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  • The Pulse Rifle seems like a very poorly designed weapon. It's bulky and probably heavy, pretty inaccurate with not much of a barrel to speak of, and has a lot of kickback. It also has those huge crescent-shaped magazines which hold too few rounds and are probably difficult to manipulate. The secondary fire is unpredictable. It suffers for this in-game, which is probably intentional to keep players from overusing their most powerful gun, but we're still talking about a standard-issue weapon wielded by the shock forces of the Combine and universally preferred by the Resistance. Maybe the Combine had some issues adapting pulse weapon technology for use by primates.
    • Game mechanics aren't really applicable on its "real-life" value.
    • The same could be said for most of the weapons in the game. I usually just chalk it up to Gordon insisting on shooting all his guns from the chest.
    • I don't think it is poorly designed. Keep in mind, it does not use those crescent magazines, they just contain the little pulse containers that actually load the gun. Plus, I don't think it is inaccurate, it is easily the most accurate weapon in the game aside from the magnum and crossbow. As for the kick-back, it is because gordon freeman is holding the rifle with one hand for some reason (type viewmodel_fov 60 into the console and look straight up).
    • Most powerful (and accurate) primary fire machine gun with a secondary fire capable of vaporizing a room full of combine soldiers in a single shot. I also call shennannigans on the "poorly designed" assertion.
  • Is it just me, or is the HEV suit terrible at what it was built for? Think about it for a minute: It is repeatedly stated (in HL1's training course and by Kleiner in Half-Life 2, to name just a couple of places) that it allows the wearer safety while working in hazardous environments. But any time Gordon comes into contact with fire, toxic waste, or whatever else, the suit (and Gordon himself) starts to lose power, and runs out very quickly if Gordon doesn't get to safety. Heck, if I remember correctly, in Episode 2, when Gordon steps into some of that green goo while trying to get across the bridge to retrieve the Jalopy, he loses his health very fast, but the suit doesn't lose any energy at all while standing in the sludge - so it protects itself, but not the wearer? The only thing it really seems to help with is somewhat limiting bullet/melee damage and alerting you to nearby radiactivity - which it won't protect you from in any way. It seems to act as little more than a talking full-body Geiger counter and vitality meter, with mild armor-like qualities. Just what kind of "hazardous environment" DOES it protect from then?
    • No helmet. Gordon is just an idiot for not wearing it.
      • There's no helmet because Gordon's suit didn't come with one.
    • This is lampshaded by a Vortigaunt at one point who mentions that "It is a shame that that suit still allows harm to come to the Freeman" or something to that effect. If I recall correctly, though, in the context of the scene where it was said, it seems as though that may have been referring more to bullet damage - which would make sense, as not a lot of hazardous environments in a research facility like Black Mesa probably involve taking hundreds of bullets. Then again...
    • In real life, even a smaller burn (by fire or acid) or a wound from a single pistol bullet would leave you screaming in pain for hours, so Gordon not losing consciousness and being able to run/jump/fight without any hindrance from the wounds is a pretty useful feature of the suit. Go play a realistic military sim instead of an action game, and you will see how crippling even a minor wound can be without wearing a power armor.
      • It's not like any other character reacts at all to damage except for small grunt here and there.
    • Oh, but it is protecting him! He can enter areas a normal person can't without getting hurt from the radiation, such as the core chamber in EP 1. If Alyx went in with him, she would die in a short amount of time. But the radioactive sludge is too much for the suit, and they probably had other means of dealing with such materials.
    • Why would the HEV suit (designed for use in Hazardous EnVironments ) have audio recordings for gunshot wounds?
      • The suit was actually secretly designed for Xen missions, which generally involve quite a bit of combat. Which is why the suit has bullet protection along with NBC protection, and has its own internal munitions tracking system.
  • How does Gordon stay alive with all the morphine the HEV suit pumps in his system? Shouldn't his heart have stopped beating by now? Or at the very least, he should have passed out a few times. After running from the cops all day and fighting through a town of zombies a man would get pretty damn tired, with only adrenaline keeping him going, but how can he keep it up being automatically pumped with opiates after every little paper cut? Does the suit also keep him on a continuous I.V. of amphetamines? That would definitely keep him awake and shrugging off pain, but combined with he morphine his head would probably explode.
    • A fanfiction I read has Gordon stating that it is only named morphine for convenience, actually a special concoction that Black Mesa invented (as having their workers addicted to morphine wouldn't work well).
    • For what little it's worth, the suit is at least designed to not inject morphine with every little paper cut - after you take a hit that triggers the "morphine administered" sound clip, it takes 30 minutes of gameplay before the clip will be triggered again. It's not all that much better considering how morphine actually works but it's at least not a constant stream of the stuff.
  • Is it just me, or is the revolver WAY too powerful for a .357? It feels to me like it should be a .44 or a .454 Casull, given its firepower.
    • Beta textures for the revolver's ammo pickups in the first game did identify the bullets as .44 Magnum, for the record; what likely happened is they changed it to a Python in .357 at some point midway through development and then either didn't care to edit the damage values (maybe thinking ".357" was good enough shorthand for "handgun that kills everything ever" by the same logic that lets the in-game SPAS-12's mag tube act as a second barrel) or couldn't find a decent lowered value that didn't make it pointless next to the Glock's much more plentiful ammo and tripled magazine capacity/fire rate.
  • How is it that a multi-dimensional empire that has enslaved countless alien races cannot develop local teleportation technology, but a bunch of ragtag fugitives working in a lab made of junk can?
    • Creative Sterility. The Combine are very good at taking existing stuff and twisting it to their own ends, but not so much at inventing new things. If none of the races they've enslaved have that particular tech in a way that they can apply, they won't have it either. Also, it's not just a ragtag bunch of fugitives, it's a ragtag bunch of brilliant scientist fugitives that used to work in a facility that already invented inter-dimensional teleportation, and now they have a bunch of advanced alien tech to reverse engineer as well.
    • A better question is why this keeps getting brought up when Nova Prospekt shows that it's quite clearly false. The Combine do have local teleportation capabilities, albeit rather energy intensive ones, so the continual claims that they don't (both in and out of universe) are rather confusing. Granted, that could've been built with the help of Mossman or Breen, but the fact of the matter is that the Combine do have the means and data to build more. Of course, Resistance teleporters appear to be far more energy efficient, which would explain their interest, but still. However, it occurs to me that since the Combine is a multiversal empire, a lot of the universes under their control have different laws of physics than our own. So, they may already have local teleportation elsewhere, but haven't been able to crack it as easily on Earth due to needing a new method.
      • Consider the source of that information. Judith, who is the one saying they don't have it, is also a spy. Also, unless I'm remembering incorrectly, isn't part of that scene her entering new equations and, essentially, reprogramming the standard Combine tech to use the Resistance-made version of the teleporting protocols? I think she actually says as much before you start holding your ground against the troops.
      • That particular one is an extremely early prototype based on information that was funneled to the Combine by Judith Mossman, their spy inside the resistance, and even then they didn't manage to do it right. The Combine version not only is so energy intensive that it needs its own special generator at Nova Prospekt that takes ages to charge compared to the Resistence version but it took them a week to reappear at the other end. That and the destruction of Nova Prospekt most likely destroyed all the information the Combine had on intrauniveral teleportation.
  • How does one put on the HEV suit?
    • I'd imagine there's at least a zipper or something on the back. Alternatively, the suit itself might not be as rigid and bulletproof as it's supposed to be when it's not being worn, to facilitate someone actually putting it on; the actual armor part of the suit apparently works by making fibers within the suit rigid with electricity (at least that's what The Black Mesa Incident, a fanfic retelling of the first game-plus-expansions, went with), I could imagine the rest of the suit working in the same manner so it's flexible and easier to put on while in storage, then powering up at least a little bit once it's worn to actually do its Powered Armor thing.
      • Also, What Exactly is the Suit made of? In 1 it looks Metal, but in 2 it's made of leather or something...
      • I think it's put on much like a diving suit; it splits into two parts, torso and legs. The legs are put on first, then the torso section is put on, and the two sections are sealed at the waist.
  • What was the experiment that caused the resonance cascade supposedly supposed to do? It's implied Breen and the other higher ups knew it would cause the RC but I don't think the regular scientists had any idea based on how freaked out they are when it happens.
    • The hint is in the name of the device that the experiment uses: The Anti-Mass Spectrometer. Mass Spectrometry is a way to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions, a physical quantity used in calculations for multiple types of physics. The addition of "Anti" implies that the Xen Crystals have negative mass, implying they're made of the theoretical "exotic matter", which has been used in some speculative theories of wormhole construction. Supposedly, the Anti-Mass Spectrometer's laser is designed to excite the matter in the crystal to cause it to resonate, said resonance could then be measurednote . The sample used in the experiment in-gamenote , combined with the unusually high power the Spectrometer was pushed to, probably caused the crystal to resonate hard enough to cause a tear in realitynote , which the Nihilanth could rip open further and begin the invasion.
  • 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 no, it's well within acceptable bounds." What was he going to say?

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  • Why exactly was Half-Life and its expansions so full of dark humor and the random slaughter of NPCs, both the cornerstones of the game, while Half-Life 2 features neither? It feels like an entirely different series.
    • I don't know. They decided to go in a different direction with the series. What about it? Play Portal instead. Or even Episode 2. I think they actually acknowledged this somewhere and plan to add more humour to later installments.
    • Episode 2 had its fair share of humour, particularly the double act you run into down the mines, and the Resistance characters in general. As far as gameplay stuff... I guess locking Lamarr in the rocket counts? So it seems they're going back that way.
    • Wasn't the random slaughter of NPCs just so you'd know there was a danger? Presumably as graphics got better you'd be able to discern that for yourself.
    • All the NPCs in Half-Life 1 died because they were stupid/unlucky. By Half-Life 2, the only humans alive are both smart and lucky.
    • I don't think I'd agree that the slaughter of NPCs counts as a "cornerstone" of Half-Life.
      • I felt like it was. When Half-Life came out, it was, as far as I knew, the only, or at least the most popular, game that let you simply kill friendlies with no consequences.
      • Apparently you never killed a scientist in front of a Barney, or shot a Barney with a gun that didn't kill him in one hit.
      • Was I the only one who couldn't do that?
      • Given that the Barney guards were reported as being extremely popular and some people kept them alive as long as possible I think you weren't alone.
      • Barney was always safe from me. Otis "the whingeing fat coward with a BFG", on the other hand...put it this way, on my first playthrough of OpFor Shephard got himself a Desert Eagle much sooner than might be expected.
      • Otis got to live for a different reason: He had infinite ammo and surprising accuracy with a Desert Eagle. Just don't get between him and the target.
      • You're certainly not alone. On a recent play-through of Half-Life I spent about 10 minutes trying to herd two scientists and two security guards into a corner so they would be safe when I left them alone.
    • NPCs die all the time in Half-Life 2, especially near the end, if you don't take care of them. There are just far fewer setpieces that showcase them getting killed in various violent means (the one from Half-Life 2 that stands out in particular are the two guys who get mauled to death by the Antlions).
