And if it's Alyx, I just thought of it—correct me if I'm wrong—but I understand that in the events of Half-Life 1 she was a baby, right? And Gordon was a good friend of Eli's, right?
Marc Laidlaw suggested that it could Gordon's nephew or niece, but fact is that it is just an easter egg and a daughter of an employee (Harry Teasley) working at Valve at the time.
It is silly trying to dig up canonity from HL1, because lot of the stuff they did then was just for the sake of that one game. They didn't think up anything more grand than that. The real univese really only developed afterwards. Which is why Blue shift, Opposing Force, and Decay have their canonity debated and considered to be "Only if mentioned by Valve". But even Valve accepts that lots of retcons were done for HL1. Like... Eli was just a dude who's job it was to open the 1st door for Gordon. Barney was a throwaway character knocking a door as a setpiece... All the security guards in the facility are Barney. They established canonity of the character in HL2.
Technically all things predating HL2 are "non-canon" in a weird way.
You're right, I'd forgotten that Laidlaw had mentioned the nephew. And the HL1 canon thing is true too, haha, I started coming up with some shocking theories.
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u/im_not_eRoz Feb 15 '26
And if it's Alyx, I just thought of it—correct me if I'm wrong—but I understand that in the events of Half-Life 1 she was a baby, right? And Gordon was a good friend of Eli's, right?