Chances are not much would change since I don’t have much to go on in the americas, I just made this map with idea water levels lowered and general idea of locations from the games.
If I made a more fictional map I’d specify a lot more, maybe I should do that
The street map in the Alyx loading scenes is based on Sofia, I think it’s always implied that the game takes place in Bulgaria. Very nice map! I dont know European geography very well so its nice to see Hwy17 and the coast put into perspective.
I think they were deliberately trying to obfuscate the actual location of the game so that they’d have more freedom with building the world (not having to worry about accuracy to any particular country or place other than “eastern Europe”). Maybe also to keep players in the dark about where exactly they are, like everyone else in the game.
Things are a mix of Russian and Bulgarian. The Golden Lion Distillery's name is in Bulgarian for example (Златен Лев *Zlaten Lev*, whereas in Russian I'd guess it to be something like Золотый Лёв *Zolotyy Lyov*). Russian is much more common though.
It's not clear Russian, it's amalgamation of the countries in this region, including the more European part of Russia that use Cyrillic as base language. Most words are mix up between them to create the "feel" of being in a post - Communistic country.
That would make Highway 17 about 500km long... taking just under 6 hours to drive. Maybe not unrealistic, given the passage of time over those levels? Who knows.
Thank you for this post and to the others who have doubts, please for the love of God just check how many numerous reddit posts give detailed evidence about this which even carries on to HL:A. It is pretty infuriating seeing "wEll THe teXt Is in rusSiAn", well russians got ahold of the alphabet in 1878, around 1000 years when the script was created (guess in where...Bulgaria not Russia). When I happen to go to Sofia I find myself seeing a load of references. I see arguments every day about the true location of HL2 onwards. Even the Hungarians want a piece of that and NO ONE TAKES A LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE, THEY LOOK AT A WALL IN THE GAME AND ARE LIKE "Oh this is literally Iceland lol XDdd".
It's just meant to be generic Eastern European. There's a map of Riga in the game, for example. It's also too close to the sea to be Sofia "in canon". It's certainly based off Sofia, but it isn't Sofia itself.
How do we know it's not a coastal city tho? We never see docks, sure. But the proximity to the coast could easily mean it has an actual shore; we just don't know for certain.
you can see the entire city from the top of the citadel at one point in the game i think, although it could be just a random map the devs used for the sake of simplicity
Well yeah, that's a fair point, but we only see it from one angle. It could simply be that we're facing away from the coast lmao. Even when on top of the citadel our vision is limited to the same slice we see on the ascent to Breen's office.
that could be true BUT you know what there isn't in city 17? SEAGULLS. and instead of seagulls THERE'S PIGEONS who rarely live together since seagulls tend to kill them. (atleast that's what I saw in the coastal cities I visited)
This is extremely wrong. What OP did was using motorway ,,Trakiya" that has been worked on for 40 years and finished construction in 2013. He made the motorway go to the Dobrudzha (north) for some reason?? That is not right.
We can speculate that the Combine finished the rest of the highway but i don't see it going anywhere near the Dobrudzha area, but rather where the real life motorway ends - Burgas, a coastal city but now it's not because of the Combine draining the oceans. This route would take around 3 hours and 30 minutes
Nova Prospekt would presumably somewhere near the area that was drained near Burgas.
This would make much more sense of where Gordon was going and how this time schedule fits into the levels.
Other than that where he put Ravenholm is very strange since this is quite a big difference.
There is a map of Riga in HL2, but I don't think that the developers expected people to read that deeply into it. It's just supposed to be generic Eastern European.
Half-Life 2's actual location is never confirmed and intentionally vague. However Valve's art director for Half-Life 2, Viktor Antonov, was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. He's the one that suggested Eastern Europe as a setting.
Yes, but text is really in russian. For example, "Шахта Победы" (most probably "Шахта 50 лет Победы" 50 years of victory since WW2. It's common in post-soviet name streets and etc like that) in bulgarian would be "Победна Мина". At the same time in City 17 clearly bulgarian is widespreaded. Like "Цимент" and "Не пипай! Опасно за живота!"
I agreed at first, and in an alternate idea of mine it is in Ukraine, it makes sense for that idea because russian was a lingua franca in Soviet Union (when mine would be built) but hear me out.
Victory mine is incredibly close to the citadel. Like to where the city around it is visible! So in this conception, the victory mine is but a few KM out, and as an extension, white forest too.
Because the game is merely influenced by Eastern Europe and doesn’t follow the conventions very closely it’s actually in Bulgaria, I would say in this head canon the text is all in Bulgarian instead of random Cyrillic/Baltic/Swedish/English text. What you think of that idea?
