Thread:TheLoneClone/@comment-25867149-20160113155441/@comment-25867149-20160214124355

Kind of both, but probably leaning more towards the science-fiction angle. The first few games are set in the last decade and the story is that scientists at the Black Mesa research facility accidentally create a Resonance Cascade, like I said above, tht allows creatures from the Xen universe into ours, and the scientists, along with Gordon, Colette, Gina, Barney and Adrian, have to not only defend themselves from Xen creatures, but also Adrian's mates the HECU marines sent in by the government to silence everybody and sterilize the area. So Gordon jumps through the rift into Xen and kills the Nihilinth, a massive floaty space fetus that's keeping the rft open. He is then offered a job by the G-Man, and if he refuses he'll be trapped back on Xen, in the middle of "a battle you can't possibly hope to win..."

In the sequel and subsequent episodes, Gordon reawakens from stasis in the 2020's in the dystopain City 17, where he discovers that the Resonance Cacade attracted the attention of an alien empire called "the Combine", who are slowly sucking the Earth's resources dry and have installed a supression field to stop human procreation. Gordon then gets rescued by undercover Barney and introduced to Alyx, a colleague's daughter from Black Mesa, and they get involeved in the resistance against the Combine and their "Consul", Gordon's former boss Breen.