History Headscratchers / HalfLife

** I heard this second-hand, so it might not be accurate, but supposedly there was a writer at Valve who wrote up a draft for the plot of Episode 3, which never got made, so eventually he just released his ideas as a standalone story with CaptainErsatz versions of the Half-Life characters and concepts. In this story, it's revealed that the G-man is a time traveller from the distant future. In that future, the Combine have conqured the galaxy, which G-man isn't happy about, so he goes back in time to prevent the Combine from doing that. His version of time travel (and teleportation) doesn't allow him to go wherever he wants; he can only show up in specific moments based on the nature of the spacetime conituum or whatnot. Thus, his whole scheme is based around setting up ForWantOfANail moments that indirectly lead to the Combine's eventual defeat. So maybe in the "original" timeline ''everyone'' at Black Mesa died in the Resonance Cascade, and G-man tweaks it so at least a few people survive. He decides that Gordon suits his purposes and takes him through time to the right moment where, if all goes according to plan, Gordon will eventually blow up the Citadel (and this in turn presumably sets up more long-term headaches for the Combine). But G-man is an EnemyOfMyEnemy type, not an actual nice person, and his preferred version of the future probably involves his employers running the galaxy instead of the Combine. Enter the Vortigaunts, who are actually nice people, who enact their own scheme to throw off both G-man ''and'' the Combine. But even if any of this was intended to be cannon at some point, Episode 3 was never made and the story has never been officially established.

** Barnacles are the blithering retards of Xen. They'd be extinct by now if Earth wasn't full of ''other'' blithering retards for them to eat.

** Gotta reiterate that Valve claims to run a shop where people get to ''choose'' what to work on. Now think for a moment: if billions of dollars are backing up whatever kind of experimental technology and gameplay innovation you can dream up as long as you can get a cabal of colleagues on board, who the hell is going to choose to work on a [[StrictlyFormula strictly by-the-numbers FPS]] that picks up the end of someone else's unfinished story? There's very little room in Half-Life for gameplay or storytelling innovation at this stage, and the franchise is getting old enough that many of the people who actually created it no longer work for Valve and have been replaced by younger hands, who want to build something of their own. Things like AI Directors, new directions in strategy gaming, non-Euclidean level design, reactive storytelling, ... are interesting. A manshooter whose signature style is entirely built around [[SeinfeldIsUnfunny extremely dated mechanics]] and involves essentially zero engineering innovation is ''not'' interesting. I'd honestly be amazed if more than a handful of people were working on Half-Life at any one time, if only because the kind of person who would volunteer for that project is the kind of person Valve doesn't hire (they get to go work in the Activision mines).

** GameplayAndStorySegregation. From a story standpoint, we can simply assume that Gordon fought off every single headcrab before it could make proper contact with his head. Sort of like how in the ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreed'' series, you can get hurt, even though the synchronization drop that occurs whenever that happens suggests that the "real" Altaïr, Ezio, etc., never got hurt at all except in cutscenes.

** Also, animals that don't move ''ever'' require very little energy, and by extension, very little food. They can probably just pick up a single large animal and slowly digest it for the rest of their lives. [[StarWars Sarlacc]], anyone?

*** The only ones besides Gordon who are even aware of the G-Man are Adrian Shepard (detained), Barney (who only sees him once, and doesn't pay much attention to him), Dr. Breen (who is aware that Gordon's contract is "open to the highest bidder") and Eli (whose only contact with him was right before the resonance cascade). The G-Man serves only his "employers" for reasons I'm sure Valve will pull out of their ass when they decide to start working on another series. Until then, we can only wait...

** I don't thnk the Gonomes are canon anyways, as they were only seen in ''Opposing Force''.

** Process of elimination. Barnacles that crop up in locations that receive more traffic may get more food, but they're also a ''lot'' easier for the various intelligent factions to notice and eliminate as pests. Once spotted, they can't run away, so they die if they or their barfed-up leavings are too visible.

* Just before everything gets pear-shaped with the experiment, one of the scientists says: "It's probably not a problem, probably, but I'm showing a small discrepancy in... well know it's well within acceptable bounds." What was he going to say?

* You know, Machinima/FreemansMind made me realize something: the HECU makes no sense. Why would you have a special unit of Marines that not only contain hazardous threats, but execute ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP THEM?!? And then send in Black Ops to kill the Marines, as well as evacuate Black Mesa's Marines, leaving some behind, which is AGAINST THE CODE OF MARINES?!? There's military incompetence, and then there's the HECU! How is any of this justified?!?