The original opening sequence had Gordon completing several hundred grant applications, but it didn’t playtest well.
Imagine Papers Please, but all border crossers are Gordons, some of them carrying suitcases with their labwork you decide (not) to open. You click one of them open and you ether get attacked by a furious cat, or poisoned by chemicals, or both. And some of them do that intentionally, or carry a crowbar taped to their cock, or cause a cascade resonance to your microwaving breakfast if they are especially pissed. These Gordons, man. The headache is granted.
> experiment goes horribly wrong
I wonder why, maybe because he wasn’t an experimental physicist?
Well someone must pull that switch and push that cart. Only a highly trained professional from MIT can do it.
Gordon doesn’t need to hear all this. He’s a highly-trained professional.
They had an auto tram that could carry everyone across the entire facility and was sophisticated enough to stop for a robotic auto loader.
I feel like it would have been trivial to ha e acomputer Controlled cart and, if they really wanted, a humanoid robot to press the button.
Or, you know, just hardwire it instead of placing a button within the risky zone.
Black Mesa was an insane confluence of theoretical and practical physics. I mean they’re inventing fucking interdimensional travel and handheld laser weapons. Also there’s a security guard that jokes to Gordon “looks like you’re in the barrel today” which implies everyone on the team takes turns in the suit. That was just Gordon’s day; he probably does spend most days in an office somewhere doing math
They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics.
I said, I had a theoretical degree in physics.