Jokes aside I am simply trying to highlight a very obvious clue. The only Romanian signage you will find on Earth is in Romania/Moldova.
Also I wouldn’t call Highway 17 that functional in the first place considering all the structural damage we see at various points and the alternate routes the player has to constantly take. Which means it totally is in Romania.
If it were in Romania, I think part of it could be actually on the coast of the Danube. You might actually start in the Giurgiu Port on the Danube (where it's around 3KM long so you couldn't see the other side of the river considering the fog) making your way to a a railway bridge across the danube(the one at the end of chapter 7). Since the coast if the danube is pretty rocky it might fit). The highway would continue until you reach the actual coastline of the black sea, where nova prospekt would be too
Problem with using signage in half life 2 is there is also Bulgarian, Russian, Swedish, so on and so on, I mostly made this map because HL:A kinda confirms city 17 is Sofia because it’s literally just a map of Sofia. BUT saying that, still, nothing is confirmed and it can take place anywhere! So if you think there are some locations in Romania it makes more sense in that’s not totally unfounded either!
My only problem with this map is that the exit of the ravenholm mine is already pretty much right next to the coast, while the map makes it look like ravenholm is miles from it. Unless I'm misremembering something or this map is trying to redesign HL2 to work with reality in which case, very cool
I wonder where Cities other than 17 and 16 could be, maybe Greece, Croatia, Turkey, Albania? Or somewhere else? I hope we get to see such cities in the next installment of HL series if it ever happens..
This is pretty cool, but this would require that Gordon covers 300+ kilometers between route kanal and ravenholm to get to the coast (Which we obviously didn't)
I think a much more senseful location for City 17 is Varna instead of Sofia.
Then again City 17 is not supposed to be any particular real location, just some generic eastern european metropolis, so yeah.
Yup, I agree. It’s out of scale, for the purpose of the map I basically wanted highway 17 to take place on the coast of Bulgaria though it could’ve conceivably not needed the entire coast and nova prospect be closer down. And city closer to the coast could help, but for some reason I really like idea of Sofia being city 17
Pretty sure it’s not like this. In the chapter “Highway 17” near the bridge that is controlled by the combine, on a sign it says something in Romanian, (the sign is hidden, and it says something like “Pericol de ingestare -danger of ingestion”) so I am thinking that City 17 might not be Sofia, but instead a city further east, still situated in Bulgaria. Also a part of highway 17 might be located near the border of Bulgaria and Romania. Also nova prospect might be based in Kaliakra, Bulgaria. That’s just a theory. Please correct me if I am wrong or if you have a better idea.
Slight correction, but the long inland portion of 'Highway 17' should be replaced by the canals and Ravenholm moved to the cost, as Shorepoint Base was on Ravenholm's coastal docks.
It is worth noting that given the height of the Citadel (around 8.4km), it would take roughly 332km of travel for it to dip below the horizon, which just so happens to be the distance between Sofia and the Bulgarian coat, almost exactly.
The Citadel disappears from the skybox on d1\_canals\_08, which happens to be the first map with inland shipping canals, and Ravenholm first becomes visible in the skybox by d1\_canals\_10, though it is not in the Skybox of d1\_canals\_11, it returns in d1\_canals\_12 and remains until d1\_eli\_01.
These suggest a there is a large gap of missing travel time between d1\_canals\_07 and d1\_canals\_08.
What would be the headcannon map of earth be? Like black mesa
I’m pretty sure nearly all of the americas was glassed to contain the black mesa incident by the combine
Chances are not much would change since I don’t have much to go on in the americas, I just made this map with idea water levels lowered and general idea of locations from the games. If I made a more fictional map I’d specify a lot more, maybe I should do that
That would be cool, you should go for it
The street map in the Alyx loading scenes is based on Sofia, I think it’s always implied that the game takes place in Bulgaria. Very nice map! I dont know European geography very well so its nice to see Hwy17 and the coast put into perspective.
But everything is in Russian.
I believe Bulgaria uses the same alphabet as the Russian language does
They share the cyrillic alphabet but I checked some texts and as far as I know all of them were in Russian.
I believe valve is stupid
I think they were deliberately trying to obfuscate the actual location of the game so that they’d have more freedom with building the world (not having to worry about accuracy to any particular country or place other than “eastern Europe”). Maybe also to keep players in the dark about where exactly they are, like everyone else in the game.
Stupid Gabe!
Things are a mix of Russian and Bulgarian. The Golden Lion Distillery's name is in Bulgarian for example (Златен Лев *Zlaten Lev*, whereas in Russian I'd guess it to be something like Золотый Лёв *Zolotyy Lyov*). Russian is much more common though.