      • JSYK, only one of those guys has to die. If you're quick enough with your SMG, the non-wounded guy will survive, and have a few lines of dialogue for you.
    • Half-Life 2 might have a slightly more solemn atmosphere than its predecessor, but it's hardly humorless. Father Grigori? Odessa Cubbage? Kleiner and Lamarr? Citizens moaning about cheese? The cat teleportation incident that left Barney emotionally traumatized? There's plenty of levity here.
    • Plus Eli's teasing of Alyx.
      • Precisely, the idea that all the humor from the Half Life series was sucked dry by the time of the second game is a nonsensical claim. Maybe OP just doesn't have a funny bone for dark humor.
    • I don't think all the dark humour, at least not more than in Half-Life 2 was intentional in the original game. It was simply a 90s shooter with 90s technology that didn't fully allow for the serious tone we know for a fact they were going for: hiring Marc Laidlaw to write a grounded story with no Doomguy or Duke Nukem was a deliberate choice. It just so happens that it coincided with designing cartoonish NPCs with their engine limitations and janky AI made it really easy to kill them or to have them say inappropriately funny things. That elevator crash in Unforeseen Consequences? Probably not meant to be funny, but to cast doubt on whether you are truly helping anyone or just unwittingly causing more damage than anything. Questionable Ethics? Probably not funny, once you consider the actual implications and don't just laugh at headcrabs being vaporized. It simply aged a little poorly.
  • Why doesn't Gordon talk?
    • He's a mute. And sign language is tricky to do in the HEV suit, so he doesn't bother. Also, he gets a kick out of the "man of few words" remarks.
    • OR the parts where he implicitly responds is when he IS using sign language, and we just can't see it. Come on, wouldn't a true Heroic Mime be cool?
    • It's part of immersing you in the game. Gordon is not mute. Rather the game tries to get you more into the role of Gordon Freeman by having you play out his dialogue. Often times it doesn't play out quite that way, but often you will find yourself thinking and feeling just like Gordon would in that situation, so it really works.
    • He's just quiet and shy. People are used to him not saying much, most of the people he meets he doesn't know anyway, and he's probably in shock because of Black Mesa.
      • That's my theory, too, since it makes perfect sense. But I figure in real life he'd still have something to say.
      • I don't think "shy" is the word for it, considering his facial expression on the box. He's more likely taciturn. He's a focused, driven man who doesn't talk much because he thinks that most conversations are pointless. Of course he'd still have reason to talk occasionally, but that's explained either as a gameplay gimmick (it's easier to immerse yourself in a silent character) or because he's actually mute in-universe.
    • I prefer to think that he's always just about to say something before he is interrupted by someone or something.
    • I prefer this explanation.
    • One Half-Life fanfic has Eli explain to Alyx that Gordon suffers from some kind of psychological illness that prevents him from speaking when he is stressed. Considering that nearly all the time in the games he is either alone or in a stressful situation...
    • He really is mute. Listen to the "pain" sounds in the files or in game. You can hear him gasp or sharply inhale in pain. That's all he can do.
    • From his fandom page: Though Gordon is commonly thought to be mute, this is contradicted in the Half-Life PlayStation 2 manual. The image of Gordon Freeman's letter of acceptance to the Black Mesa Research Facility mentions a "recent telephone conversation" between Freeman and someone at Black Mesa.
      • Considering that Black Mesa runs on hyper-advanced tech, it's not too hard to imagine that they use videophones. And if Gordon is mute he'd have a reason to own a videophone, precisely for cases like this, when he needs to communicate over long distances with sign language.
  • Is anybody going to give Gordon a break? I know we leave inconvenient things like sleep and potty breaks out of these games to keep the action immersive. Still, Gordon has been fighting zombies and the Combine for at least five days straight, and it's only in the interim between Episodes 2 and 3 that he might have finally gotten a chance to rest.
    • Don't forget that, from his perspective, he just got back from Xen, too.
      • Talk about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
    • Maybe after his two decade long stasis, things such as sleep were terminated. There are humans in real life that don't sleep.
    • By my count Gordon has been working nonstop for about six days (almost two days for HL1, three days for Half-Life 2, one or two days for the Episodes). Hopefully those periods of suspended animation provided some rest and potty breaks.
    • Maybe he pees in his suit, like an astronaut.
    • I have seen in a number of places that Gordon's subjective time between the Half-life 1 and 2 was a couple of days. Presumably, this was enough time for him to eat the lunch he'd packed for work that morning and stashed the same place as all the guns he carries, take a crap, and catch up on sleep. Beyond that, the HEV suit likely has a catheter, water recycling system, and a drinking straw to prevent dehydration, and Gordon's just been without sleep for a few days, except between the episodes. He'll probably spend most of the helicopter ride to Episode 3 asleep.
    • I think we can assume the stasis gave him plenty of rest/nutrition. When someone wakes up from a coma, they don't remember the coma, but they're still rested. It's the same thing. So the only thing to consider is Half-Life 2 through the Episodes. My theory is that he has rested, they just didn't show it. For example, he could have spent a few hours sleeping at the church in Ravenholm. For obvious reasons, this wouldn't be shown in the game, though.
      • The stasis doesn't count as rest. According to the Episode One story page, Gordon was kept in stasis "far from Earth, thought, and time itself." If Gordon was kept in a dimension where time doesn't exist, that means his body didn't change at all, so he was in the exact same state when he was brought out of stasis as he was when he went in. So he still would be exhausted from fighting monsters for two days when he arrived in City 17.
      • But still, Gordon has the HEV suit when he goes into stasis, but not when he comes out. At least one thing changed, so it stands to reason that others might've as well.
    • As far as I remember, the G-Man said something about a "well-deserved rest" in reference to the stasis Gordon's been in between HL1 and Half-Life 2. He might've also gotten a bit of rest between Episodes 1 and 2, but other than that, he was awake for the whole time. Personally, I see the fade to black at the end of Episode 2 as Gordon slowly slipping into coma.
    • Besides, there are a couple of places where you could handwave it that Gordon did get some sleep, it just wasn't shown on screen—he could've caught a nap at Black Mesa East, for example, or the church in Ravenholm, or the White Forest base before the Combine showed up.
      • In a fanfic I'm writing, Gordon passes out from exhaustion for a few hours when he arrives at Black Mesa East. So there's at least one place you could fit in a nap to suspend your disbelief. But that's the only place I could fit in any real sleep. The rest of Half-Life 2, they can't stop because they need to rescue Eli, and from their perspective they don't have much time before the Combine decides to kill him. (And in fact they might not have had as much time as they did if not for Judith convincing Breen of Eli's usefulness.) In Episode One they can't stop because they're trying to escape a dark energy flare (and they just barely make it even without sleeping), and in Episode Two they can't stop because they need to get to White Forest before the superportal activates, and Alyx's injury causes an enormous delay as it is.
      • You could slip in a sleep break at the Vortigaunt Camp just before the siege of Nova Prospekt.
      • Yeah, that one works pretty well. At least from after Gordon arrives at Black Mesa East, he's running nonstop throughout the night and into morning through Ravenholm and the mines, and then continues on to mid-day along the coast, but then after acquiring the bugbait and leaving the camp, it's suddenly gone from sun high in the sky to nighttime again.
    • I like to think that all the health packs scattered throughout the level (and ravenously picked up by players) contain some sort of ration substance (like maybe Gordon drinks that green liquid in the containers) so as to keep him hydrated and fed. As for sleep, maybe whatever it is also contains caffeine or something similar.
  • It bugs me that Freeman has no agency. He never actually makes a choice, he just does what others tell him. He's not really a hero at all because he takes no initiative. He's just someone else's pawn. Whether that person is Alyx or the G man or fucking Odessa Cubbage varies from set piece to set piece, but he still never has any real power. He just goes /forward/. While I understand that that's part of how Gabe Newell and his team try to build up the illusion that the player /is/ Gordon, playing someone who doesn't actually have any power, initiative or drive, no original ideas or plans, and nothing to offer other than his crowbar-hand and the suit that basically is the only reason he's any good in a fight at all... It takes you out of the game more than Gordon saying something you might not usually agree with but do because the designers have done a good job when it comes to getting you into his head. It just feels like... I dunno. Almost like it's a lazy way of side-stepping the fact that Valve really can't write that well.
    • I think that's just the inevitable trade-off you make with the Silent Protagonist; perhaps you feel more like that protagonist, but fitting yourself into the role of an emotionless, personality-less mute tends to lessen how much you can feel for the guy. And he's at least made one choice: he chose to 'work with' the G-Man instead of dying for principle in Half-Life 1.
    • I like to have the idea that Gordon's getting pretty pissed with it as well. He's angry that he's everybody's pawn, but he's saving lives while doing so, and has to make a trade-off. Of course, there's no real basis for the thoery, but...
    • The Half-Life series has more to it than simply an awesome sci-fi story and some first-person action; it is all, in my eyes, an extended metaphor/exploration of mankind and the nature of power. By this logic, Gordon's seeming powerlessness fits perfectly into the themes of the series; he's not a savior, but just a tool.
      • This makes a pretty interesting extension on the G-Man's "Right man in the wrong place" statement. Essentially, Gordon has the illusion of choice, without actually being able to control his own destiny, and that's just how the G-Man wants it to be.
      • Well, I'd personally say that being an awesome sci-fi story would imply having more complex themes than just We Blow Up Aliens by nature of being awesome, but I agree. Gordon's status as a tool is one he's probably not very happy with.
    • I agree that Gordon at this point is probably pissed with his lot in life too, but what else is he going to do? Every situation he has been put in since he pushed that fateful cart has been 'fight or die'. As far as original ideas and things to offer, I suppose I would consider some of the in game stuff you actually play though as some of his good ideas. 'Hey Gordon, how do we get past this wall?' * Gordon stacks up some boxes with the Gravity Gun* 'WHOA GREAT IDEA GORDON!'
    • Yeah that always bothered me too... I believe everyone else has answered your question pretty good, but I just want to say something about the suit: I'm not sure how this applies in the story, but HECU Marines and Combine Soldiers each have 50 health, and have the same guns as you, yet Gordon kills like a hundred marines in the original Half-Life alone.
    • One final point: as mentioned above, the real story of what the hell is going on is All There in the Manual. Gordon has almost no idea what the hell is really going on, and nobody has had the time to sit him down and give him a detailed explanation. So he's in a situation where his life in danger and he's got almost no clue as to the reason why. It could be assumed he's following other people's lead just because he literally has no other option.
    • Gordon does have a slight bit of agency, in that he has exactly one choice that he constantly makes: He chooses to press on. He could easily have sat down, took the suit off, and let someone else go ahead instead of him. But instead, he chose to put his own life at risk and go for help. With each new challenge, he has an opportunity to just sit down and quit, wait for the world to end, but he never does. His choice was to be willing to be the "right man" who does whatever job is needed of him.
  • You know, Freeman's Mind 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?!?
