Half-Life: Blue Shift storyline

This article describes the Half-Life: Blue Shift storyline, chapter by chapter.

In Blue Shift, you step into the shoes of Barney Calhoun, a mid-ranking security guard in Black Mesa, who is responsible for the preservation of equipment and materials and the welfare of research personnel in a cavernous underground sector of the facility.

Hazard Course (optional)


The training chapter of Half-Life: Blue Shift. The "Black Mesa Hazard Course for Security Guard Training" trains the player to effectively use their uniform, how to move around and interact with the environment and how to use weapons. Scientists (such as Rosenberg) can be seen watching the player during the training.

8:42-8:47
"This train is inbound from the Area 8 Topside Dormitories to the Central Transit Hub in Area 9"

- Black Mesa Announcement System

As the game begins, Barney Calhoun rides the tram from the Area 8 Topside Dormitories on the surface, into the underground sector of the Black Mesa Research Facility. Along the way many new details about Black Mesa are revealed; Calhoun passes a laundromat and several fast food outlets, suggesting that the facility is very self-sufficient and probably houses many of its workers. While Calhoun is locked outside the door to Area 3 Security Facilities, he is passed by Gordon Freeman riding in another tram heading towards Sector C in a scene that mirrors one in the original game, in which Gordon Freeman sees a guard locked out of a door on the inside of a tunnel.

Trivia

 * A soccer ball that fell from the basketball terrain above can be seen under the tracks at the very start of the ride.
 * In the laundromat, a scientist and a security guard are playing a fighting arcade video game, named Prax Wars 2: Dante's Revenge; the security guard eventually loses the game. A second scientist is reading The Mesa Times while waiting for his laundry to be done. Prax Wars is a nod to Prax War, an actual canceled game by developer Rebel Boat Rocker, on which Gearbox's Randy Pitchford worked. It was announced at E3 1998 as a very promising game.
 * This chapter starts 5 minutes before the Half-Life chapter Black Mesa Inbound, and ends just as Half-Life begins.

8:47-8:58
As a seemingly normal day at work starts, Barney Calhoun visits security headquarters, including a shooting range and a surveillance room where it is possible to see Gordon Freeman again on camera heading towards the HEV Storage Area. Calhoun is then sent to help some scientists with an elevator; along the way, he witnesses many incidents foreshadowing the resonance cascade, such as a pair of scientists vainly trying to fix a supercomputer. He also sees the G-Man passing by in a tram. After repairing the elevator, the resonance cascade occurs; the elevator is jammed, the cable snaps and sends Calhoun and two scientists plummeting down the shaft as chaos breaks out around them. As the elevator collides with the bottom of the elevator shaft, Calhoun falls unconscious.

Trivia

 * The chapter takes place at the same time as the Half-Life chapters Black Mesa Inbound and Anomalous Materials.
 * Also, the Half-Life: Decay chapter Dual Access takes place at the same time as this chapter.

Chapter 3: Duty Calls


Barney Calhoun regains consciousness at the bottom of the elevator shaft to the sight of a houndeye eating the body of a fellow security guard. The two scientists in the elevator are dead, and so Calhoun sets off through the industrial waste areas of Black Mesa to try to find help. Along the way he gains an insight into the scope of the disaster, and sees a pair of marines dumping corpses into a sewer opening, thus discovering that the military is trying to cover up the disaster rather than evacuate surviving personnel.

Trivia

 * At the end of this chapter, a reference is made to previous Half-Life expansion, Opposing Force, as one of the marines grumbles "just because Shephard's team didn't make it, we have to do the crap jobs?"


 * Although the previous chapter corresponds chronologically with "Anomalous Materials" in "Half-Life", Barney encounters a scientist who mentions the infiltration of Black Mesa by the "HECU", meaning that enough time has passed for the HECU to respond to the emergency. A possible reason for this jump in time is that Barney was unconscious from the fall in the elevator until at least chapter 5 in "Half-Life," "We've Got Hostiles". Since the final chapter of "Blue Shift, "Deliverance," corresponds with the chapter "Apprehension" in "Half-Life", the events of Blue-Shift then most likely take place between the events of "We've Got Hostiles" and "Apprehension."

