Had a long dream where I toured Valve and we were playtesting the next Half-Life title. Highlights include all levels of previous Half-Life games being playable in it in modern quality, Portal story content and Amiga controller support (Gabe was super excited about this). Thread:

I wasn't invited to the tour, but Gabe (or Russell Crowe, hard to tell) snuck us in through the emergency exit which, in classic Valve fashion, was unlocked and not triggering any alarms (only some of you will know why this is funny).

On the way to the playtesting Gabe complained about bugs in WoW and how it doesn't support the Amiga controller properly (I have no idea why dream Gabe is obsessed with it). Once we arrived at the playtesting floor there were several rooms of different categories of people.

I was put with the young adult group (~50 people) who were currently going through the first level of the game. They weren't playing it but were watching an employee play on a big screen. Everyone did have a PC but it was only unlocked to play specific things at specific times.

I, with my hacker skills (/s) was able to just access the game regardless (and everyone was somehow fine with it). First level was breaking out of some stasis facility (assumed to be owned by gman). Co-op between Gordon (PC) and Alyx (VR). Standard enemies with a boss at the end.

I stopped playing the story mode and decided to check out some of the other maps. Opened developer console and looked at the autocomplete of the map command, turns out this build had all of their developer playground/experiments included. Yay! Checked out Aperture maps first.

Only was a map of Aperture HQ in its non-glados days. There was big entrance hall with a center desk reminiscent of the Black Mesa entry bit. Long lines of people in front of various elevators. Player was there to apply for being a test subject and was put in line with others.

That level was meh, so I switched to the next Aperture one. Next one was some sort of reverse engineering lab where an experiment went terribly wrong (classic). What were they reverse engineering? A Stargate. Gabe, still there, chimed in and said they had licensed the IP. Cool.

Moving on, I stumbled on a test map with various mechanics from the older Half-Life games, a map set in space where you spawn in a familiar cockpit and... a side scroller. Gabe excitedly jumped forward with an Amiga controller (again wtf) and told me he had personally made this.

I messed around with the controller. Was barely able to use it and the calibration was all out of wack, but it sort of worked. Good job, Gabe. Meanwhile the group was asked by Valve's Kaci which parts of the game so far they liked the most. Turns out many didn't like it at all.

I chimed in that I liked how the co-op level picked up from both EP2 and HL:A. Naturally also very excited about the Stargate licensing for the Aperture storyline but the response to that was "we're not here to talk about that yet" and then I woke up to start writing this thread.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of my weirdly realistic and memorable dreams. Tune in next time when they'll likely be more amplified due to anti-allergy meds. Further amiga controller mentions not guaranteed.