Headscratchers / Half-Life 2

Headscratchers for Half-Life 2.

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• The Combine seem to lack any air assets besides helicopters and gunships that stay low to the ground and lack enough armor to withstand more than a few RPG hits. The entire plot of the game could've been derailed if the Combine had bothered to keep on hand and maintain even a handful of human jets, as the resistance bases along the coast or the missile base at White Forrest could've easily been hit with an air strike. Instead, the Combine decide on costly ground attacks. Additionally, the Combine seem to lack any kind of artillery or mortar systems besides Headcrab shells and the Suppression Device located on top of the Overwatch Nexus. Again, had they more artillery, the resistance would likely be attritioned severely. In either case, these kinds of weapons would've enabled them to terminate Freeman from a distance without risking any more of their troops. So why do they lack these weapons when they can manufacture them easily, or could've simply retained whatever was left of the existing stockpiles after the Seven Hour War?
• Barney still has security clearance as a member of Civil Protection despite being one of the unofficial leaders of the uprising a week into the conflict. Why wasn't it removed?
• Why do the Combine use the MP7? It has low stopping power, low range, is expensive to mass produce, and is generally viewed as inferior to the P90 (and even that has pretty low stopping power). The only advantage either gun has is low recoil and high armor penetration, moreso on the parts of the MP7 and P90, respectively. Against unarmored but determined opponents, having to arm thousands, or even millions, of soldiers, why not just give them MP5s, or UZIs?
  • The Combine curb-stomped humanity in 7 hours. The worst thing we can possibly do to them is steal their tech one piece at a time and build ourselves up. This is why they do what they can to limit our exposure to their level of technology.
  • Two possible reasons. One, this is some magical variant that's so incredibly cheap to mass produce canceling out all possible negative effects, or two, it's a game and these aren't actually real guns, just fictional weapons that vaguely resemble them. I would've preferred if they made the MP7 an MP5, mostly from a logical perspective but also because it looks cool, but oh well, there's always mods.
  • Combine technology is hardly efficient and just seems to be 'whatever works.' The Advisers probably just looked at a list of guns and said "that one."
    • Though this does bring up the issue of why the Combine didn't recycle plentiful human weaponry and be done with it. It would be much easier to find millions of AK-47 rifles and MP5 submachine guns to equip the remaining twenty percent of humanity, and those weapons are much better performance and reliability wise than MP7s.
    • Surely the answer to all of this is reasonably obvious. The MP7 is a very modern gun to the point of barely being in service at the time of Half-Life 2's release. The most recently designed ANYTHING is always the best, or at least that's how it seems if you don't know much about the objects at hand. It's brand new, made of space age material and costs a fortune, therefore it must be MARVELOUS.
    • Also, keep in mind that the leader of the Combine occupation on earth was Dr. Breen, who, as far as I know, has no military experience outside of working as the Overseer of Black Mesa. He is probably the one who chose the MP7 on the basis of new=better, without any experience with the weapon to demonstrate otherwise.
    • In-game the MP7 has an enormous ammo capacity (especially compared with the Pulse Rifle), and it's most distinctive feature is being able spray bullets in the general direction of your target with little need for aiming. Sounds about perfect for policing City 17, where the main opposition to the Combine's terror regime at the start of the game are a loose network of barely-equipped and unarmored refugees and dissidents. The MP7 is lousy vs. heavily-armored cyborgs or Gordon in his HEV suit, but it would do horrifying damage if fired into a mass of protesting C17 citizens.
    • Keep in mind these are the same guys who thought the SPAS-12 had two barrels. The conversation probably went something like this: "Remember the guns we used in the first game? Lets modernize them!" "Right! The Glock is now a USP Match, which is fancy and new. There is a new MP7, which is two better then the MP5!". It should also be noted that the alpha and betas had different guns - including the AKM (meant to be the main rebel gun), XM29 (main Combine rifle), and the MP5. Short version: It was new and looked more futuristic.
    • The whole ethos of the Combine empire is to, well, combine things into their empire. They repurpose and reuse old things that the places they invade have already made for them. This is why the buildings still look like fairly standard Bulgarian architecture, aside from the Combine additions like the door locks. As the point was made above, the MP7 was the next big thing, and so they armed most of their standard force with "the best" they could find on hand. Notice how the Overwatch Elite only uses OSIPRs? Why would they give all their lower-ranked, lowly humans better tools, especially tools that can dispatch their fellow soldiers in a few shots? They do mind wipe anyone above the Metrocop rank, but it still wouldn't make sense to give them more than they need to stop the few resisting civilians who are never seen wearing actual padding or armor like the Combine. Gordon Freeman is the unexpected exception to this rule, naturally.