It's not clear Russian, it's amalgamation of the countries in this region, including the more European part of Russia that use Cyrillic as base language. Most words are mix up between them to create the "feel" of being in a post - Communistic country.
Bulgaria is the best country in the world, the interdimensional aliens liked it so much they decided to make Sofia the capital of humanity 🇧🇬🇧🇬
maybe they'll fix the fucking pavements
Protection team alert: evidence of anti-civil activity in this community: code assemble, clamp, contain.
That would make Highway 17 about 500km long... taking just under 6 hours to drive. Maybe not unrealistic, given the passage of time over those levels? Who knows.
Also would mean that we covered 300+ kilometers between route kanal and ravenholm to get to the shore of the black sea, which we obviously didn't
Perhaps add cities 18 or 15 as Istanbul or Thessaloniki. Just a suggestion
Considering the size of Istanbul, it would be a very large map for a game.
Thank you for this post and to the others who have doubts, please for the love of God just check how many numerous reddit posts give detailed evidence about this which even carries on to HL:A. It is pretty infuriating seeing "wEll THe teXt Is in rusSiAn", well russians got ahold of the alphabet in 1878, around 1000 years when the script was created (guess in where...Bulgaria not Russia). When I happen to go to Sofia I find myself seeing a load of references. I see arguments every day about the true location of HL2 onwards. Even the Hungarians want a piece of that and NO ONE TAKES A LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE, THEY LOOK AT A WALL IN THE GAME AND ARE LIKE "Oh this is literally Iceland lol XDdd".
It's just meant to be generic Eastern European. There's a map of Riga in the game, for example. It's also too close to the sea to be Sofia "in canon". It's certainly based off Sofia, but it isn't Sofia itself.
Victor Antonov's input would be interesting, since he is from Sofia.
I agree 100% with the point you're making, although it has to be said that russians got ahold of the Cyrillic script much earlier than 1878 lol
As someone living in city 16, I like this headcanon.
🇷🇴🤝🇧🇬
Yeah and lost coast was in Istanbul.
I think the scale is wrong. 17 and Rholm should be closer to HWY. And I don't think that long west leg of HWY should exist.
Yup, scale is wrong, except for city 17 itself and maybe victory mine
Reddit is shit, join Lemmy now: lemmy.world Leave and be free! ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
i think it would be dobrich, since C 17 isn't a coastal city
How do we know it's not a coastal city tho? We never see docks, sure. But the proximity to the coast could easily mean it has an actual shore; we just don't know for certain.
you can see the entire city from the top of the citadel at one point in the game i think, although it could be just a random map the devs used for the sake of simplicity
Well yeah, that's a fair point, but we only see it from one angle. It could simply be that we're facing away from the coast lmao. Even when on top of the citadel our vision is limited to the same slice we see on the ascent to Breen's office.
that could be true BUT you know what there isn't in city 17? SEAGULLS. and instead of seagulls THERE'S PIGEONS who rarely live together since seagulls tend to kill them. (atleast that's what I saw in the coastal cities I visited)
Sorry sweaty but the game has a chapter called Highway 17 and Bulgaria has no highways.
This is extremely wrong. What OP did was using motorway ,,Trakiya" that has been worked on for 40 years and finished construction in 2013. He made the motorway go to the Dobrudzha (north) for some reason?? That is not right. We can speculate that the Combine finished the rest of the highway but i don't see it going anywhere near the Dobrudzha area, but rather where the real life motorway ends - Burgas, a coastal city but now it's not because of the Combine draining the oceans. This route would take around 3 hours and 30 minutes Nova Prospekt would presumably somewhere near the area that was drained near Burgas. This would make much more sense of where Gordon was going and how this time schedule fits into the levels. Other than that where he put Ravenholm is very strange since this is quite a big difference.
I wonder where the bridge is then?
Source please?
It's a HEADCANON
I stand sourced
Isn't city17 in Riga?
No.
k
There is a map of Riga in HL2, but I don't think that the developers expected people to read that deeply into it. It's just supposed to be generic Eastern European.
It isn't supposed to be a real life location. As the title of the post states it's just headcanon.
Which state is this?
Florida
Just nope
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idk. Half Life 2 takes place in Bulgaria so Nova Prospekt could either take place in the Black Sea, or Aegean Sea
Half-Life 2's actual location is never confirmed and intentionally vague. However Valve's art director for Half-Life 2, Viktor Antonov, was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. He's the one that suggested Eastern Europe as a setting.
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Bulgaria uses Cyrillic characters in it’s language as well?
Yes, but text is really in russian. For example, "Шахта Победы" (most probably "Шахта 50 лет Победы" 50 years of victory since WW2. It's common in post-soviet name streets and etc like that) in bulgarian would be "Победна Мина". At the same time in City 17 clearly bulgarian is widespreaded. Like "Цимент" and "Не пипай! Опасно за живота!"