Chapter 4: Captive Freight
Barney Calhoun reaches the surface and encounters the HECU. He manages to fight through them and reach Dr. Rosenberg. He and a team of fellow scientists were trying to escape until the marines caught them.

Calhoun rescues some scientists who have been locked in railway cars in Black Mesa's classification yards. One of the scientists, Dr. Rosenberg (who is also a character in Decay), advises Calhoun that the entire facility is surrounded by Hazardous Environment Combat Unit Marines intent upon killing all base personnel to cover-up Black Mesa's research into extradimensional exploration. The only way to escape, Rosenberg explains, is to use an old prototype of the Lambda Complex teleporter; if it works, they can reach an obscure entrance to Black Mesa which (hopefully) has been overlooked by the Marines.

Chapter 5: Focal Point


Barney Calhoun and Rosenberg reach an older part of the Black Mesa Research Facility where a disused teleporter system is being reassembled by scientists. To make the teleporter completely operational, Calhoun is forced to travel to Xen and activate a device to allow teleportation to happen. Notable in the older part of the facility are older-looking models of health and HEV chargers and the use of hand scanners instead of retina scanners for identification.

The remainder of the game takes place in an abandoned, walled-up sector of the base originally built for research of the first teleporter device. Calhoun, Rosenberg, and two other scientists (Walter Bennet and Simmons) try to restart the prototype teleporter. Calhoun is briefly teleported to a ruined human research camp on Xen to operate a triangulation device.

Trivia

 * The name of this chapter comes from physical term focal point. In optics a focal point is the point at which initially collimated rays of light meet after passing through a convex lens, or reflecting from a concave mirror.
 * This chapter takes place at the same time as the Half-Life: Decay chapter Rift.

Chapter 6: Power Struggle
After discovering the teleporter had used its entire supply of batteries to transport Calhoun to Xen, Calhoun is again forced to go down to a power facility level and find the batteries and recharge them. Calhoun fights through a team of HECU marines and aliens before he reaches the power generators.

Chapter 7: A Leap of Faith
Finally nearing escape, Calhoun helps operate the simpler parts of the teleporter to get all the scientists through. Once the scientists escape, he faces some HECU resistance before finally teleporting to the other scientists.



Chapter 8: Deliverance


In this final chapter, the other scientists have teleported to a safe location outside Black Mesa with some cars laying about. Barney Calhoun also arrives and sees Simmons and Rosenberg trying to fix an SUV and Bennet breaking open a gate with a crowbar, but some kind of discharge has affected him. Calhoun is glowing green and is teleported to several locations, such as a Xen platform and a storage room in Black Mesa where he witnesses Gordon Freeman being carried off by a group of HECU soldiers to a trash compactor before transporting back to the scientists (a reference to the chapter Apprehension of Half-Life). Calhoun finally ends up back at the yard with the scientists, no longer glowing. They have fixed the SUV, and Rosenberg expresses his relief, explaining to Calhoun he is lucky not to have been caught in an infinite loop. Walter pulls the gate open, and the game ends.

Trivia

 * The chapter takes place at the same time as the Half-Life chapter Apprehension.

The area at the end before the screen blacks out is the same area from Opposing Force chapter Friendly Fire, before you find the thermonuclear warhead.

Behind the scenes

 * Blue Shift is the 2nd shortest game in the Half-Life series followed by Half Life 2: Lost Coast, with all the events taking place immediately after the Resonance Cascade. It is interesting to note that aside from the PlayStation 2-only Decay, Blue Shift is arguably the only HL1-based game with a happy ending. At the end of Half-Life, Gordon Freeman is conscripted by the mysterious G-Man, and Opposing Force's Adrian Shephard is detained by the same individual to ensure his silence. However, in Blue Shift, Barney and his three scientist companions escape Black Mesa and the scrutiny of the G-Man, whose brief report suggests either that he deems them too insignificant to bother further monitoring or eliminating or that they managed to escape while he was busy with Freeman and Shephard (the exact wording says "out of range").