea for a mod where you play as a woman named May Lance who was snatched up by Delirium, an organization hidden in a hidden fortress in an interdimensional "pocket" (sort of like Xen without the interesting scenery), from whence they futzed with the Combine (albeit to a lesser extent than Gordon Freeman). New models, lots of interesting voice acting, a lesbian romance, and the four main-est characters would be named after the members of Queen. It would culminate in a high-pitched escape from the Citadel as it started to explode at the end of Episode 1. Oh, and I was possibly going to use the gag from The Matrix about the main character pulling open her jacket to reveal how heavily-armed she was to a poor little Combine guard, whose last words would be "Holy shit!" ... twice.

The nail in that coffin was reading Adam's comments about stuff beyond the skillset of an entire team of modders ...

Excellent idea for a topic! I had a rather intriguing idea for a mod back before Episode One came out. It doesn't really make sense now, but I suppose with a little tweaking it could work. I can't do anything beyond the very basic in mapping, so a simple plot outline will have to suffice.

Essentially, you wake up in a strange and undeniably alien landscape, surrounded by flaming wreckage; clearly, a catastrophic explosion decimated this place, yet you are all but unharmed. You have no idea who or where you are, but you are wearing the armor of a Combine soldier, and are able to salvage some nearby weapons. Before you can get your bearings however, you come under attack by antlions. As you proceed along a possibly non-linear route, you fight off more antlions, headcrabs, and other, new alien creatures (so yes, new models). Along the way, you have eerie, Bioshock-esque visions of events from the Half-Life mythos - Black Mesa, the Citadels being delivered to Earth, the 7 Hour War, and the return of Gordon Freeman. Soon, you encounter Combine soldiers, but even though you wear their armor, they are quite hostile, and actually seem to be actively pursuing you.

After a while of fighting both alien fauna and the Combine, you eventually seem to evade them, or more specifically, they seem to have given up on chasing you. Shortly thereafter, you reach a structure, similar in scale to Nova Prospekt, but entirely Combine in design. Security is surprisingly poor - a quick skirmish with some soldiers, a fight with a gunship or two, and you're in.

What you find inside is truly terrifying - hundreds of human beings, clad in blue jumpsuits, but with one key difference: green rings around their wrists, necks, and waists. You come to two conclusions very quickly. First, this is a Combine slave labor factory: the humans, faces stolid and emotionless, are mindlessly assembling APCs, Hunter-Choppers, pulse rifles, et cetera. Secondly, you have wandered right into a trap - you step into a hall, which turns out to be a weapon confiscator like those in the Citadel. Unarmed, you are surrounded by soldiers. As the human slaves continue their work in the background, the player, and the protagonist, come to the conclusion that you never escaped the Combine at all; you just happily walked right where they wanted you, and disarmed yourself. You are beaten unconscious, and the screen blacks out.

In one final series of hallucinations, it is revealed that you are none other than Wallace Breen, Earth's (former) administrator. Only part of your mind was sent to your host body, which was why you had no memory of who you were or why you were there. The ruins at the beginning were from the teleporter explosion at the end of HL2 - it hit just as hard on the other side. Your Combine overlords, seeing you as an incapable ruler and useless pawn, have set you up. When you wake up, you find you are wearing the same green rings as the others, and are monotonously working on an assembly line, welding armor plates on Combine APCs; you have been made what you always were to the Combine - a simple tool.

As the screen once again fades out, this time to the credits, an exerpt from the last Breencast from HL2 is played: So much for serving as humanity's representative.

So which of the remaining slots does my idea occupy? I'm going for Leftfield, or just flat out bizarre, if that's available.

That is kinda whacked in the head, Terrapin, but I like it. :) The idea that you end up being Breen is awesome. A fitting end for the biggest traitor to humanity in the HL universe!

Oh, yes, another idea I had (possibly to be used in my above mod) was, essentially, Aliens vs Predator in the Half-Life 2 universe. And if it was one level in the above mod, I'd do my best to make it a surprise, i.e. giving the models and textures names that sort of described them without giving them away, i.e. "bug" for instance, or "headhumper" for facehuggers ... then give some dialogue like "I thought I saw a headcrab getting Dave yesterday while we were escaping ... then yesterday, I found his body, it looked like he hadn't been attacked by a headcrab, there was this big hole in his chest like he'd been ripped up from inside!" or "What's that ... rattling sound?" "Kinda like antlions underground, you think?" "No, not really ..." And then you'd get attacked by a xenomorph.

Yeah. It would've been really bad.

Terrapin's idea deserves to be made into a mod. I almost want to work on it myself, but I have other commitments. As far as what those are, I feel mysterious today. Yes, I am working on a project, and the proof of concept level will be finished hopefully soon. Details to come soon as well.