• Why in blue blazes there are no more robots like Dog? You'd think the resistance would benefit from obedient mechanical behemoths that can beat friggin' Striders in a fight, and crap, even harm and scare away a Combine Advisor. Alyx made Dog (well, most of it) with spare parts, so he can't be THAT unique. And before somebody mentions that it took her a long time to do so and thus would be unpractical to mass produce, consider that Alyx upgraded Dog all by herself pretty much as a hobby. A team of people assembling the robots would be able to do much quicker, especially since there is already one prototype made they would use as example.
  • Dog is overall a pretty poorly conceived character that makes no sense at all. How did some girl with no real training who's been living in hiding all her life build that thing? Where'd they get the parts? Why is it that a scrap of junk held together by wire and built by two people (one of which has no formal training and the other has a degree in physics) can beat giant bio-mechanical death machines invented by a civilization that's thousands of years ahead of us? How does Dog's body support the weight of an APC when he throws it? What wire is that strong? If it's so easy to build a robot like Dog, why didn't the U.S. Government build something like this pre-black mesa? If it was combine technology that made this possible, why didn't the Combine build one? Are you telling me they with all their minds and technology couldn't figure out how to build a fast, strong Lightning Bruiser robot that can throw tanks, yet two random rebels can? Overall, I think they try to excuse it with rule of cool, but personally I think it would've made more sense if he didn't exist altogether.
  • They had robots like that in Black Mesa, they carried crates. Aperture also had 'lethal military androids', so the tech exists, it's just not too widespread.
  • Eli is a genius, and he and Alyx have been upgrading Dog for at least a decade (not really as a 'hobby', more of a necessity). She probably was taught the skills by her father, and you can learn quick when your life is in danger. Other rebels could have helped too.
  • As for why the Combine didn't build something similar... they don't need to. Why build a robotic super-soldier when you can sic near limitless numbers of cheap, mass-produced cyborg troops on your enemy? They might have done that for a more important world in the Combine empire, but certainly not Earth. It's not worth the time or effort, especially if you have other means.
    • Combine Hunters are their version of Dog. Walks around on more than two legs? Check. Deadly close-combat abilities? Check. Highly resilient? Check.
  • Also, Dog is intelligent. The Combine troops are more or less mindless, that gives him a significant advantage.
  • Dog isn't held together by wire. If it was holding him together, his arms would fall apart at the hinges. The wires may be power cables, they may assist his joints, they might even be decorative- but they're certainly not holding his body together.
  • While Dog seems to be built from scrap, it's likely some of his internal components (especially his computer brain and power source) require parts that can't just be found in scrapyards. That's why robots like him are rare, if any others exist at all.
  • Also, as stated before, Rule of Cool.
  • If you look, Dog's head appears to be made out of a Combine scanner, albeit not the ones seen in use currently. Presumably it was an earlier model that was easier to reprogram and Eli built Dog around that, and the Combine later developed ones that weren't reprogrammable in the same way. Therefore, making any more Dogs isn't practical.
  • Alyx isn't going to make any more Dogs because she's very attached to the one she already built from scrap.
  • I can at least answer the part about throwing tanks: Dog can throw tanks because he has a Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator in his right paw (hand?), which lets him totally nullify the mass and inertia of those tanks during the windup. Without that, he's big and strong, sure, but also very much limited to close-range. So, the Combine forces likely don't make Dogs because their mastery of zero-point energy field manipulation is significantly less advanced than that of the rebels (e.g. despite how useful it would be, Striders don't have gravity guns on their legs), and the Rebels don't have more Dogs because there are only two or three gravity guns in existence (possibly they require exotic matter to produce).
• If Magnusson lacked a suitable delivery platform for his devices, why did he emplace so many throughout the valley? They were apparently in place before Freeman arrived.
  • Freeman's arrival was not a surprise. They knew he was coming, with his gravity gun, and it was clear from the dialogue they knew they'd have a strider problem soon also.
    • One has to wonder what the backup plan was if Gordon didn't turn up. Catapults maybe?
    • Good luck using stationary catapults against a moving target.
    • I think Dog was the backup plan, since he has a gravity gun built into one of his arms.
    • I am now miffed that Dog wasn't the primary plan, given that he'd have had much less trouble with that level than I did.
    • Gordon is the "messiah" and so he gets to be the primary plan. He is the messiah because of one simple ability that he has learned: "Save Game". That is the only reason he's survived so long. Who would you rather have defending the base against striders? A fantastic robot that was built by a kid and has been steadily upgraded by said kid as she grew up, or a messiah that can instantly redo anything and everything if he makes a mistake?
