IMO the comps look like they’re running 98 anyways:
Wait, wait…I may have a possible explanation for the weird dates here, BM came out with their “portal technology” in 1998 but Gordon Freeman didn’t get his job at BM until year 200X, so BM had their portal technology still but it was primitive (working but primitive), it worked but must of it had flaws in it so Gordon Freeman was hired for his “services”. Not to later, RENASCENCE CASCADE! The End :retard:
WRONG the machine in both screenshots has a win 2k skin applied, it wasn’t released till win ME and 2000.
Here’s the pre-2k color scheme(also used in NT 4.0):
:hmph:
I was just thinking the same thing. The portal tech was developed in 98 but the BM incident didn’t happen until 200X.
Did you not read the article?
It’s already been confirmed.
Time to edit all the wiki’s about half life. 
Yes, and I went to Aperturescience.com where they got the timeline, all I saw was what was there already “initial tests went well”.
Where are the Sources?
I was always under the impression that it took place in the late 90’s myself…
I always liked to think it took place in 2006, and HL2 took place 20 years later.
Oh well, at least that got cleared up.
What the…? So HL officially takes place in BOTH 1998 and some time 200x? Also if the resonance cascade happened in such a short time after Black Mesa succeeded with portal technology, how come scientists have Xen aliens in crates/cages and several dead hazard-suit-wearing scientists can be found in Xen?
I don’t like this announcement one bit…
Agreed. It opens up too many holes. The letter that came with Half-Life was dated 200X, and while it is reasonable to assume that the portal tech was developed in '98, if Gordon wasn’t working for Black Mesa until 200X, then the Black Mesa Incident could not have happened before Gordon was an employee of the BMRF. Valve created a paradox by stating HL happened at least two years prior to the date where their main character was employed.
I always figure HL took place in 2003 or 2004, myself…
I refuse to believe this until one of two things happen.
- This information actually appears from a Valve-controlled source like aperturescience.com. Right now, aperturescience.com still says:[code]1996 - After a decade spent bringing the disk operating parts of GLaDOS to a state of more
or less basic functionality, work begins on the Genetic Lifeform component.
Several Years Later - The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned
activities on Aperture’s first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day.
In many ways, the initial test goes well…[/code]
- The author of the article proves they actually learned something from their college writing days, and cites their sources. Where did they get the last paragraph from in that timeline? We assume Valve, but without sources…
Oh well, it doesn’t matter that much to me. Although this puts the Resonance Cascade at or around 1998 or 1999, this doesn’t necessarily mean the actual events of Portal occurred around that time (although I guess this does effectively end the “before or after the cascade?” debate). The only implication this has is that GLaDOS took over the Enrichment Center facility in 1998, and the Resonance Cascade occurred “a few days later,” in 1998 or 1999. As far as Portal is concerned, years could have been spent, between GLaDOS’ takeover and Chell’s awakening, developing the handheld portal device that the test subjects were meant to use. I think it’s clear from the presence of the Ratman’s scribblings alone, that at the very least, a few months had passed prior to Chell’s waking up. That is, if the tally marks inside the Ratman’s various lairs are any viable indication of time passage… Then again, they could just be the scribblings of someone who was going out of their mind (which is probably more likely, considering the Companion Cube level)… but who knows?
At any rate, I say it’s still up to Valve to definitively clarify this, or update aperturescience.com. Just my 2¢. 
Here’s hoping the Black Mesa devs didn’t depend too heavily on that (relatively ambiguous and vague from the very beginning) date of 200X… :fffuuu:
Well, where are the sources from Valve confirming it?
I’m not accepting this until Valve says so.
I won’t believe this until Valve actually state it officially.
@ ManlyStump: Oh crap, I totally forgot about that… you’re talking about Questionable Ethics, right? Well, I was personally under the impression that the creatures you see there were only recently acquired by other scientists, after the resonance cascade, considering the relatively low-security areas they were being held in, like the room with the Grunt, and then the Headcrabs. (At least, they all seemed very “low security” to me… in my last job, I spent a number of months working in a far more secure lab testing radios, let alone studying and experimenting on alien lifeforms.)
As far as the bodies on Xen go… I was under the impression that we had been going there for months, prior to Gordon’s arrival, but now that I think about it, maybe they were all sent there after the event, in various efforts to get to know our new enemy, or perhaps some of them were even sent as potential “Gordon Freemans” in various efforts to stop the incomming aliens. Certainly something new to consider… guess we’ll have to wait for Valve to clarify, though, either through an aperturescience.com update, or something in-game, for Portal 2 or Episode 3. 
@ Ajax: Agreed, I figured it most likely happened in 200X too, but I never really wanted to trust in that 200X date too much to begin with myself, simply because it came from the game’s instruction manual. I had a bad feeling in my gut something like this would happen one day. :’(
When it comes to canonical timelines, I figure that in-game content and/or developer announcements have priority, instruction manuals come second, whereas websites, advertising media, and viral marketing, dead last… since conflicts like this seem to happen a lot… oh well…
^ Well, since this timeline is from Aperture’s perspective, maybe Black Mesa had successfully teleported to Xen months before, but Aperture only found out about it during the Resonance Cascade, or possibly even later when the Combine invaded, considering the Cascade seemed to be fairly localized.
That seems like an awful lot of them to have set up between the time of the RC and Gordon coming to that area (between 24 and 48 hours if you’re being generous), and to be honest, if it were me in there, I’d be more interested in getting the f*** out alive!
That still doesn’t explain the RC happening supposedly before Freeman was hired by Black Mesa! And unless you played an official game set in Europe or Asia, showing absolutely nothing going on, what makes you say it was localized?
Sounds to me like the author of the Aperture Science history article (Meagan VanBurkleo) is just filling in grey areas with their own BS (pun intended). There’s nothing from Valve that confirms anything.
/thread