Borealis
This might have been explained in Ep. 2, but what exactly does the borealis do? (lol, that rhymed) Does it hold a bunch of supplies, like different gels, or even portal guns? I'd love to see this stuff in Ep. 3...
Not in wrath
The REAPER came today
An angle visited this grey path
And took the cube away
I've never played the Hlalf-Life series (inb4 my lack of credibility - they're just not my type of game), but after having read the entire plot and most of that CombineOverWiki or whatever it is, I got the impression it was a testing facility, but a mobile one.
Hoo boy, you walked into it this time. If this is anything like the other speculation threads, I'm in before bigtime debate. Or not perhaps.
Anyway, the short answer is no one really knows for sure what's on the Borealis, or, indeed, what its purpose is. The general consensus, I believe, as taken from the times it was mentioned in HL2:Ep2, was that it contained some new and vastly powerful sort of technology, as not only Dr. Mossman and the rebels but also the Combine were in a race to find it. Eli Vance has told Gordon ingame that it's vital that the Borealis/its cargo must be destroyed and never used. Some have speculated that it was some form of portal technology, but I doubt it, seeing as how 1) the Combine have already made use of portal technology (albeit cross-dimensional) and 2) there's no real reason for Eli to have warned against using it in my opinion.
So to summarize it's a cargo ship that disappeared from the drydock in the older parts of Aperture Science and reappeared somewhere in the Arctic, and it contains a new and interesting form of technology which, if we're lucky, might be featured in Ep3/HL3. And for the record I think that's about as far as a crossover as we'll have between the two games. I think any sort of further storyline intersections would ruin things quite honestly.
And now I'm fairly depressed because reading over this I've realized how much of a nerd/geek I am.
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Winston is pretty much right, except that I believe it was an icebreaker, not a cargo ship. Which makes it odd that it's drydock is underground in Michigan. The blueprints show that it contains Unstationary Scaffolds and Emancipation Grills, so a limited form of testing might have occurred onboard. Eli doesn't want it to be used, but Kliener seems to think that whatever it contains could destroy the Combine, so it's presumably pretty powerful.
I played Ep2 without sound so I had no idea what was going on most of the time. (no speakers, silly me) I gotta play it again sometime.
What is on the Borealis? Probably something you can't find in the portal games. Something that is worth stealing from by competitors.
If I ever buy a boat...
"I hear voices. But I ignore them and I just carry on killing."
Yeah, nothing is really known about the Borealis - it was all left up to Episode 3 to explain. Which makes it a horribly cruel move by Valve to put a reference in Portal 2 to a game they haven't even started work on yet.
F-STOP!
Time travel. Most probably the answer.
With time travel they could stop the combine, or the combine could completely rule the earth before humans had any way of retaliating.
I'm sure I saw "GLaDOS" on the Borealis Blueprints shown on the screen in the room where Eli and Kliener talk about it.
Oh, and in regards to the Borealis teleporting all those years later, it could have been a "slow teleport" like in HL2.
BTW I'd want to see Mantis Men as an enemy in HL2 Ep3/HL3 if Gordon actually gets on the Borealis.
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Hah, oh yeah. Or maybe Aperture's still yet to be seen "military androids".