#my dreams get weirder by the year I stg

[thatcrazyshaman]

Had a dream today that I was playing a demo made out of cut content from Half Life

It was

Bizarre

The premise of said content was that there was a hidden medical ward in Black Mesa that had been added at some point years prior to the resonance cascade during a rash of accidents that occurred, that was maintained by one guy who had experience as a surgeon of some sort, referred to as Dr. --- from here on out, as I have no memory of his name

During the resonance cascade, he had gathered as many personnel there as he could, as the ward had everything they would need and was essentially a glorified bunker - unfortunately for everyone involved, the incident made this guy go straight off the deep end

In a misguided attempt to keep everyone alive and well, he enforced an involuntary lockdown, recruiting the security guards whom were present to help him prevent any escape attempts, and that's where the demo picked up

Gordon was swapped out with an unnamed PC, who had stumbled across the ward while trying to find a safe place to hide out, immediately being "welcomed" in (it was more like they acted as if he should have been there the whole time), and was directed to go to Dr. ---'s meeting - this meeting, held in a cramped side room set up in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a classroom, was filled with all of the personnel he'd taken hostage, who sat at rows of desks just listening to him talk in an almost belligerent tone

What he was talking about I've no idea, because his speech in this portion was represented by jibberish with an occasional audible word here and there that gave no context whatsoever, as if it was meant to play through different lines of speech and placeholders had been used instead

He stood at the front of the room behind a podium as if he was doing a scientific presentation to his peers, in front of a terracotta-colored chalkboard that had various odd symbols drawn on it that I didn't recognize

I walked up to him to get a better look at his model, which was unique and mildly uncanny - he looked a tad like a low-poly Magnusson in overall appearance, with wide eyes that had barely discernable pinprick pupils and rolled up sleeves

It seemed to be implied that he had attempted at one point to saw his left hand off, as he had jagged reddish scars around his wrist like he had tried to go at it from multiple angles but gave up (the demo itself never confirmed this, but the dream presented the idea omnisciently as a potential fact)

He stared directly at the PC the whole time I was present, turning to keep his gaze locked on him as he moved

That detail wasn't particularly weird until I figured I'd go look around the ward to figure out my next objective

As soon as I exited the room, his formerly belligerent jibberish talk became belligerent jibberish shrieking, which caught me off guard and I ran into the next room to find a place to lay low for a moment just in case

The room was spacious, but seemingly not by design - it appeared to have originally been two rooms, a bathroom with stalls on one side and the actual ward itself opposite, but they had torn down the wall separating them and left the stalls standing across from the rows of beds, which was an interesting choice

I ducked into the middle stall, thinking that was a decent place to hide, just for Dr. --- to come storming over seconds afterwards AND KICK THE DOOR SO HARD THAT THE LOCK FAILED AND THE DOOR FLEW OPEN, BEFORE PROCEEDING TO PUNCH THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME, which resulted in a game over

This is where the demo took a turn from the way HL was structured, confusing me even further

Going back in led to the sequence restarting, except this time I realized suddenly (via omniscent dream mechanics) that I had the option to 'apologize' via keybind and it was spammable - this had the effect of calming Dr. --- down in increments, which led to him not punching me to death, but very animatedly moving about as if he was talking, though no audio accompanied it seemingly due to the lack of actual voicelines or filler noise being present, though he did utter an occasional word like before that still provided 0 context for what he was actually trying to communicate

In the process of trying to figure out what was happening, I accidentally took a swing at him at one point, which immediately led to him starting to punch me again at the same time that literally everyone else present in the room put their fists up and ran towards the stall to join in, but this time I made the PC crouch in some half-assed attempt to dodge a killing blow from the doc himself and started spamming the apologies again, to which he responded by crouching himself to forcibly keep eye contact and went back to animatedly talking while everyone else went back to idling until the lights suddenly went out and an announcement was made that it was time to sleep - Dr. --- backed off and went to patrolling the room, while I made an attempt to walk around a bit more

Bad idea - the moment I moved anywhere that wasn't in the direction of the beds, the security guards would immediately bumrush me from wherever they were in the room, ready to deck me (everyone here really likes punching people, I guess), but I managed to find a spot to hide behind a desk until they de-aggro'd

I lost track of what happened immediately after this, as I was on the cusp of waking up and the dream's continuity started to fall apart, but it ended with the PC and another resident of the ward slipping into a nearby side room together where the npc offered to fill him in on everything, but they got distracted momentarily looking around the mostly dark room and finding an implication that the ward had once had a pair of animals present as pets, due to crates with bedding and water dishes being there - no animals were to be seen, but on approaching the crates curiously, something unseen growled from inside

And then I woke up