    • The HECU's status as supposedly being Marines might just be Valve not really knowing that much about the real US Military and assuming "Marines" is shorthand for "baddest of the badass in the army", kind of like how I mentioned in another topic the revolver didn't get a downgrade in power after they changed it to be a Python in .357 because they might have assumed ".357" is basically Hollywood shorthand for "this gun is the best gun ever". Note too that as far as weaponry and vehicles go, pretty much the only thing that's accurate (and not accidentally so due to multiple branches of the military using it, like the Abrams tank) is the presence of V-22 Ospreys - they don't use the MP5, they don't use the Glock or the SPAS-12, and they don't use the M2 Bradley or the AH-64 Apache. As for their idiotic decisions, it's probably a result of just how incredibly, exponentially fucked the situation keeps getting. They arrive to control the situation and silence any witnesses (which includes armed personnel that would otherwise be happy to assist them in controlling the situation). The situation gets more fucked, and some of them are left behind, accidentally or not, and as such are considered potential witnesses if they manage to get out anyway, hence Black Ops sent to silence them and finish the job.
    • Also, even if the military wants to kill all witnesses, it's really weird that they decide to kill them immediately, in the middle of this deadly situation, right in front of every other witness who happens to be in the room. ("They're coming for us! It's our only way out!") Obviously this just motivates everyone to resist and escape, which makes HECU's job that much harder. The smart thing would be to evacuate everyone to a secure location for "decontamination" or whatever, pretending like you're trying to save lives and securing everyone's cooperation. Then, once you've got everyone secure in the offsite "decontamination building", just blow up the building. Boom. Done. Much easier that way. Most of the HECU people themselves will believe that it was all a rescue mission. Most people won't know that the Black Mesa staffers even died, and anyone who does know that they died can be told that the decon building was blown up by terrorists or an enemy spy or something. Only the absolute highest US authorities will ever know it was all a giant cover-up.
    • Also also, why would they want to kill all the scientists in the first place?? These are the people who built the tech that created the problem, right? They might be the only people on earth who can figure out what went wrong and build some new tech to reverse the problem? What if you kill all the scientists and then new aliens keep showing up through portals and you can't figure out how to stop them because all you just killed all your portal specialists? And then the aliens invade with a massive army and they conquer the earth and...oh wait, that's the plot of Half Life 2, isn't it? In retrospect, maybe the Combine invasion could have been prevented outright if the US goverment hadn't been absurdly gung-ho about killing witnesses at Black Mesa.
  • If City 17 is in Eastern Europe, why does everyone (save Father Grigori and Odessa Cubbage) speak with North American accents?
    • The possibility of a resonance cascade was theorized when Gordon Freeman was still in high school. The theory was controversial enough that the US government didn't consider it a serious enough threat to justify shutting down Xen research. However, they did develop a comprehensive contingency plan if one happened. While every other government panicked at the sight of aliens appearing all around the world, the US government implemented their plan, and it mostly worked. As a result of this, the US still had a cohesive military apparatus when the Combine showed up, so the Combine forces in North America focused on taking out that military, targeting Washington, D.C. and whatever military bases remained active instead of major cities. The net result was that at the end of the Seven Hour War, the US had taken far fewer casualties than most other countries, and Americans made up as much as a tenth of the global population. The Combine relocated most of them to other cities, in order to repopulate those cities. So a lot of the people in City 17 are actually Americans.
    • Another thing to consider. Twenty years have passed since the Seven Hour War. Twenty years of Breen on television screens around the world, speaking American English. He has had an enormous impact on the way people speak. This would be even more extreme in City 17, where Breen is most visible, and where the leaders of the Resistance also speak American English. Throw in the high proportion of American survivors and the pre-existing dominance of American culture, and it isn't surprising that American English has become the common language of humanity.
    • Also, consider that the Combine seemingly constantly relocate people, perhaps to prevent them forming relationships, most probably just to be dicks. It would be a great show of their power and the Citizens' lack of power if they randomly transported people from one part of the planet to another; those living in the USA just happened to be moved to Eastern Europe. As for Grigori, he is awesome enough to have lived in Ravenholm since the Seven Hour War.
    • Technical limitations are the real-world reason. You simply can't practically fit enough sound clips to represent all the languages and accents that City 17 would contain (at least at the time), so they just went with straight American accents for the English release. Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw said that if someone were to make a mod that made the citizens speak all the localization languages, had Breen's transmissions looping through all the translations etc., it'd be much more true to his vision of the city.
  • Alyx's fingernails. They are, in each game, perfectly manicured. Leaving aside the fact that she spends most of her time with the player fighting zombies in dark pits, she's an enthusiastic mechanic who probably doesn't have too many opportunities for regular bathing. Her nails should be ground in with so much grit that they're almost black. The rest of her design evokes a character who isn't at all fussed about generally looking like something of a mess, but...the immaculate fingernails. It just bugs me. And on a similar subject, what the heck is she using to color her hair?
    • Well, the whole finger nails thing is probably due to them just not caring. Its a really minor detail. As for the hair coloring, Eli probably had it before the war, plus, its not that hard to find stuff like that, its not like the Combine would outlaw that.
    • It's not hard to find hair dye in the REAL world — but did you miss the part where Half-Life 2 takes place in a nigh-apocalyptic dystopia? I doubt there would be any hair dye around, whether the Combine outlawed it or not!
      • Assuming her natural hair color is dark, bleach the parts of it she wants to dye reddish colors and then use beet and carrot juice. Alternately, marigold or hibiscus flowers. There's plenty of plants with reddish dyes in them; if you look around the Internet, you can find several recipes for natural hair dyes. People have been dying their hair for a whole lot longer than mass-produced hair dye has been around, after all.
      • Well obviously, but I doubt Alyx would think to do that, or want to go to the trouble of finding beets or carrots, grinding them up, and trying to dye her hair with them; and I doubt marigolds and hibiscus still exist, or if they do they're likely very hard to find. Plus she seems like the kind of person who would spend her time doing more productive things.
      • Alyx is a genius, doing teleportation work with Kliner, Mossman and her dad, building and upgrading a sophisticated robot with extremely sophisticated AI that appears to have free will and the ability to come up with new ideas, able to hack Combine technology, knows sign language as well as likely other languages considering Laidlaw intended City 17 to speak a ton of them, is a skilled combatant on Freeman levels without a HEV suit, and is hard to kill. And now is magically bonded with Gordon via a mystical force that apparently lets Vortigaunts reincarnate and do magic, so for all we know, it's retroactive. She found time to become a genius in multiple scientific fields before the age of 30, likely with private tutelage from the best minds on Earth. And she prefers being outdoors and doing stuff over being in a safe base, and although we don't see it, can beat up a ton of grown men armed with stunsticks, which implies martial arts training. I think she would find time for grounding up some plants. Also, Dr. Breen has vending machines, and the concept of buying things still exists, even with rations being seen used, implying that there is still capitalism as well, likely only possible via theft or working for the Combine. It's quite possible that there's hair dye, but only for the Combine, and Alyx found or stole some. Or she found unused boxes in a junkyard.
      • It's probably the work of another resistance member, there are women in the group maybe, that dye their hairs, so Alyx get used to borrow some for herself.
  • How come some of the main characters are wearing casual clothes? How the hell did they get those, and why do none of the refugees seem to have any?
    • Look closely; Alyx, her father, and Kleiner are all wearing clothes from Black Mesa. They're rebels, and avoid the Combine, so it's not like anyones around to just confiscate the clothes. And the reason the other rebels don't wear casual clothes (including Barney) is because they are not in a lab, they are in the middle of a freaking war zone, so they wear bullet proof vests (looks like CP vests to me). And last I checked, some of the refugees did have casual clothes, white sweaters and jeans. The rest were just wearing the jump suits given out by the combine.
  • Gordon Freeman. He can leap over waist-high walls, lift up huge crates and oil drums without a problem, swim faster than some fish or animals, take an entire clip of .44 rounds to the face and not blink, not to mention run non-stop for miles on-end while holding an entire arsenal in his back pocket. And yet, despite his obvious above-average physical prowess… the man absolutely cannot hold his breath for more than 15 seconds at a time. What?
    • Or, maybe he's not holding his breath at all. Maybe… he's relying on the HEV Suit's built-in oxygen reserve in situations that call for holding one's breath. If that's the case, though, that suit has a pretty poor oxygen storage capacity.
      • I'm thinking the full suit would probably be a sealed system that would actually work pretty well at holding oxygen for the user to breathe in situations where it needs to be sealed off, e.g. being underwater or an environment with poisonous fumes in the air, and it's another one of those cases where Gordon is screwing himself over by not wearing the helmet.

    The G-Man 
  • What the crap is the G-Man up to? Does he even have a goal, or is he screwing with people just to get his jollies? Nothing that he does appears to have an overarching purpose. For Example: He delivered the Xen crystals to Black Mesa knowing it would cause the Resonance Cascade and attract the Combine to Earth. Twenty years later he brings Gordon out of stasis to destroy the Citadel, which in turn causes more death and destruction, but he guides Gordon to White Forest, explicitly to help seal the breach that the Citadel's destruction caused. I mean, GAAH!
    • It is possible that his actions do have an overarching purpose, he brought the Combine to Earth so that they would be defeated once and for all. However, he is evidently mercenary, so he could simply be hired by one force, and then, once the contract is completed, is free to be hired by another force. For example, he could have been hired by the Combine to open up Earth for invasion, and then, later, hired by the Resistance to take out Dr Breen.
      • The only ones besides Gordon who are even aware of the G-Man are Adrian Shephard (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...
      • Still, it's very possible that Eli knows more about the G-Man than we thought, if his little conversation with Gordon near the end of Episode 2 is any indication. He also seemed to believe that the G-Man was possibly malevolent, though that could have been him just getting fed up at being manipulated.
      • There is also Colonel Odessa Cubbage, who can be seen talking with G-Man if you take a peek at the his base during the Highway 17 area with some binoculars. Why G-Man would talk to Odessa is anyone's guess.
      • Maybe to avoid talking to Frohman?
      • I read somewhere that he gave Odessa the RPG, with the specific purpose of giving it to Gordon.
      • As Boyd once said G-man! Who are you working for? And who is G?
      • The resistance could not have hired Freeman from the G-Man as the resistance has nothing the G-Man might want as payment.
      • How do you know that? How do you know what he would want as payment?
      • They have teleportation technology far in advance of what even the Combine have. Given the subplot with the Borealis, it's entirely possible that he wants the secret of teleporting bulk matter (G-Man appears capable of teleportation himself, but it's possibly not by the same method the rebels use).
    • I always thought that he setup the whole Black Mesa incident to convince his "employers" that Freeman was right for employment. Freeman being sent to stop the Combine was just a job from the "employers".
    • The G-Man is a being of potentially cosmic power. His methods and motives are beyond the knowledge of mere mortals.
      • Yet he was also stopped by a small group of Vortigaunts at the beginning of Episode 1; his power is not limitless.
    • He doesn't guide Gordon to White Forest. The Vortigaunts have freed Gordon by then. I sort of read his dialogue in Episode 2 as being acceptance of the fact that Gordon's going whether he likes it or not, and him giving a final warning. I also considered that, as Breen is aware of Freeman's 'contract', maybe the G-Man has negotiated with him previously, but Breen was unwilling to pay, so now the G-Man is roughing him up, essentially. A protection racket.