    • Dog would have been a terrible primary plan. On open ground, he's so cumbersome that a strider can easily target him with its main cannon. Which would do terrible things to Dog.
    • Dog? Cumbersome? Is this the same Dog that kills striders with its bare front manipulators? That climbs like an orangutang on crack and hits the ground rolling like an aikido master when thrown? That can outrun anything on foot and some cars? Besides, the striders weren't coming through open ground, there's low hillsides and trees all around.
    • Dog did well against a single Strider (And let's not forget an entire Combine platoon in Half-Life 2), but there's no real telling how he would do against an army of Striders with a huge number of Hunters in support. For all we know, the Hunter might have been able to knock Dog about like a tetherball while the Striders nonchalantly aimed their wang cannons and collapsed Dog into a singularity. Besides, while Dog could have been able to deliver the Strider Busters (Okay, Magnusson Devices. Happy?), detonating them would be a different matter altogether. Yeah, there were Rebels running around, by they wouldn't detonate a Buster (Device) that Freeman deploys, so that largely indicates that they lack the firearms accuracy to do so. Besides, though it's been a while since I've played Ep2, but wasn't Dog held back to do something on base such as help prep the rocket or defend the squishy scientists?
    • Dog would presumably have been deployed with Barney or Alyx (if not entire squads) riding shotgun alongside him. And now that I think about it, why the hell didn't they send Dog out along with Gordon? Gordon can keep the Hunters off Dog's back and detonate the Magnussons, and Dog can take care of running back to the nearest dispenser point to fetch more... not to mention actually throwing them so they friggin' hit the Striders on the first try.
    • perhaps Dog was taking out striders coming in from the front of the base or something?
  • Perhaps some sort of rocket. He was likely going to work on that if he hadn't been interrupted by the Combine attacking.
  • And what I can't understand is the Magnusson Devices to begin with. If Magnusson can design a sticky bomb that teleports, but you need to then punt it with a gravity gun AND THEN pull out a pistol and shoot it to get it to work... certainly wouldn't it have been just easier to upgrade the RPG launcher with a more bad-ass warhead and be done with? (and easier to use as well...)
    • The Magnussons don't teleport on their own - they use the teleport modules that the rebels spent years developing. The Magnussons were probably a recent invention, as in Magnusson came up with the idea a few day before Gordon showed up, and they got the first one working four days ago. They could have done something like use them as rocket warheads, or give them auto-detonators... or they could have used the time to make enough of them to actually be useful.
    • Look at the size of the Magnusson devices, there's no way you'd be able to fit one into the RPG, so making it into a warhead for the RPG is completely out of the question. Magnusson even flat out states that he lacks a suitable delivery platform, and that Gordon's gravity gun is ideal.
  • Why is Gordon's gravity gun so unique? When he first got it in Half-Life 2, it was being used by the rebels to move crates around, for goodness' sake. Why didn't they have like a dozen of them lying around in some storage area on the rocket base? Or, if they just happened not to have one, why didn't Dr. Magnusson (or any of the other numerous Omnidisciplinary Scientists on the base) just put one together out of spare parts and junk over a lunch break, which is how the first one seems to have come into being?
    • The gravity gun is really heavy. It takes Alyx enough effort to hand it over to Gordon that it would definitely be impractical in a battle situation without Gordon's suit.
• If the reproduction suppression field merely suppressed formation of certain proteins within the uterus, and not the sex drive itself, why aren't the citizens enjoying the free birth control? Yeah, some people would only want to do it for kids, but they probably wouldn't be in the majority. And are there no Catholics in the cities? Were they all shot for complaining, or did they move away, or is there no Catholic Church in Half-Life?
  • It could have been like in Children of Men, where nobody enjoyed sex anymore because the whole thing made them so depressed. As for the Catholics, well, there are not many humans at all left and City 17 is so cordoned off I doubt the Combine allow religious practice. And if it helps, City 17 is in a primarily Eastern Orthodox country, even though the only one we meet for sure is Grigori and almost everyone else seems to be North American.
    • To be honest many religious practice were... well practiced regardless of current opinion of government about them. Believe or not but in modern times in countries where prosecuted it sometimes lost members when the religion equality was introduced.
    • That and the Combine probably killed literally everyone who continued to hold any kind of religious service. They don't actually give a damn about humanity in the long run and are literally driving us to extinction. It would make sense if they bulldozed all churches then killed everybody who continued to express any form of religious sentiment.
