White Forest

White Forest is a major Resistance base located in the Outlands, North of City 17.

Features


The base is installed in an aging Cold War missile silo, apparently designed to house a pair of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Most of the facilities are underground, but there are several bunker-like structures, a hangar, and a radio tower at surface level. White Forest is powered by generators and seems to be totally self sufficient. It contains two silos, the primary silo and the (mostly abandoned) secondary silo.

The silos have an alarm system which is triggered by movement. False alarms in the decrepit secondary silo are sometimes triggered often by nesting crows, and the structure suffers from the same decay as most of the Half-Life series' architecture.

While the silos are used for research (mostly closing the Superportal with the rocket, the only known use), the storage areas are used for more normal means. They are used to store supplies such as food and ammo, and used as barracks for the Resistance personnel.

An area also includes a small courtyard where training to the use of the Magnusson Device can be performed on a dead Strider installed on tracks.

Certain areas of the base are above ground. These include one entrance, which has a garage for vehicles, a gate which can only be opened with a valve, and a watchtower. It is totally walled off aside from the gate. A radar station is also set up above ground in this area.

Another area is the back entrance. It includes another garage and is heavily guarded since it is easier to enter. There are three buildings around the area, the Sawmill, Cabin, and Lodge, each carrying important military supplies. In anticipation of Combine assault, several checkpoint buildings were set up, all carrying supplies. All buildings in this back entrance have delivery ports which teleport in Magnusson Devices from the main White Forest base.

Research


The research that takes place at White Forest is led by Doctor Arne Magnusson, one of the surviving Black Mesa Science Team members. Uriah, a Vortigaunt, is his research assistant. The subjects researched by White Forest include portals and stopping them, Superportals, and rocketry. White Forest's research was the key in stopping the Combine from overwhelming Earth with armies through a Superportal, like they did during the Seven Hour War.

History
Arne Magnusson had been operating a Resistance base at White Forest for an unknown amount of time before Gordon's arrival. In the years before the City 17 uprising, the White Forest personnel built an operable rocket in an old missile silo, with plans to launch it and use it to dissolve a Combine Superportal should a revolution take place. After arriving at the base, Isaac Kleiner and Eli Vance helped with the research as well.

Soon after the uprising in nearby City 17 and the Citadel meltdown that followed, the Combine grew aware of the threat posed by White Forest and began taking measures to destroy the threat. They first tried to kill Alyx Vance and Gordon Freeman, who were taking vital information on the Combine to the base, but they failed to stop them. The Combine tried to halt the advances of White Forest once more by breaching the secondary silo. While this set off the alarm, the staff at first thought it was merely crows nesting until the word about a real Combine invasion of the base spread. The Combine forces included Hunters, Overwatch Elites, Overwatch Soldiers, and Manhacks. This attack was thwarted by Gordon Freeman.

For one last time, the Combine tried to stop the rocket launch with an overwhelming attack force consisting of Striders and Hunters. Just one Strider could have destroyed the rocket if it got close enough. However, through use of delivery ports and the Magnusson Device, the defenders, led by Freeman, halted their efforts once more, and the rocket was successfully launched.

Alyx and Gordon planned to use a helicopter located in a White Forest hangar to fly to the Borealis and rescue Judith Mossman, but a sudden Advisor attack killed Eli, and would have killed Alyx if not for Dog's intervention.

Personnel
In addition to Magnusson and Uriah, there were some other Resistance personnel of note stationed at White Forest. One is Mirt, a mechanical handyman for the Resistance, and another is Sweepy, the Vortigaunt janitor of the base.

Behind the scenes

 * White Forest was apparently based on one of the many abandoned Cold War bases located in Belarus and Ukraine. Textures, layout and signs were apparently reused with few changes.


 * During the second Episode Two teaser trailer released August 2006, Kleiner and Eli are seen watching Mossman's message in a slighlty different office, with apparently a direct view of the rocket silo.


 * At the end of the same teaser trailer, Kleiner can be seen in an humorous situation in the rocket silo at White Forest, saying "Mmhh... Now, that's interesting! I think we're getting somewhere!", then screaming when sparks spew from the rocket. This sentence/sequence is not featured in Episode Two; the scream is recycled from the scream Kleiner makes when Gordon appears behind him at the end of the teleportation failure at the start of Half-Life 2. The console Kleiner stands at is instead used by Magnusson, and is at a different place. Furthermore, no Vortigaunt can be seen on the level right below.

Trivia



 * In the base, an Easter Egg referring to the TV series Lost can be found. In Uriah's lab, there is an inaccessible room containing a computer terminal with the six factors of the Valenzetti Equation shown on the screen and, on the wall, a Dharma-style octagon with the three pines from the White Forest logo in the middle. The room was inserted at the request of Gabe Newell, who promised to insert a reference to Lost in response to Half-Life references in Lost's first season. This being merely an Easter Egg, the connection between the two universes is however not to be considered canon.


 * The Consoling Couple appears to have managed to leave City 17 alive, as it is seen through Eli's / Kleiner's office window when first going to visit Uriah.


 * It may or may not be a coincidence that the name "White Forest" is diametrically opposed to the name "Black Mesa".


 * The missile silo mirrors Black Mesa Research Facility rooms such as the Anti-Mass Spectrometer Test Chamber or the Tentacle chamber in the chapter Blast Pit.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life 2: Episode Two