anticitizen one

Half-Life 1 starts, continues and ends on rails. Gordon Freeman never had another way out of Black Mesa. No free will.

Half-Life 2 also starts on rails. If G-man had his way, surely Gordon would wake up in another train again far away from City 17 and further away in time instead of the rubble around the Citadel, no freedom again.

Yet, as Episode 1 finishes Gordon is yet again on those rails, though something goes wrong. Episode 2 Gordon is finally off those rails, mostly because they blew up. He is still bound to G-man, though, as we find out in Alyx, G-man is displeased about something Gordon might or might not do in the future. It's funny how it coincided with the fact that Episode 2 does not end on those rails.

Alyx stands out. The game starts with Alyx at her home and it's not her who gets on the rails. It's her father moving towards his death. She of course tries to get on another set of rails to find him, but she needs to find her own way instead, leaving the rails behind.

Yeeees, of course!! Thank you for the kind words!

Why not do both at the same time

I’m honestly really interested in the idea of Chell somehow ending up in the hl2 timeline

This super agile and tenacious woman from Aperture just spawns in the middle of nowhere, and the resistance has to figure out who she is and how she got here, considering there are no records of her ANYWHERE throughout the resistance bases