Breengrub - Audio Reconstruction

An intercepted audio packet from the White Forest Base radio tower. Decoded by Vortigaunts and stored in the Resistance archives.

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Out of universe, this is an AI-driven audio reconstruction of Marc Laidlaw's twitter account "breengrub". Laidlaw, the former lead writer of the Half-Life series, famously made headlines when he posted his story treatment of Half-Life 2: Episode 3 in 2017 (at the time called "Epistle 3"). Breengrub was a twitter account that was apparently written from the perspective of a copy of Dr Breen's brain, backed up into a combine advisor (Shu'lathoi) body. This was quietly the most significant piece of Half-Life lore we've had in the last ten years excluding Epistle 3 itself, and subtly answered several questions that had been omnipresent across the Half-Life series up until this point.

"Breengrub" answers:
What the Combine actually are and where they come from
the true scope of the vortigaunt's abilities
The identity of the G-Man and his motiviation (heavily implied that he is an escaped Shu'lathoi working to free his species from the Combine's control)

It's my opinion that the ending of Half-Life: Alyx was a misfire of storytelling. The loss of Alyx at the end of Laidlaw's story treatment was a completely appropriate cost for saving the world from the Combine. I believe that a hypothetical version of Epistle 3 from 2012 that incorporates the Breengrub information would have satisfactorily wrapped up the mysteries of Freeman's story without spelling them out too explicitly. Valve could have then gone back to create prequel games based around Alyx, Barney, and Shepherd.