    • Another thing that doesn't make sense, is that he doesn't save Alyx at the end of Half-Life 2, yet in Episode Two he says that he considers her to be valuable, and tells Gordon to see her safely to White Forest (which Gordon was going to do anyway, making this "order" pointless). And how come he can stop time and put people in some kind of alternate state "far from Earth, thought, and time itself", but he can't get past a few measley Vortigaunts?
      • Don't forget that at the end of Half-Life 2/beginning of Episode One, he wasn't intending to let Gordon go back either. At that point, he likely considered their part in the story to be complete. But when the Vorts saved both of them and Gordon went on to continue to kick butt and take names, perhaps G-man reconsidered and decided to let them keep going. As for the last, well, if "a few measly Vortigaunts" can stop him, they must not be so measly after all, hmmm?
      • They clearly aren't measly - they're hunting Advisors, things that Gordon can't even get near without being frozen to the spot. The Vorts are clearly a lot more powerful than they immediately appear, at least in some ways.
      • Here's my theory; the reason that the Vortigaunts can hunt down Advisors is the same reason that they can stop the G-Man: The Antlion extract. After all, when the Vortigaunts had taken it, they were able to bring Alyx back from the dead, so who's to say that's all they can use it for? There is some evidence for this: IIRC, the Vortiguants who stop the G-man have the same glowing aura that the Vortigaunts had when they healed Alyx, and speaking of that; when the Vortiguants are using the extract to heal Alyx, it allows the G-man to get through to contact Gordon. It would seem that Antlion extract increases the power of the Vortiguants exponentially. Am I the only one who's noticed this?
    • 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 Captain Ersatz 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 For Want Of A Nail 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 Enemy of My Enemy 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.
      • This turns out to be a mangled version of the actual plot summary that was released: [1]
  • Why did the G-man and his employers even give a crap if Adrian Shepard escaped or not? I mean, doesn't the G-man say that his "employers" were planning on killing Shepard if he hadn't stopped them? This wouldn't be a question for me if they hadn't let Barney go without really fussing over him.
  • Who exactly is the G-Man working for? At times it seems like he's helping both the Resistance and the Combine at the same time. I can't get my brain around all the crap he's pulled.
    • It's implied in the second game that the resistance hired Gordon's services from the Gman. For instance, in Half-Life 2, the resistance weren't surprised at you... popping into existence and joining them. Also, you can see the Gman talking to various members of the resistance throughout Half-Life 2 (a vortigaunt has him on a TV, he's seen talking with Cubbage as well). I suppose his contract ran out after the Citadel exploded.
      • Ahh... A very plausible theory. Time for some more Wild Mass Guessing!
      • Actually, that is the most plausible theory I've heard. And it makes sense even that Gordon's contract with the resistance would have run out at the explosion of the Citadel, but in Episode One, rather than let G-man reclaim him to be given to the next highest bidder or have to pay him (whatever it is they give him) the vortigaunts not only keep Gordon on Earth, rather than let him be put back into stasis, but save Alyx from the exploding Citadel.
    • I've always thought that the G-man is simply a third party trying to bring down the Combine. He would allow the Combine to conquer Earth. The humans, led by Gordon Freeman, would then revolt, retake Earth, then proceed to exact revenge on the Combine. Dr. Breen was probably another tool - he ended the Seven Hour War before any more humans could be killed.
      • His opening speech correlates this.
      • Maybe the g-man is someone from the future and he is shaping history to fit the timeline that lead to the human race that g-man is a part of. it could explain why he comes across as so odd. the human race has evolved and everyone looks and sounds vaugly alien just like the g-man
      • What really bugs me is why was Gordon employed to destroy the Combine's Dark Fusion reactor? He had to go through quite a lot of hardship to get to the Citadel, whereas the G-Man just materializes inside it with impunity. Wouldn't G-Man himself or the magical purple vortigaunts that seem to be at least his equivalent be better suited for the job? (Of course, in case of G-Man the reason might be plausible deniability - blowing up the reactor is sure to piss off the Combine, so it's better to place the blame on Gordon than take responsibility himself.)
      • The G-Man and the vortigaunts teleported in after the reactor exploded. The reactor might have been blocking him from destroying it via the higher dimensions or whatever. Kind of like why the G-Man didn't just blow the Nihilanth's head up in Half Life 1.
      • It seems to me that since the G-Man has agreed to abide by "certain res-tric-tions" he cannot interfere directly with anything else but Gordon.
      • I always figured that the advisors used their psychic powers to keep the G-Man and, more importantly, the Vortigaunts from just teleporting in. Once the reactor exploded, they probably focused their powers on protecting themselves instead of the entire citadel.
      • I don't see how their psychic powers, which appear to be quite limited as it is, could stop someone like the G-Man. Plus, if they could have stopped the G-Man from teleporting in, they certainly could have stopped Gordon from walking in.
      • Not necessarily. If teleporting in (the way G-man does it, anyway) is a mental/mystical thing, then they might be able to block that somehow, like how the Vortigaunts can. A mental/mystical ability is totally different from a physical action, after all. It's like... say you have a facility protected by anti-aircraft guns. Airplanes no longer can attack you. But a ground assault wouldn't have a particularly hard time of it, because AA guns aren't designed to target infantry. Or a different explanation—it's like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. The Advisors were so busy focusing on the telepathic stuff that they just plain failed to notice or consider the possibility of a physical infiltration.
    • They gave a crap in a similar vein to why they gave a crap about Gordon; he proved in the G-man's eyes to be a valuable asset or resource, it was either this or he would be a loose end that needed to be tied up. More so given just what he saw during the incident. Beyond that, Given his track record, he's a near-equal in many regards to Gordon freeman, not the least due to his sheer ability to take on a variety of enemies and win, not unlike his scientist counterpart (or security guard, and so on). For one reason or another, other people such as Barney were let off, either because they were not regarded as worthy enough and simply not worth the time, or perhaps due to some other larger goal not unlike what the G-man has in mind (whatever that may be) that is yet to be implemented (assuming one makes the expansion packs canon), G-man was able to convince his employers that Shepard (like Freeman) was more useful to them alive than dead, so there you go. But that's just my take on it. Anyone else?
      • Insurance policy. Why just keep a single One-Man Army, when you can have two? Barney may have survived, but perhaps the unique criteria required to be stored was not met.
      • Or maybe unlike Adrian and Gordon, Barney was able to be of use to the Resistance right then and there, rather than needing to wait for the right moment like Gordon.
      • Or maybe, Barney managed to escape from being "employed". At the end of the game, unlike his counterparts, his status is stated as "out of range." The reason Barney is not employed or detained is because he eluded G-Man.
      • While I may be off, due to never playing Opposing Forces, what if the reason the G-Man's employers were going to kill Adrian was because he would have been taken by the Combine and made into an one man army for their side? I mean someone further up suggested that the combine took and converted the military into their army. The employer's already had their killer pawn in Gordon, so they wouldn't need to take others like Barney. But Adrian, in the wrong hands, could have easily become the monkey wrench in their plans. This is why the G-Man had to convince them to simply take Adrian rather than kill him.
      • The only explanations I can think of are: 1), because in Blue Shift, Barney is with some other scientists, whereas in Opposing Forces and the original Half-Life, Adrian and Gordon are both by themselves. Either the G-man only has the ability to interfere with people who are by themselves, or his employers have rules that prevent this - after all, we don't really see the G-man interfere with the two leads of Decay at the end of that game, who were with other people at the time. 2), Barney didn't have any advanced tech on him (no HEV suit, no experimental/alien weaponry), whereas Gordon had an HEV suit, and both he and Adrian had experimental/alien weapons; since Barney didn't have any of those, the G-man probably viewed him as little more than a foot soldier, and figured that it would be best if he just let Barney go as opposed to capturing him.
      • Maybe it was to keep them from coming into conflict. Of the two of them, Freeman is more accomplished as an intellectual. Maybe they just preferred a scientific man instead of a militaristic one if they can both do the same job regardless. Besides that, Sheppard's mission was to capture or kill Gordon. If they happened to come in contact, Sheppard could cause enough problems for Gordon to cause him to fail. Gordon and Sheppard are tools, but they are very powerful ones. Letting someone as dangerous as Sheppard go free could be too much of an unpredictable element to let stand. But also, another danger would be Gordon and Sheppard deciding to work together. Alone they each take out an army. Together, they may be able to do more damage then the employers want to see. As for Barney, his accolades weren't as great, but he was a known friend of Gordon by retcon. He was unlikely to impede Gordon in any mission he was sent on.
  • How did the resistance scientists survive the nuke from Opposing Force? We know from Blue Shift that a few scientists were taken prisoner by the soldiers, but the ones close to the experiment were shot on sight in the original Half-Life, and in Opposing Force, assasins started killing all witnesses(which would logically include the imprisoned scientists)
    • If by "resistance scientists" you mean Kleiner, Eli and Magnusson, they probably survived by not getting captured in the first place.
    • But then they should have been in range of the nuke. The only real entrance to the complex was bombed by the military and you only got out because you ran through the bombing. And the route you used to get in the air vents was opened up during the bombing so likely didn't last long, so even if they tried, they couldn't do it.
      • Calhoun, Rosenberg, et. al. got away, why the surprise that a few more escape?
    • The events of Opposing Force aren't really considered canon, except for the nuke, although not necessarily when it happened. So canonically there probably was time for them to get a safe distance before the nuke hit.
    • The nuke goes off almost a day and a half after the incident begins, i.e. the late afternoon or early evening of the second day. Barney and co. escaped fairly early that same morning, i.e. around 24 hours after the incident started. That's plenty of time for Eli, Kleiner, and Magnusson to have escaped — for all we know they might have escaped before Barney did.
    • Nukes aren't terribly effective in destroying vast subterranean structures. That's the very idea behind Fallout's Vaults and the metro from Metro 2033. Why should Black Mesa be different? The only thing the nuke probably did was knock out everything electronic via EMP.

    The Combine 
  • Why is the Combine capital called "City 17" and not something like "City 1" or "City 0"?
    • Alyx confirms that, while the Combine have had a presence on Earth for about twenty years, they only actually started building the Citadel within the last five or six. My assumption based on that is there never was a "Combine capital city" before then so much as there was just "whichever city Breen is currently operating from", and when they decided to change that and plop down the Citadel, City 17 happened to be the lucky one.
  • If the Combine is attempting to convert the remainder of humanity into soldiers for their war machine, why do they prevent reproduction? Without it, the supply would dry up within a generation, and there is no evidence of them artificially incubating replacements.
    • If they want to try to control all of humanity and turn it into a part of their army, the first step is actually controlling humanity. And humans, in large enough numbers, are hard to control. It makes perfect sense to me that they'd need to stomp out certain drives that don't really lend themselves well to military dictatorship, like the sex drive. It just makes controlling large sums of people way more complicated. I'm sure once they'd beaten it out of the humans they'd begin with a controlled continuation of the species.
