Epistolary Afterthoughts: The map is not the territory. A sketch is only a starting point. Everything changes as you try to make it real...

Everyone who works on it will have ideas, and new opportunities will appear and change everything...

But even on a story level, you will find as you get closer that some things just won't work. Would Alyx really kill Judith Mossman?...

Is that too harsh? What if Alyx pushed Judith into a timeloop or portal bubble instead, leaving her fate open?...

Is there a role in all this for the former security guard Barney? What about DOG?...

What if the final explosion powers a huge timeloop singularity that puts Gordon back on the Black Mesa Research Facility Inbound Train...

...and it all never happened?
...or is about to happen again?

Also, how do you tell it? Do you start on the Borealis and have physical timeloops that function as flashbacks? How would that work?

Do you start with glimpses of a Combine interrogation cell? Do you think the entire experience is provoked fantasy as a means of getting info?

Or is a straightforward linear experience the most satisfying? It takes a team to work this stuff out. Vignettes are easy.

And then what do you do if the brilliant actor who plays Wallace Breen...dies?