    • Also, any religious identities the members of Civil Protection and Overwatch may have would be stripped from them when they undergo Memory Replacement.
  • In the opening segment, if you listen to Breen long enough it's described as suppressing "reproductive urges". So, apparently, just to make sure, the Combine didn't just make sure that they couldn't reproduce, but also that they wouldn't have the will to if they felt like trying anyway.
    • Furthermore citizens at the train station you arrive at warn you that the water has been poisoned with some sort of psychoactive chemical. Quite possibly the Combine have spiked the entire water supply with a libido-depressant.
  • I was under the impression that citizens were still shagging, and the Combine had some sort of way of detecting this and the whole "you have to conquer sexual urges to be allowed to reproduce again" meant that the Combine would only shut off the suppression field once they verified that the sex rate had dropped to zero. Plus, if the Nineteen Eighty-Four allegory stand here, if Civil Protection caught you at it I imagine you were in for a fatal beating.
• Why can't Gordon hold enough rocket launcher ammo at once to take down even a single gunship or strider? You only get rockets when you're fighting them, so you'd only get a handful more shots at any other time. It's a pointless restriction that only draws attention to itself.
  • Because this isn't the kind of game that would screw you over that way. The difficulty is getting in the hits without dying. It also keeps players from abusing rockets to kill weaker enemies unless you can think of a creative way of doing it.
  • In Episode 2, you finally have a use for the Rocket Launcher other than in circumstances where ammo is infinite: killing Hunters.
• I realize the 'real' answer is simply "gameplay," but why is the flashlight in a different meter as of Episode 2? I understand that it was done to alleviate the 'running/swimming with the flashlight on' problem, and I think it's a good change, but I don't get why the flashlight was given its own meter instead of the sprint. Wouldn't it make more sense if running was based off of stamina instead of reserve energy?
  • Running is enhanced by the suit, Power Armor you know.
  • Mentioned in the commentary to Ep 2... Word of God says that the player can assume the new battery mechanic is result of the train crash.
  • It might be difficult for Gordon to run by his own strength with a heavy and bulky power armor, which is why it requires its own supply of power to give him that ability.
• So, what is a way that's impossible to be destroyed?
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon. Also, who knows that a barrage of particles yet to be discovered would conform to the laws of physics as we currently understand them?
  • Breen was just running his mouth to try and discourage Gordon. Beyond that, possibly just being annihilated completely with no other effect, and thus violating the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy.
• It just bugs me that the regular gravity gun can throw around 600lb drums of toxic waste as if they were baseballs but can't even knock over civil protection grunt massing no more than 200lb.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation.
    • It's an error in gameplay design, not an inconsistency between gameplay and cutscenes. The player is able to manipulate—within the game environment—very massive objects with ease but can't control lighter enemies until given the super gravity gun.
    • Maybe it doesn't work very well on organic creatures? You can punt headcrabs with the regular gravity gun (it doesn't kill them, though, it just knocks them away), but nothing else. And for some reason you can't even do that much when they're dead.
    • Actually you can kill the headcrabs with the gravity gun if you hit them three times.
    • You can also knock antlions on their backs with the gravity gun. It's a good way to stun them for a few seconds while you sprint off the sand or back towards a thumper.
• Why is the resistance investing so much in speculative R&D projects with no immediate military purpose? The resistance didn't know they needed a space launcher prior to the end of EP 2 but they put the effort into building one anyway and had a launcher ready when they needed it.
  • It was likely a long-term project, brought to the forefront once the opportunity arose. Satellites have been used in the past to prevent portal formation, so presumably the idea was to jam the Combine's portals one day.
    • Actually I think this was made explicit in dialogue in the game. At one point in Episode 2 it's mentioned that the Resistance was planning to use the satellite for a while, presumably to cut the Combine on Earth off from the rest of their empire, but launching was impossible while the Combine was still in near-total control of the situation. As for the other major R&D project, the teleporters that the Resistance seems to have put so much effort into building, it's justified in game dialogue as an effective way to secretly move refugees and rebels around, and has obvious strategic benefits that the Combine doesn't have. Also, the Half-Life universe is somewhat a case of alternate history; it's implied that even before the start of Half-Life 1 there was already lots of work done on developing working teleporters, so they wouldn't seem nearly as speculative to the Half-Life characters as they seem to us.
• Why does the Mk V HEV Suit have an antidote for three different types of neurotoxin, that acts in seconds?
  • It was upgraded by the Resistance, who would have experience with poison headcrabs. I can't recall any other poisonous enemies, so I can't explain the other two types of neurotoxin it can counteract.