      • That is exactly what Dr. Breen implied in the Breencast in the beginning of the game. Plus, "reproductive privileges" were offered as an incentive for the soldiers for Dr. Freeman's capture, which would make a good incentive. Join the army, have sex. 90% of the fraternity brothers in America would join up.
      • It's possible that the voice says "reproduction simulations" instead of "privileges"; either way, same idea.
      • "Non-mechanical reproduction simulation" is what the Overwatch Voice calls it
    • You may as well ask why the combine are stripping a perfectly good planet to the bone? Couldn't they use the ocean for massive planet-wide fish-farming instead of draining it? The answer: they don't give a shit. Their plan was to consume all of earth's resources, then leave it a lifeless chunk of rock. It'd be way too hard to maintain the infrastructure that humans have to raise more humans. do you really think the combine want to have to run schools? It simply requires far less effort to take what's there and move on. There's a bajillion more little blue-green planets in the multiverse.
      • The Combine are likely just draining the ocean off TO a little blue-green planet somewhere else. Why secure a whole new planet permanently when there's another one with far more useful/exploitable sea life, or just needs a few billion tons of water to flood out resistance on the land. It's also probably a prelude to strip-mining the planet down to the core to get at the radioactive metals down there.
      • To me, the thought of Combine soldiers teaching kindergartners at gunpoint is freaking hilarious.
      • *speaker crackle* "Pick up that No. 2 pencil."
      • Exactly. The Combine have no care whatsoever for humanity; Dr. Breen managed to convince them that humanity was worth adding to the collective in order to ensure the "survival" of the species, and the efforts to quash the Resistance are essentially a test to see if they have anything valuable to contribute, even if small. Plus, it's a good way to get rid of the human population to just let them all kill each other; keep the loyal ones once victory is ensured, and if the Combine human forces can't do the job, then there's little lost. It's only after Freeman severely messes up their plans by closing their super-portal that they realise humanity poses a potential threat, and start getting more involved.
    • No, the Breencast at the start explicitly states that they removed reproductive urges, not just viability. Hell, the very fact that they refer to it in such impersonal terms as "mate" suggests that they don't really have their hearts in the idea... yet.
      • That's only one reference to the field suppressing "urges", though, and it's possible that Breen was mistaken or being imprecise with his language. He also didn't specifically say that the field suppresses the urge to reproduce, only that it's something we need to get rid of. He says the field will stay up until everyone proves they don't need it, suggesting that the field itself doesn't suppress urges, only that such is the Combine's ultimate goal. All the rest of the info about the suppression field suggests that it only suppresses reproduction, not sex drive. And of course people don't have their hearts in it, they're living in an apocalyptic dystopia! Who needs a field that suppresses urges when you have depression and PTSD to do it for you?
    • My theory was always this: compared to the human brain, a Combine's brain lacks some of our abilities in several ways: Emotion (duh), The human ability to question & innovate, and etc. I may be wrong: But I think that both, humans and combine both have things the other race doesnt in terms of brain power. Obviously, they are more advanced then humans technologically, but who knows how long it took their race to gain said technology? or whether it was even theirs to begin with?
  • Why do the Combine provide the oppressed citizenry with watermelons? I mean, they're attempting to crush all hope out of humanity, making sure things are made as unpleasant as possible. The Combine, among countless other things, uses zombies for biological warfare, turns dissidents into Stalkers, and the police deal out random beatings, robots which flash cameras in your face, and try to encourage collaboration with the promise of eating stuff other than crap dispensed by a machine in the train station.

    But watermelons? If you're working so hard to make life as horrible as it is, why also give people delicious, refreshing watermelon? Is it just a small luxury to make sure that while the people stay downtrodden, they (in the absence of a Badass Bookworm who is a Messianic Archetype) don't get so miserable that they simply snap and all rise up against their oppressors regardless of the consequences, instead staying just shy of that point?

    This might be like in Dwarf Fortress, where clouds of miasma and puddles of vomit fill the corridors, and a dwarf's friends and family are always liable to die in magma-related accidents or be devoured by carp. All the many horrible things a Dwarf Fortress dwarf is guaranteed to experience in his life can lead to one finally snapping and going berserk, smashing any objects or people in their path. However, the players (who screw with the dwarves under their control for their own sick amusement, eerily similar to how the Combine exploit humanity for their own gain) often take steps to prevent such destructive tantrums, often by placing extremely magnificent furniture in the dining room, thus generating enough happy thoughts to prevent a malcontent causing chaos.
    • They're not attempting to crush ALL hope, just string people along with the hope that small things will come out alright, while distracting them from the things like their planet being irreperably damaged. Life may suck today, but tomorrow is watermelon day!
      • Dr. Breen's broadcasts also make it clear that the Combine is trying to paint themselves in a positive light. Getting rid of luxury fruits that have no effect on dissidence whatsoever would not be exactly conducive to that end.
    • Because watermelons are just so much fun to smash against walls with the gravity gun.
    • Kleiner may grow them himself. Or perhaps he has a cloning machine and just infinitely clones watermelons.
    • I'm so glad I'm not the only one who is always wondering this! I wouldn't find it so weird if watermelons weren't such a strange thing to grow somewhere that looks like Eastern Europe; after all, they're tropical/subtropical plants, and need temperatures higher than 25°C, so you'd probably need a greenhouse or some other way to provide an adequate environment. This makes it pretty unlikely they're grown by the Resistance, as it would be more trouble than it's worth. And as for the Combine, why go to the trouble of growing watermelons in Eastern Europe when you can just stick with things that are easier to grow in that climate — and when you already have some sort of mass-produced ration mush (at least I assume it's mush) to feed the citizens? If it's to give them some small luxury for the purposes of demoralization, I can think of way more efficient ways to do that than setting aside time and resources for a large-scale watermelon farm. I really just don't get it.
      • You're forgetting one factor: The Combine are messing with the environment. Climate change!
    • Watermelons are a good source of hydration - it's right in the name - so if the Combine has to provide its human livestock with some kind of roughage to prevent gastrointestinal incapacity, using watermelon may cut back a bit on how much potable water the city's population requires. Symbolically, there's also the whole ugly "slave food" stereotype about that particular fruit.
  • Why didn't the Combine recycle some of the best human technology? I can understand them not including tanks because striders are basically a more mobile version of most of those, but why don't the combine seem to have any answer to a fighter-bomber jet or even a nuclear missile? Nukes would be probably be really useful to any civilization. But no, the only technology they have seemed to recycle for the military are firearms, APC's, and Attack helicopters. On a similar note, why didn't humanity use nukes against the combine in the seven hour war? If you saw millions of Striders, Gunships, hunters, and dropships descending from the sky, wouldn't you try to kill them with your most powerful weapon?
    • Before the Seven Hour War, humanity had centralized itself into the cities because the Portal Storms had made non-urban areas extraordinarily dangerous. Like "dive off diving board into the mouth of a recently teleported Ichthyosaur" dangerous. The Citadels teleported directly into the heart of each city, and released the bulk of the Combine forces immediately. Humanity couldn't nuke its own cities, and so the military was quickly overwhelmed.
      • Is there a source for that? I don't know if it comes from an interview from Laidlaw, or something like that.
    • Who says they don't? The Overwatch forces aren't actually the bulk of their forces. They're just a peacekeeping force left behind to make sure the remnants of humanity don't get uppity. As for the second question, after the events of HL1, humanity packed together into cities for greater protection against the random monsters being teleported in by the Portal Storms. This bit them in the ass when the Combine teleported in Citadels right into the middle of each city and released hordes of forces right into humanity's vulnerable nether regions. There's no point nuking your own cities.
    • I know that the forces on earth are just a fraction of their forces, but are they a fraction of all the human forces they have? Is most of the human army off conquering other alien planets?
      • You don't use strategic bombers to defeat an insurgency. The big guns are likely being held back in the Citadel.
      • That's actually a pretty cool theory. They've weaponized every other species they've come across, why not humans too? Not that we're as useful as headcrabs...
      • Well, I know at some point the Overwatch voice says that failure in a mission (to kill Gordon, probably) will result in a "permanent off-world assignment" so I always thought that some human Combine forces are probably off somewhere, conquering other dimensions.
      • I thought that was like a "go work in the mailroom" type thing. It doesn't really serve a important purpose it just does the dirty work no one else wants to do. Referencing another troper, things like catching the headcrabs.
    • In regards to nukes, who says they didn't try using nuclear weapons, or at least those that were left after the portal storms wreaked their havoc? The Combine have technology substantially beyond what Earth's was in the late 90's. I'm sure they could take some nukes and still keep coming. Alternately, Earth's governments tried to hold off until it was clear the Combine would win, and by that point, all of the major cities had already been destroyed, including country capitals (so no one was left with the launch codes).
  • Its sort of small, but it still bugs me: Why are the Combine soldiers so poorly equipped? Only a few of them actually carry assault rifles, all the others carry SMGs and pump action shotguns, when in reality they would be carrying assault rifles and semi-automatic shotguns. Plus, why does their hand grenade blink, besides gameplay reasons? I mean, doesn't that just warn the target that a grenade landed right next to them?
    • Keep in mind that a lot of the game takes place in urban areas (like City 17) or houses along the coast. Enclosed areas like that are best explored and fought in with SMGs and shotguns. Why they're using the kinds they're using, I don't know. Maybe Valve wanted to avoid the usual MP5 AK-47 loadout that exists in too many games. As for the grenades, I don't have an answer.
    • I don't have an answer for the grenades either, but I wanted to jump in and note that the US Marines in the first game were loaded out with MP5s. They don't even get a light machinegun until the expansion pack, and they never pack assault rifles. Valve is just big on SMGs, I guess.
      • They did get assault rifles in the High Definition Texture Pack that shipped with Blue Shift. Whether or not that's canon or not I can't say. It does however raise the question of what M16-variant uses 9mm ammo.
      • The Colt 9mm SMG? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_9mm_SMG
      • It's just a gameplay oversight and/or a case of simplified logistics. Frankly I think they should have simply made a nicer MP5 model and been done with it.
    • To answer the grenade question- it's for gameplay reasons, like you said. It's not as realistic, but when you're in the middle of a firefight with a dozen Combine soldiers shooting at you, you need a quick visual cue that someone has just lobbed a grenade at you, and a blinking red light does the trick well.
    • Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't recall the resistance members reacting to the grenade lights, they just happen to see them. In Close quarters battle situations, like those requiring SMG's and shotguns, real soldiers often use infrared lasers on their guns, so their allies, also wearing infrared goggles, see what they are aiming at, preventing the whole team from targeting one man while the rest of the other team kills them. In the chaos of CQB, the combine soldiers would want a grenade with an infrared light on it, so they don't run over it and die. The gas masks probably have built I. Goggles, as does a certain scientific research Haz Mat suit
  • Did anyone else think that the combine rebuilding/getting rid of all the tanks and APCs after the seven hour war was a little... unnecesary? I mean, for example, an M1 Abrams tank has way more powerful armor than a strider (7 shoulder launched missiles to kill a strider, where as US Forces have reported that even with 9 tanks firing at it at the same time, a certain Abrams just didn't blow up). Even if they had better weaponry, than couldn't they recycle the thousands of tanks and APC's humanity had for their transhuman forces? It would save them tons of time and money.
