Редактирование: Half-Life universe (раздел)

== Setting ==

'''Black Mesa''' is a US research corporation, experimenting with [[teleportation]].  Its New Mexico headquarters, the Black Mesa Research Facility, is a sprawling complex of advanced industrial and scientific facilities and serves as the setting of the first <i>Half-Life</i> and its expansions.

'''Aperture Science''' is a private company that competes with Black Mesa for government funding, with a comically haphazard approach to basic research and development.  In addition to stable [[wormholes]] and an alternative in-universe teleportation technology, their achievements include [[artificial intelligence|AI]]-controlled robotic systems (including reconfigurable architecture and weapon turrets), [[mind uploading]], and [[cryonics]].

The '''Combine''' or '''Universal Union''', a multiverse-spanning, highly advanced technological, as well as semi-biotechnological (as revealing in <i>Half-Life: Alyx</i> that some of their technology are fueled from living beings (via the health goo seen in the both ''HL2'', its episodes, and ''HL:A'' were Antlion Grub blood) civilization, are the main antagonists of the series, starting in fully since <i>Half-Life 2</i>.  Led by 'advisors' (large grublike aliens wholly dependent on their technology for physical tasks), the Combine subjugates other species using [[synthetic biology]] and overwhelming military might transport through inter-universe portals.  <i>Half Life 2</i> and its sequels are set in and around the eastern European '''City 17''', one of a series of Combine-controlled urban centers in which human survivors of their invasion (and the resulting ecological devastation) are concentrated.