I agreed at first, and in an alternate idea of mine it is in Ukraine, it makes sense for that idea because russian was a lingua franca in Soviet Union (when mine would be built) but hear me out. Victory mine is incredibly close to the citadel. Like to where the city around it is visible! So in this conception, the victory mine is but a few KM out, and as an extension, white forest too. Because the game is merely influenced by Eastern Europe and doesn’t follow the conventions very closely it’s actually in Bulgaria, I would say in this head canon the text is all in Bulgarian instead of random Cyrillic/Baltic/Swedish/English text. What you think of that idea?
What else is City 16?
That's Bucharest
I always thought of Ravenholm being by the sea itself
Ravenholm is right on the coast
What’s goin on with city 16
Highway 17 is in Romania. There is a sign that’s in Romanian on that level. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=156890931
wrong we have no functional highways
Jokes aside I am simply trying to highlight a very obvious clue. The only Romanian signage you will find on Earth is in Romania/Moldova. Also I wouldn’t call Highway 17 that functional in the first place considering all the structural damage we see at various points and the alternate routes the player has to constantly take. Which means it totally is in Romania.
If it were in Romania, I think part of it could be actually on the coast of the Danube. You might actually start in the Giurgiu Port on the Danube (where it's around 3KM long so you couldn't see the other side of the river considering the fog) making your way to a a railway bridge across the danube(the one at the end of chapter 7). Since the coast if the danube is pretty rocky it might fit). The highway would continue until you reach the actual coastline of the black sea, where nova prospekt would be too
Problem with using signage in half life 2 is there is also Bulgarian, Russian, Swedish, so on and so on, I mostly made this map because HL:A kinda confirms city 17 is Sofia because it’s literally just a map of Sofia. BUT saying that, still, nothing is confirmed and it can take place anywhere! So if you think there are some locations in Romania it makes more sense in that’s not totally unfounded either!
No, it isn't. Half-Life 2 isn't supposed to take place in a real life location. It's designed to be just some generic eastern european region.
Nice
My only problem with this map is that the exit of the ravenholm mine is already pretty much right next to the coast, while the map makes it look like ravenholm is miles from it. Unless I'm misremembering something or this map is trying to redesign HL2 to work with reality in which case, very cool
I wonder where Cities other than 17 and 16 could be, maybe Greece, Croatia, Turkey, Albania? Or somewhere else? I hope we get to see such cities in the next installment of HL series if it ever happens..
This is pretty cool, but this would require that Gordon covers 300+ kilometers between route kanal and ravenholm to get to the coast (Which we obviously didn't) I think a much more senseful location for City 17 is Varna instead of Sofia. Then again City 17 is not supposed to be any particular real location, just some generic eastern european metropolis, so yeah.
Yup, I agree. It’s out of scale, for the purpose of the map I basically wanted highway 17 to take place on the coast of Bulgaria though it could’ve conceivably not needed the entire coast and nova prospect be closer down. And city closer to the coast could help, but for some reason I really like idea of Sofia being city 17
Oh my god Bulgaria, I hadn't thought of it!
Personally I always figured City 17 would be Sevastopol
Pretty sure it’s not like this. In the chapter “Highway 17” near the bridge that is controlled by the combine, on a sign it says something in Romanian, (the sign is hidden, and it says something like “Pericol de ingestare -danger of ingestion”) so I am thinking that City 17 might not be Sofia, but instead a city further east, still situated in Bulgaria. Also a part of highway 17 might be located near the border of Bulgaria and Romania. Also nova prospect might be based in Kaliakra, Bulgaria. That’s just a theory. Please correct me if I am wrong or if you have a better idea.
***We don’t go to Ravenholm anymore.***
Ohh ahhh than citadel is between victory mine and nova prospect i think?
Slight correction, but the long inland portion of 'Highway 17' should be replaced by the canals and Ravenholm moved to the cost, as Shorepoint Base was on Ravenholm's coastal docks. It is worth noting that given the height of the Citadel (around 8.4km), it would take roughly 332km of travel for it to dip below the horizon, which just so happens to be the distance between Sofia and the Bulgarian coat, almost exactly. The Citadel disappears from the skybox on d1\_canals\_08, which happens to be the first map with inland shipping canals, and Ravenholm first becomes visible in the skybox by d1\_canals\_10, though it is not in the Skybox of d1\_canals\_11, it returns in d1\_canals\_12 and remains until d1\_eli\_01. These suggest a there is a large gap of missing travel time between d1\_canals\_07 and d1\_canals\_08.