    • The Combine don't seem keen on using anything human. Even humans under their control who haven't been modified (the metrocops) don't use human armor or helmets. There's also the consideration that striders and gunships are probably alive, or at least based off something that once was alive, so I guess that's the Combine's thing. Maybe they just aren't a fan of things they didn't develop themselves, maybe they prefer to use things that don't need pilots, who knows? And a strider, while more vulnerable than a tank, also has a lot more powerful weaponry and more maneuverability than any tank I've ever heard of.
      • The Strider is actually faaaaaaar more durable than any modern human tank. Remember how, in the first game, it would only take three hits from the portable anti-tank rocket launcher to destroy an Abrams? In Half-Life 2, it takes seven to destroy a Strider (on normal difficulty). Combine that with its maneuverability, efficiency, and apparently thin armor that nonetheless beats the shit out of any heavy vehicle armor we have today, and it's not hard to see why the Combine weren't interested in using tanks for their human forces. The APCs are meant to serve a different role that the Combine synths aren't able to: transporting and supporting human infantry. Notably, the APCs and Hunter-Choppers also take a few anti-tank missiles to put down, giving them Abrams level durability- which, considering their role and how fragile they look, is friggin ridiculous and just shows how absurdly durable whatever that Combine metal is. Modern APCs and attack helicopters will be blown to smithereens by even one relatively primitive anti-tank rocket, while Combine ones can take several hits from a very powerful and high tech one.
    • But then why did they recycle APC's and Hunter Choppers?
    • They don't look like any real-world machines to me (certainly not the APC... I don't know about the chopper). They were probably modelled after existing human vehicles though, so that it would be physically possible for brainwashed and transhuman soldiers to drive them. The Combine hardly has any need to recycle things though; by the look of it they have pretty much infinite production capacity by any standard we can comprehend. Alien technology also looks more intimidating simply by virtue of belonging to the enemy.
    • Tanks are gas guzzlers: a convoy of modern tanks requires a larger convoy of gas tankers to keep them going. It would take a lot of time and effort to keep oil production and refinement going at a rate required to sustain a force of tanks and combustible fuel engines (is their goal to take fossil fuels? Doesn't seem like it...more likely water, organic matter, metals and heavy metals). It would take even more time effort to retrofit earth gear to run more efficient fuel and locomotive gear.
    • The Combine didn't really have any need for tanks, anyway - humans are all confined to the cities and there wasn't any significant resistance until the Uprising, by which point it was too late to start producing them. Until then all they needed were light vehicles for transportation and perhaps keeping small pockets of rioting in line. They based them on human vehicles (because we're the experts at designing vehicles that work well on our planet and can be driven by humans), but they upgraded them with their own tech, e.g. pulse weapons and probably some kind of dark energy engine. As for the synths, they're a lot more flexible, and probably a lot cheaper to produce and keep running than mechanical devices (animals tend to work a lot more efficiently than any machine we've produced thus far, and these ones were specifically designed for their purpose).
    • Also, remember that we only see City 17, the capital of the Combine occupation. We never see their other cities, or off-world transhuman forces. For all we know, they are using some recycled human gear, but the ones around the capital are better equipped. This is kinda supported by the presence of a normal Soviet-era IFV during the Uprising at the end of Half-Life 2; it's not see being used, but it's painted in the distinct Combine gun metal grey. It's likely this vehicle was part of their reserve arsenal. Understandable, considering how common rocket launchers are among the Resistance, and the fact that a normal modern IFV isn't even designed to take one hit from these kinds of weapons, unlike the Combine APCs, Hunter-Choppers, and Synths.

    Other Species/Races 
  • Why are headcrabs so perfectly suited to "coupling" with human hosts? I mean, they probably aren't even from the same universe as us. ...and only humans! You never see a vortigaunt zombie.
    • The Nihilanth's been planning the invasion for a while, so he was probably engineering the Gonarch to use against humans.
      • How do you know he was planning it?
      • Guess where the sample for the resonance cascade came from? The Nihilanth's chamber.
      • Not to mention the fact it becomes painfully apparent in Half-Life that the Scientists had been visiting Xen for a while. They even had time to start building a bio-dome/zoo to contain the Xen wildlife, as per Opposing Force.
      • The sample was provided by the G-Man, though.
    • I wouldn't say they're perfectly suited. Zombies are very asymmetrical and deformed - they don't look like something that occurs naturally. Presumably the headcrabs had a symbiotic relationship with some other species (perhaps some kind of plant?) on their home planet, which due to unfortunate coincidence looks or smells very similar to a human, so they have the urge to latch on to humans heads as a misapplication of their instinct to couple with that species. The mutations that occur are a result of the headcrab injecting chemicals into humans that had a different effect on the intended hosts, perhaps positive ones (e.g. making the leaves on their "arms" grow and opening their "bellies", expelling pollen).
    • I figure that, seeing as headcrabs seem to be designed to couple with and mutate a host, they are probably very adaptable and can mutate pretty much anything they couple with as long as their basic genetic structure is scrutable. And as for why only humans, considering the headcrab's design, I imagine they are used to coupling with animals with a distinct head (easier to latch onto), which none of the aliens have aside from vortigaunts and Alien Grunts. Maybe before, they used to couple with vortigaunts and Grunts, but we don't see vortigaunt or Grunt zombies because they either are so good at fighting them off, or because vortigaunts are so rarely seen in Half-Life 2 to begin with. Who knows.
    • I imagine trying to couple with a Vort, alive or dead, is a good way to get 10,000 volts straight to your beak and brain if you're a headcrab. Probably fatal for them. As for why they don't couple with dogs or something, who knows. Maybe that suppression field was the death of all animals with lifespans shorter than 20 years old and there were other animal zombies for a few years after the infections started. It's never stated if the zombie can live beyond the host's natural lifespan. Or perhaps headcrabs can only detect and/or effect intelligent creatures or some other limitation that humanity hasn't had the time to research in-universe.
  • Headcrabs aren't that small or lightweight either. They're actually as big as a goose or mediocre dog, if not bigger. Now imagine several pounds of flesh and bones plummeting towards your face. The impact alone should be enough to break your neck and crush every part of your face. Considering this some parasite-induced puppetization should be the least of your worries.
  • Why are there Barnacles in locations where they are unlikely to catch any prey, like under the railroad bridge?
    • Of course, there is also the fact that ones that are unlikely to have caught any humans still drop human bones when killed, but that is just lazy design.
    • Opposing Force mentions that the Barnacle that you use was 'removed from its point of gestation', suggesting that they don't have a choice where they are. Of course, this just raises the question of just who or what does choose where they're located...
      • Two reasons: 1) They probably set their eggs/young of in the wind, allowing them to be carried far and wide. When the egg lands it will attach itself to the celling where ever it lands, not necessarily in a good position (though they seem to end up in good ambush positions to eat Gordon). 2) There was this time when Earth was ravaged by the resonance cascade when all sorts of crap was teleported in from Xen. Barnacles where among them, being dropped in random locations around the world. Since the Barnacles can't move themselves they got stuck wherever that was.
    • Also, there are crows, zombies, combine troops, human resistance, antlions... There's a lot of stuff wandering around for a barnacle to feed on.
    • The barnacles under the bridge were likely feeding on seagulls or headcrabs. Both are abundant.
    • 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. Sarlacc, anyone?
    • 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/accessible.
  • Why is that when the Headcrab is shot off a Zombine, the entire skull above the lower jaw is missing, but the regular zombies seem to have the heads mostly intact beneath the crab?
    • The designers stated that this was intentional, and that we shouldn't know yet.
    • Those cybernetic implants are really, really delicious?
    • Who knows what happens to a combine soldier's head when the helmet is removed by force?
      • Interestingly, there appears to be some sort of label on the bottom of the combine soldier's gas mask warning against its removal, or something to that effect.
    • I'd always assumed that the modifications made to Transhuman Soldiers either made them less compatible with the head crabs, such that the original head was largely destroyed by attempting to fuse... or more compatible, such that the head was almost entirely absorbed by the head crab during the coupling.
      • Maybe there just isn't enough biological matter left, and headcrabs have to tear all the way down to the neck/lower jaw area before they can make any sort of connection.
    • The headcrab-helmet-skull bond is stronger than the force holding the top of the head to the lower jaw.
  • Where does the Zombie get the material to create its claws and other protrusions? Granted, sometimes they are seen to mess with corpses, apparently eating them, but it is odd that zombies confined to locations without a ready food source do not attack each other.
    • I presume they just use the existing biomass and... alter it somewhat.
      • The energy comes from breaking down the fat and muscle of the existing body, which is why zombies look so thin. The extra bone and stuff forms like how bones and teeth can form in a teratoma (Greek for monstrous tumour, and they ain't kidding).
    • Zombies never attack each other, didn't you learn this from Resident Evil?
    • On why they don't attack one another—most of the time, when you come across them, they aren't moving. My guess is that they're in some sort of hibernation or stasis state to conserve energy until something living comes along. And you'll notice headcrab zombies only mess with uninfected corpses, which makes sense: why would headcrabs attack their own species? Most real-life animals don't, unless they're territorial, and headcrabs really don't seem like a territorial bunch.
  • Why can't headcrabs attach to Gordon's head? (Or any companion's head, for that matter, including Alyx?)
    • Contrary to popular belief, I'm pretty sure that headcrabs can only zombify dead bodies. So the reason they can't attach to Gordon's head is that he isn't dead.
      • I would strongly contest this! In HL 2, "Water Hazard", one can see a very much alive person in the process of being brainsucked (sorry for using an UFO 3 term).
      • Remember, if you shoot a headcrab zombie in the torso, the host body will die, but the headcrab will pop off and start looking for a new host. So it's clear that headcrabs need their host to be alive to a certain extent. A probable theory is that the headcrab keeps alive the body systems from the host that it needs to survive, and leaves the rest to rot (helping to explain the fly sounds near zombies).
      • "Didn't have a bath in the last 1-20 years" explains the flies pretty well I think.
    • The HEV suit has a helmet, even though Gordon's never depicted with one in publicity shots.
      • Because it's ugly.
      • Really? The one in the first game didn't. When you see the Freeman model in Opposing Force he's clearly not wearing a helmet.
      • Dead people wearing the suit have helmets on - if you teleport well enough in HL 1 / Opposing Force/ Blue Shift, you'll find some. Gordon isn't wearing one because he's that special.
      • Okay, fine, it creates some sort of sound wave or energy field or some such phlebotinum that keeps headcrabs off of you. Happy? :P
      • They didn't know about Headcrabs until long before Xen. I suppose that could be possible in the second game, with all the time Kleiner had to change the suit, but let's say for the first one, a Headcrab first tackles you to knock you onto the floor, and then climbs onto your head from there while you're stunned, and the HEV suit reduces knockback enough that you don't fall over.
      • You did see the bits in HL1 where they were experimenting with entities from Xen, right? The HEV suit has modifications made directly for fighting in Xen as well. Anyway, in HL1, you can't see the suit gloves either. I assume the helmet in Half-Life 2 is a retractable hood pulled up from behind the suit, which we can't see before we put it on.
