Breencast

A Breencast is a regular broadcast made by Dr. Wallace Breen, delivered to the populace of Combine controlled towns and cities via private televisions and, more commonly, large video monitors mounted on walls in public places such as town squares and railway stations. The term Breencast is an obvious portmanteau of the words "Breen" and "broadcast".

At several points during the game, Dr. Breen uses these Breencasts to deliver announcements to the citizens of City 17, and, later in the game, Gordon Freeman himself. The following are transcripts of several of these announcements.

Behind the scenes
Just like Wallace Breen himself, the Breencast device went through different aspects before its final version. Two early versions, designed by Dhabih Eng, show the device hanging above the ground, covered with screens, and attached to the surrounding buildings from its top. A version was designed in cluster-like compound eyes, with the City 17 logo in each screen when idle, and bearing some similarities with the screen running around the Consul's chair in his original office in the Citadel. Another version featured many yellow screens from different sizes, showing the Consul making his speeches. This latter design recalls steampunk films like 1984 (and its original novel) or Brazil. Indeed, Breencasts bring to mind the image of Big Brother himself in that they reflect a figure meant for purposes of propaganda and absolute control. Early sound clips for the early Breencasts exist (in the folder /sound/C17/, "c17pa" from 0 to 4, "pa" standing for "public announcement"), all starting with "The true Citizen...", with a foreign/made-up language heard behind.

Trivia

 * The large, tall screens used for most Breencasts are comprised of several holographic layers, possibly to amplify visibility.
 * The Breencasts use a separate model of Breen featuring only the top half of his body and located in a distant, out-of-map room that is only accessible by using the noclip cheat (this was directly addressed in the commentary track for Episode One). If Breen is killed, the Breencasts will stop. Furthermore, any entity spawned in his room will be seen on any Breencast screen present in the map, the Breencast being in a way broadcast to an in-universe real camera.
 * The G-man replaces Breen in one instance where a Vortigaunt is supplying a portable television with his blue energy, also looking at the screen itself. However, it is noted that the bottommost portion of his chest in this instance is missing.
 * The G-Man can sometimes be seen on the large rectangular monitors used for Breencasts; in these instances, they will flicker a ghostly version of his image. This can be seen in the "Water Hazard" and "Anticitizen One" chapters of Half-Life 2.
 * The Breencast is the successor to Half-Life’s Black Mesa Announcement System. Portal’s equivalent is the Aperture Science Speaker System.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life 2
 * Half-Life 2: Episode One