Half-Life 2: Episode One

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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Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute games and related media online, from small independent developers to larger software houses. Steam also has community features, automated game... updates, in-game voice and chat functionality. As of January 2012, there are 1504 games available through Steam, and 40 million active user accounts. The concurrent users peak was 5 million on January 2, 2012. Although Valve never releases sales figures, Stardock, former owner of competing platform Impulse, estimated in 2009 that Steam had a 70% share of the digital distribution market for video games. Many major publishers have large catalogs available on Steam, including Bethesda Softworks, Activision, Rockstar Games, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, 2K Games, and Sega. Steam's primary service is to allow its users to download games and other software that they have in their virtual software library to their local computers. Steam-integrated games are stored as single non-compressed archive files with the extension .gcf .
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