      • There's got to be a helmet, or at least some kind of visor, for the HEV HUD to be displayed on. Also, if there's no helmet, the zoom function doesn't have an explanation.
      • It's his glasses. They're super, high tech glasses.
    • Headcrabs don't find beards appetizing.
    • The real-world reason is just because it's too hard to do from a technical standpoint — earlier versions of Half-Life were going to have allies "killed" by Head Crabs be turned into zombies, as mentioned in Sierra's in-house magazine they included with some of their games, but it was dropped from the final game for technical reasons.
      • As for in-universe reasons? Maybe it takes time and effort to do it — it's not just a matter of jumping on their head — and they're never given the chance; either Gordon kills them, or he dies and the game loads up an old save.
      • Alternatively, we might just see it in the next game or something. In the first two Halo games, you never see people get turned by the Flood for the same reason, but in Halo 3, you do.
    • I'd say for the same reasons Resident Evil main characters never turn into zombies no matter how many times they get bitten because you suck as a player.
    • Gordon's heroic luck prevents the 'crabs from landing on his head.
    • Plot Armor
      • Gordon has a helmet. Alyx and Barney use an anti-headcrab shampoo.
    • The HEV suit has a forcefield that gives the benefit of a helmet without having to wear a helmet/gas mask/breathing regulator constantly in a science environment.
      • I always assumed it's because Gordon is thrashing around and swinging his Crowbar at them. They probably have to latch onto a corpse, or sneak attack someone and hit them just right to latch on to Zombify them. Also, Gordon doesn't wear a helmet. Both times you get the HEV Suit, there's no helmet to go along with it. That and all but one piece of official art never shows him with it on.
    • Gameplay and Story Segregation. 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 Assassin's Creed 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.
  • How do headcrabs survive? That is, what do they eat? We know Lamarr eats watermelon, but all the other headcrabs don't seem to eat away at their host, and Ravenholm has a metric ton of zombies but no visible food sources. I'm not sure how long before the events of Half-Life 2 Ravenholm is supposed to have been shelled, but it doesn't seem like the zombies, being part human, would live for much longer than three or four days without food. If they fed on their host, there should be a bunch of "used" corpses lying around, but there aren't.
    • They're omnivorous. You can see this with Lamarr attacking birds. Anyway, they could hibernate.
      • Yeah, note that many of the zombies in 2 (especially in Ravenholm) are "dormant" until you do something to wake them up. I'm embarrassed to admit that I found myself ambushed a couple times after examining an area and going, "Nothing here but a bunch of dead zombies." Anyway, if you accept the premise that the headcrabs were likely engineered as a weapon from the beginning (and why not, when Xen has snarks and hornetguns?), it explains a lot of the evolutionary improbabilities behind headcrabs and zombies.
    • They're parasites. They drain the resources from one host and move on to another. Probably live on the blood of the humans they possess, which would by why the blood is drained from the face of normal Zombies if you remove the headcrab.
    • They survive by being really cool to the Valve team. So cool they stick them in all over their Half Life games. So that's how they survive.
      • Thank you for making me chuckle.
    • Concerned may have a solution to the question of how long the Zombies in Ravenholm have been there, but I highly doubt Valve would count it as canon. But in Concerned, Frohman tells Breen about Ravenholm, causing it to be bombed. Then it's shown that Freeman appears only shortly after Frohman returns to City 17. It's probable that the Zombies were fairly new in Ravenholm, with Freeman appearing to be only about a day behind Frohman.
    • Also, in Opposing Force (not quite canon, I know), you can see zombies shoving food directly into their stomachs through their chest cavities. Presumably, the zombies eats stuff, and the nutrients are passed to the headcrab.
  • What's the purpose of the headcrabs'... claws? They jump onto a victim facing forward, so to the human the headcrab is actually facing the other way. You can see them quite clearly on regular zombies and I'm not sure what they're supposed to do... do they help the crab latch onto the victim's face, or are they just there to look scary?
    • Those are just their front-parts. They turn around after zombifying people. Why? I don't know. Maybe to see better?
    • They "zombify" victims by humping them... Take a guess what strange parts near the mouth of the victim is for... *shudder*
  • I may have missed something that prevents me from fully understanding (not to mention I only recently started playing Opposing Force and Blue Shift) but... what the Hell happened to like half of the aliens from the first game? In Half-Life 2, the only creatures from the first game we see again are the Vortigaunts, the Headcrabs (and therefore the zombies), the Barnacles and those weird leech things. Where are the Houndeyes, the Gargantuas, the Bullsquids, the tentacles, the Snarks, the pit drones, the alien grunts, the Chumtoads, the shock troopers, the Ichthyosaurs (that one cameo does not count), the manta rays, etc? And what happened to the gonomes, who are supposed to be the secondary stage of zombification? And how comes none of the headcrabs seems to live long enough to become a Gonarch?
    • I got the feeling that either the Combine just wiped them out or they stayed in Xen. As for the mysterious lack of Gonarch: considering the Combine must breed headcrabs to put in shells and how freakishly good they are at bio-engineering, it's possible they 'fixed' the headcrabs to ensure none grow to that stage, so their numbers are easy to control. The Combine turned off human breeding; I doubt there's much they can't do.
      • There was some concept art of a Gonarch tied into Combine machinery - they may have a few captive ones, which were taken out by the Resistance.
      • It makes sense that they'd have a few Gonarchs around so they have a steady supply of headcrabs, but they wouldn't want them out in the wild.
    • For gameplay variety, probably. Also, if the Combine still control most of those races, they might have taken them off Earth to send them onto the next world. The ones that remain are wild like the Ant Lions. As for the Icthyosaurs, we can't get far enough into the ocean to see them, as those Goddamned Leeches eat anyone who swims more than 5 feet from shore.
      • Ichthyosaurs probably aren't seen very often because they're freakin' huge, and the player never actually gets to swim in areas it'd make sense for them to be. The various rivers in Route Kanal and Water Hazard are too narrow, too shallow, and/or too debris-choked for an Ichthy to survive in, not to mention it's a Resistance path out of the city that they'd probably do their part to keep clean of highly-dangerous aliens (note that you never even see so much as a headcrab through Route Kanal until the Combine starts actively hitting the path with headcrab shells). The waters out past the coast in Highway 17 could have Ichthys, but as above we'd never know because Leeches would pick Gordon's bones clean before he could swim out far enough to find one. Word of God is that Ichthys would have served as Border Patrol in the same manner the leeches do in the released game, both at the coast and in a lake that would have been just outside Ravenholm, but they got replaced by the leeches for some reason (my guess is issues getting them to work right - the sheer size of them caused the devs problems in the first game, and in the leaked beta of 2 they didn't so much patrol the border as you'd hear them coming and then you'd just die), so all that remains is the cameo at the start.
    • I don't think the Gonomes are canon anyways, as they were only seen in Opposing Force.
    • Mostly because they were enemies designed for the GoldSrc engine that just don't fit in the newer game, either because of movement, or gameplay style, or because they actually look pretty bad in high-resolution (you can find pictures of the Source versions of bullsquids and houndeyes quite easily - they look like utter crap because they were originally designed to be consistent with a different, more basic, art style).
      • Black Mesa made them perfect. Those versions just had makers that sucked.
    • I have a personal theory that bullsquids got converted by the Combine into hunters.
    • Word of God is that they still exist, they just aren't around as much as the other aliens.
      • It makes sense. While their acid attack is quite dangerous, the name implies that that is the male of the species. It's quite possible that they actually work as quite good cattle, and if not, they're likely like deer to the human population, but more dangerous.
    • Also, consider how effective the Combine have been at containing antlions (or at least protecting small areas). Perhaps these other species were easier to fend off? (with things like barnacles and the odd headcrab down in the sewers not being considered enough of a threat for them to actively try to wipe them out)
    • Either they simply died out because they couldn't adapt to Earth's environment (Half Life only occurs over the course of a few days, so not enough time for that to happen yet), or yes, the Combine wiped them out. They don't want their slaves running into the maw of a bullsquid after all - they've got work to do! It wouldn't be too hard, we manage to make lots of species go extinct it without even trying - the only reason the animals we've seen are still around are either they're useful (headcrabs), breed too quickly/can be kept at bay by other means (antlions), or simply aren't much of a threat to your average citizen (barnacles, leeches, Ichthyosaurs, crows). Ironically, this is one place where the Combine have actually been quite helpful for humanity.
  • Why are all the headcrab zombies dudes? Do they only couple with men? I mean, it would be pretty horrifying, but...why do none of the headcrab zombies have breasts?
    • Most headcrab zombies don't even have chests. They're eaten into that gaping maw. It stands to reason breasts might have been devoured in the process.
    • Probably because if they were to show breasts they'd have to beef up the age rating. Also it requires more models/voice acting, and Valve are laz- economical with their time.
  • Why are there so many Zombines in Episode 2? In Episode 1, it was said that Combines were getting infected as a result of losing control of City 17. It made sense, because there were lots of Combines in City 17 (even if some Zombines appeared in areas that seemed abandoned for a long time, like in "Lowlife"), and they had been using headcrab shells to combat the recent uprising. In Episode 2, however, we see Zombines which shouldn't have had Combine presence in the first place, like deep in the Victory Mines. Maybe it had been once a Combine outpost, but even then, it clashes with the idea the appearance of Zombines is a sign of the Combine losing control.

Miscellaneous

  • Where in Development is Episode 3? We haven't even seen so much as a trailer yet...heck all I've heard about episode three is that sign language will possibly be incorporated into the game and have seen some concept art...Any sign of episode 3?
    • If Episodes two and three were just too much to program efficiently... why didn't they just make one big game? The idea is that they're supposed to be Episodic...and episodic gameplay isn't supposed to keep you on a cliffhanger for like two years.
    • Both good remarks. Now to answer all:
      • Much like Nintendo, Valve has recently become mortally afraid of overhyping. It is one of the reasons as to why they do not talk more about ep2. For all we know, it may be, as of this writing, three months away from completion. Consider that, according to ep2 commentary, ep3 was already fairly advanced in development when the orange box comes out.
      • Well someone should go tell Valve to go read what people were saying about Duke Nukem Forever and Spore - The more you keep us waiting while you work on crap like DotA 2 and Left 4 Dead, the more we're going to keep thinking "Oh, they're spending so much time in development - it must be good!" And we're going to have high expectations of the game - if it fails to meet them, it's gonna go the way of Duke Nukem Forever and Spore and be mercilessly bashed, like we did with Fable, Black & White, Daikatana....
      • If it was fairly advanced in its development in 2007; then I guess it's safe to say it's in Development Hell.
      • Valve has also admmited some time after ep1 that episodic development sucks. Bad enough that you need to dedicate an entire team for each ep, but the main problem apprently come from the technological advancements that need to be hammered on the fly in the source engine each time you make a new ep. Problem is, once they begin with ep1, they had to go all the way to ep3. In other words It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, but it wasn't and they have been stuck with it for five years now.
