Half-Life 2

Alyx Vance is a non-player character in Valve's 2004 first-person shooter computer game Half-Life 2, and its following episodes: Half-Life 2: Episode... One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Alyx is portrayed as a young woman in her mid-twenties of Afro-Asian descent, and is a prominent figure in the human resistance against the rule of the alien race called the Combine and their human representative, Dr. Breen. She is a close friend and ally of the player's character, Gordon Freeman. Alyx's character uses a modified version of real-life actress Jamil Mullen's face, and her voice is performed by Merle Dandridge. Alyx is the daughter of Dr. Eli Vance. Her mother, Azian Vance, who is of Asian descent, can be seen in a family photograph appearing in the games but died during the Black Mesa incident . Alyx was only a child when Gordon Freeman was employed at Black Mesa, but Freeman's stasis between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 has erased most of the age gap between the two characters. Alyx is a skilled hacker, adept at infiltrating Combine computer systems and reprogramming them.
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Doctor Eli Vance is a fictional character from the Half-Life 2 series of computer games by Valve Software. Vance, a brilliant physicist and... researcher, is in his early sixties with short grey hair, a beard and mustache. He wears a prosthetic to replace his left leg beneath the knee, which was lost when he was attacked by a bullsquid while helping Dr. Isaac Kleiner climb over a wall into a Combine city. He is presumably a graduate of Harvard University; his shirt has "Harvard" partially obscured on it but clearly shows the university's shield. He is the father of Alyx Vance. His late wife, Azian, also lived on the premises of Black Mesa, but died in the aftermath of the Resonance Cascade. According to in-game dialogue from Half-Life 2, Dr. Vance was the first human being to make peaceful contact with the Vortigaunt species, quickly persuading the alien race to ally with humanity against the Combine invasion of Earth. At the time of Half-Life, Vance was employed at the Black Mesa Research Facility, working in the Sector C Anomalous Materials Laboratories, and possibly also in the Lambda Complex teleportation labs.
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The G-Man, voiced by Michael Shapiro, is a mysterious recurring character in the Half-Life series of first-person shooter video games. He is known to... display peculiar behavior and capabilities beyond that of a normal human, and his identity and motives remain almost completely unexplained. He plays the role of an overseer and employer, both observing the player as the games progress and pulling strings to control the outcome of specific events throughout the Half-Life saga. He claims to answer to some unseen higher authority which he refers to as simply his 'employers'. The G-Man's constant appearances in the Half-Life games, as well as his revealing monologues to the series protagonist Gordon Freeman, imply he is of great importance and somewhat anchors the endeavors of the player. His mysterious nature has made him an icon of the Half-Life series. The G-Man appears to be a middle-aged white male with a tall and thin physique, pale/chalky skin, dark brown hair shaped in a military-style crew cut with a prominent widow's peak, blue-green eyes, a red tie and usually holding a briefcase.
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Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's... personal computer market, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. The most recent client version of Windows is Windows 7; the most recent server version is Windows Server 2008 R2; the most recent mobile version is Windows Phone 7. The term Windows collectively describes any or all of several generations of Microsoft operating system products. These products are generally categorized as follows: The history of Windows dates back to September 1981, when Chase Bishop, a computer scientist, designed the first model of an electronic device and project "Interface Manager" was started. It was announced in November 1983 under the name "Windows", but Windows 1.0 was not released until November 1985. The shell of Windows 1.0 was a program known as the MS-DOS Executive.
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Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, and made famous by its highly successful and critically acclaimed first... product, Half-Life, released in November 1998. It is also well known for its social-distribution network Steam, and for developing the Source engine, which has been used in every product since its introduction in 2004. Valve was founded by long-time Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington on August 24, 1996 as an L.L.C. based in Kirkland, Washington. After incorporation in April 2003, it moved from its original location to Bellevue, Washington, the same city in which their original publisher, Sierra On-Line, Inc., was based. After the success of Half-Life, the team worked on mods, spin-offs, and sequels, including Half-Life 2. All current Valve games are built on its Source engine, which owes much of its success to mods and sequels.
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Vivendi Games, formerly known as Vivendi Universal Games, was the holdings company for Sierra Entertainment and Blizzard Entertainment. Vivendi Games was founded as Vivendi Universal Games after Vivendi bought Universal Studios in the early 2000s. Before then, Vivendi Universal Games was known as... Universal Interactive Studios. Vivendi Games was a 100% subsidiary of Vivendi S.A.. Headed by Bruce Hack, it was headquartered in Los Angeles, California and employed over 3,400 people at 4 separate development divisions. Vivendi Games owned the rights to such popular franchises as Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft as well as others like Empire Earth, Leisure Suit Larry, Ground Control, Tribes, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon owned by Sierra Entertainment. It is now merged with Activision and is known as Activision Blizzard. The history of Vivendi Games begins in February 1996, when CUC International, a large mail order and subscription company, offered to acquire entertainment software developer Sierra Entertainment.
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Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams. Based in Fresno, California, the company was last owned by Activision, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. Sierra is best known today for its multiple lines... of seminal graphic adventure games started in the 1980s, many of which proved influential in the history of video games. The Sierra label was absorbed by its parent company. Some franchises that were published by Sierra will be published by Activision, which also announced in 2008 that it may sell the Sierra brand. Sierra Entertainment was founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems in Simi Valley, California, by Ken and Roberta Williams after the former, a programmer for IBM, bought an Apple II microcomputer with which he planned to use to develop a FORTRAN compiler for Apple computers. At the time, his wife Roberta Williams was playing text adventure games for the Apple II.
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