      • Huh I didn't know that; I thought they actually had the other episodes done or mostly done by the time Episode one wcame out.
    • Also consider that Valve was rather embarassed when not a single thing in any of the previews for Episode Two were actually in the final game (the Dog vs Strider battle was very different, for example), and could be attempting to avoid a similar thing.
    • A more cynical possible answer: Why work on Half-Life when Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Left 4 Dead are making you fistfuls of money?
      • So you can make more fistfuls of money?
      • ^ There's a finite number of people in the company. Half-Life stuff can't happen if everyone's already busy with something else.
    • I think it's quite likely that they are scrapping the episodic format and making Half Life 3. They seem to have realised that the episodes didn't generate the same buzz and excitement as the full games, and Valve don't seem like the kind of company to religiously stick to their first plans. Anyway, this is exactly how Valve works, and I for one think it's a good thing. Half Life is such a recognised franchise now that they could release any old crap and still make a ton of money. But, unlike most other big name game developers, they don't seem interested in milking cash cows. They have always held to the philosophy that releasing a fantastic game late is better than releasing a mediocre game on time. It's probably got stuck in a kind of positive feedback loop where the longer they take to make it, the better it has to be, and what better surprise could they come up with, that the game that we thought would be a 2 hour conclusion to a trilogy is a 6-7 hour long masterpiece?. I imagine they are going to want to massively update the Source engine. Of course, this is all just conjecture, but if true, then I hope they take as long as they need and make another game that changes the face of gaming, like so many Valve products before.
      • This makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons. Namely, developing a game in episodes like they did SUCKS, and they didn't realize it until after they completed episode 1; additionally, Valve didn't have high expectations for Portal had no idea how well received the Aperture Science setting would be. The Borealis, an Aperture Science vessel that was teleported into the Arctic due to an accident in the 70s, is set to play a HUGE role in the third episode; it even features largely in a number of the scant bits of concept art released. It seems likely that they're now making an effort to flesh out the aperture science side of things as much as they have with Black Mesa before they tie to two settings together in the third game.
    • Valve apparently runs on a very open and fluid design theory whereby people can join whichever projects interest them. Left 4 Dead and TF2 have apparently been attracting everyone's attention at the expense of Episode 3.
      • Which is a shame....because you'd think given that the game industry is thinking that every game needs to have a multiplayer mode to be noticed, that a good Half Life game would prove 'em wrong. (Especially since Valve helped establish that mentality with their multiplayer-only games making them fistfuls of money) Still though, someone needs to tell them that if they don't get someone to whip them into shape and start working on it, it's never going to get done, and the more likely it is that their fans will become jaded and just decide "We're never gonna see episode 3, and if we do, it'll be just like Duke Nukem Forever, making us more interested in games developed by rival companies, or will look at trailers of Half life 2: Episode 3 in 2025 and think, "Hey Is That Still On?"
      • Honestly, I think Episode 3 is a good way to show that there needs to be some direction on what to work on...they've spent how much making hats for Team Fortress 2? They probably learned that they can make junk for Team Fortress 2 and make fistfuls of money, ignoring Half life 3. (And seeing as DotA 2 is going to be about couriers, it's likely they'll do the same thing there too.) I'd hate working for Valve cause I'd probably be the only one not designing hats and other stuff.
    • 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 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 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).
    • Half-Life is Valve's biggest franchise. It put them on the map, made them the gaming company they are today. And the fans WANT more Half-Life. They're not going to scrap it. It's human nature that when we get through with something enjoyable, we want more of what we just had. That's why Hollywood has become a sequel machine. When Half-Life came out, a bunch of folks enjoyed the game. For those who wanted more of the same experience, we got Opposing Force. It was made by Gearbox, not Valve, and was made mostly with resources developed for the main game, so it was relatively quick and easy to bang out. OpFor isn't really a sequel, it's more of a side story. Today, we'd call something like that DLC. They did it again with Blue Shift. Another side story, a little more of Black Mesa to explore, some more bad guys to shoot. Neither really added much to the GoldSource engine beyond maybe the "HD" models for stuff. None really ended on a cliffhanger. Then, Half-Life 2 came out. We weren't really expecting it to until they announced it. More Gordon Freeman, more crowbar swinging action. A bigger, freer world with more realistic physics, vehicles, and so forth. Then, Valve feels the need to follow up the Gordon Freeman story with more of the same, made in-house, pretty much immediately. HL2, Ep 1 and Ep 2 are really all one big game that ends on a cliffhanger. After all, they intended to make Episode 3, which would finish up the City 17/Combine arc and stick Gordon back in his bottle until they figured out what to do with HL3. Now I don't expect to see Ep 3, I expect to see HL3, completed in Valve time as usual. Look at Team Fortress 2. It went what? Ten years in development hell, but when it finally did come out, it was a MAJOR hit.
  • Are we ever going to see Episode 3?
    • When Valve stops being embarrassed about the fact that episodic development has resulted in their entire feature set being overtaken by later games. Episode 2 was okay, but the entire Half Life 2 experience needs a bit of a polish. That's probably why it's taking so long, they need to make it so that the experience doesn't appear dated compared to modern games. Valve's recent games like Left 4 Dead 2 have features that Half Life doesn't. This doesn't necessarily mean that Half-Life is bad, it's just kinda dated.
    • It's only gonna get even more dated the longer they wait. Much longer and this will be the second Duke Nukem Forever.
      • What? Do you think the game is ready, and they're just waiting to release it on some random date? They're developing it.
      • Yeah, and what happened to every other game that was delayed more than five years? It comes out looking dated as hell. Spore looked dated and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. looked dated. There are no exceptions, and it will only get worse the longer they wait. The fact that we've seen practically no press releases for this game, and that Valve goes on to different projects, I get the unsettling feeling of Vapor Ware.
      • Team Fortress 2. And you're crazy if you think that Spore or S.T.A.L.K.E.R were dated on release. No other games had their feature set at the time they were released. It's only been two years since the last episode came out, and what I meant was that they were putting work into making new gameplay tweaks. Hopefully.
      • Also, Half-Life 2 itself! Six years before it came out, and it didn't look dated—quite the opposite, it looked (and still looks) better than a lot of concurrent games.
    • When people at Valve quit deciding to work on stuff like Left 4 Dead, DotA 2, and Team Fortress 2 and realize that there's been a product gathering dust, then we'll see maybe an announcement that it's in development.
  • When Half-Life came out, there was all the talk about it's not a normal shoot-em-up because Gordon is a nerd/scientist, not a soldier (or whatever) that you'd see in a normal shoot-em-up. But he never does anything scientific, apart from the start of the game, and when he throws the switch (to the amusement of Barney) in the start of #2. In fact, the way the games play out, it turns out he is pretty much just your normal computer-game-soldier, and every bit as combat-capable as Adrian Shephard (for example).
    • Except you're not supposed to be a soldier. You're just a random guy called to task.
    • The first game feels like you're a scientist trying to stay alive after a horrible accident.
    • There's also the focus on puzzles/problem solving/use of environment/resourcefulness/ect evident in the game. While valve is in no way the inventor if this idea in an FPS, it still can give the feel that the character you're playing is an intelligent problem solver and isn't just some grunt using his gun to get from point A to point B.
  • Why is it called Half Life? Is it it because Gordon isn't fully in control of his life (i.e. the G-Man is also)?
    • Because it's a catchy name.
    • Because it's something most people will recognize as "science-related".
    • It's a pun. See also "Surface Tension", "Opposing Force", "Blue Shift", and "Entanglement". Valve like puns.
    • If you want to get into specifics, Half-Life refers to Radioactive half-lives, which, as stated, is a physics pun. The lambda symbol used so iconically also refers to radioactive half-lives.
    • See Terminology Title.
    • The lambda symbol looks like an arm holding a crowbar.
  • How is it that Gordon's glasses haven't been lost or ruined by now?
    • Rule of Cool can Hand Wave that. Unless Gordon has enough hair and good enough ears that the glasses stick. However, if you look at the multiplayer model for Gordon in Half-Life 1, he doesn't wear glasses. Maybe the glasses are purely aesthetic and Gordon wears contacts for combat.
  • Just how big IS Black Mesa? Even discounting the expansions, it's pretty big for a 'secret' facility. Is the USA really big enough to hide a facility the size of Black Mesa?
    • You can get a rough idea of the facility's size from this handy composite map someone made by overlaying all of the HL1 levels. It's smaller than you think, even taking into account that you only visit part of it (and that since most of that map overlaps three or four times, you'd need to "unfold" what you do see to around five times the size). While it would be one of the more notable facilities in the world, it's still on the same order as CERN or a reasonably large airbase. The facility itself is also not secret, or at least no more secret than e.g. Area 51.
  • Reflecting on the previous headscratcher: just how powerful was that nuke that destroyed Black Mesa? If one assumes that Black Mesa is comparable in size and deepness underground with the Moscow Metro, Mt. Cheyenne or Mt. Yamantau (a not exactly unreasonable assumption), one needs more than one nuke to get rid of it. All three sites I listed are nuke-proof, and it takes a concentrated bombardment with a number of heavy ICBMs to make sure they are gone. Well, that particular warhead was detonated already underground, but then again, it's only a guarantee of destruction for a part of Black Mesa close to the ground zero. The other parts of the complex will be damaged and partially collapsed, but still in existence. Unless that particular warhead was a 50 Mt Kuzka's Mother, but it doesn't look the part...
    • Maybe there was more than one. All we have is the evidence of Shepard's eyes, and he wasn't everywhere at once. The Black Ops had secured positions all over the facility by that point and could easily have put nukes wherever they wanted.
    • Alternate answer: Black Mesa isn't deep underground to protect it from external attack - it's probably underground to protect the world from resonance cascades and the like. It might well be possible to arrange other kinds of catastrophic overload of the existing technology. Depending on how telefragging does or doesn't work in the HL-verse, the teleporters might be a free source of fusion explosions.
      • Considering the risky nature of the materials being worked on at Black Mesa, and the fact that a Resonance Cascade scenario was something already theorized well before the disaster, it's entirely possible that the facility was built from the ground up with the intent of potentially collapsing it with a nuke if it ever became necessary to bury it.
  • Why are there so many HEV chargers in the Black Mesa facility? The only place where suits seem to be used is in the Anomalous Materials lab and the Lambda Supply Depot, as they're the only places where you can see them, so why on earth do places like the high security storage facility, old underground railway tunnels, and topside motorpool seem lousy with them?
    • I like to think that somebody accidentally added an extra zero to the HEV charger budget and they decided to just go with it. No harm in having extra chargers, right?
    • Tying into the above, and the implication that Xen is the "hazardous environment" the suit is meant to protect its wearer from, it's like a precaution against Resonance Cascade scenarios. In case of Cascade, get as many people as possible into HEV suits, and send them throughout the facility to combat the incursion. They'd need to be able to recharge their suits more-or-less anywhere, so it stands to reason that they'd have HEV recharge stations spread throughout the entire complex.
    • Remember all those toxic-waste pools and chemical hazards here, there and everywhere? Guess what the guys drafted to clean up after a spillage from one of those would've been expected to don, pronto.

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