  • I'm no expert, but can't people develop resistance to venoms? Like, if the HEV suit just periodically injected you tiny amounts of headcrab neurotoxin and causing a small drop in health, eventually couldn't Gordon/us not have to be terrified of those poisonous bastards?
    • True, but not all venoms work that way, and the process takes a very long time, like several months or years. Gordon has at most worn the suit for... a week in his relative timescale? It's just not long enough for that to work, even if the suit was designed that way, which it probably wouldn't have been.
  • and speaking of the neurotoxin, why does it just lower your health? Isn't neurotoxin supposed to paralyze you and eventually stop your heart and lungs? I'm not even complaining about how it instantly drops your health to 1, just how you should probably get stiff and move jerkily when you get bit.
    • Maybe it barely keeps him from collapsing hence the health drop?
• What's the point of the HEV suit? In #2, Gordon was invulnerable until he put it on!
  • Not true. You can, with frightening ease, be beaten and/or killed by Metro cops when you're not wearing the suit. And this is well before the mandatory "you lose" point. Most of them just don't use guns so it doesn't happen as easily.
  • Try not running from the cops on the rooftop. You can die, all right!
  • Alternatively, while you're still going "ooh, physics engine" and you see the Metrocop start pushing the civilians around at the start of Half-Life 2, try getting all urban warfare and hefting bricks at the cop in righteous indignation. You can, and will, be beaten into a bloody pulp faster than you can say "plot armor".
• One of the things that bugs me is: What happens if you pass through an energy field on something moving, like a train? Would it act like standing on top of an elevator? I don't have Garry's Mod (shame!) so I don't know what would happen. I'd assume you'd die?
  • Do you mean inside a train, or on top of a moving train? If you're inside you'd probably be protected from the field because the field excludes the train from deflection.
  • If it were really possible to get inside one of those trains, what would likely happen (in Garry's Mod, at least) is the train would pass through the field normally up until you reach it, at which point you would be pushed further and further back towards the rear of the train, up until you're stuck between the field and the back of the train. At this point, you'd either die from being crushed, the train would stop in its tracks because you're keeping it in place, or the physics engine would bug out and you'd get through the field without explanation/the train would derail and fly into space.
  • As I've seen, it may *or may not* be the one where you glitch through it, as I've seen in the train part of the Minerva mod.
• What the hell is with those magnusson devices? It takes like 7 shoulder launched Laser Guided Missiles to kill a strider, but for some reason the Magnusson Device can one hit kill them. How powerful is that explosive? We probably would've won if we had those in the seven hour. And how did Magnusson design it so quickly?
  • Magnusson is a genius. He lets you know often enough. As for the how, it's explained when he shows you the device. It draws power from the Strider's own internal reactor. They blow themselves up, basically.
  • IIRC, he never said how long it took him to develop the device, just that it was recently completed. For all we know he could have been working on them since the Combine invasion (~20 years?)
• Dr Kleiner must be using quite an amount of electrical energy for his experiments. Bending space-time is not a child's play, and the thick cables which Freeman plugs in before teleporting Alyx indicate that there are lots of amperes in action. The only possibility to obtain this power is to steal it from the public network. Actually, this is even hinted at, since Kleiner's lab is located directly near an electrical substation. But what bugs me is how is he managing to ensure that the Combine (or whatever Combine-friendly structure operates the network) does not notice the massive loss?
  • Perhaps the Combine are just that unobservant? Alyx herself says "The Combine can be slow to wake, but once they're up you don't want to get in their way." An alternate (and probably more likely) explanation is that they, or specifically Breen, are aware of Kleiner's power use but are letting him get on with it so he can develop teleportation technology that can be acquired later. Breen said he knew of Eli's whereabouts for the last several years, so it's not a great stretch to think he knew about Kleiner too, and was planning on presenting their technological developments to the advisors to show how awesome and useful humanity is, but then Freeman arrived and screwed everything up.
• Why does Eli ship Gordon and Alyx together? Isn't Gordon supposed to be temporally 40 years (really like 24+) old while Alyx is 22 during Half life 2. I know that people are getting ready to "mate" thanks to the suppressor being down now. Does Eli's knowledge of the G-Man make him OK with this?
  • I am not sure what your point is. Gordon is a good guy: we know that; Eli knew that. Why wouldn't he want for his daughter to be with a good, decent man, whom he knows personally?
    • Because Gordon is literally twice her age, at least. That baby photo is his locker is likely Alyx. Think about how creepy that would be if he took the slow route, and she grew up knowing him in person. Of course, since Eli knows he's been in stasis the entire time, that's actually the reason he's likely okay with it, because Gordon and her are actually about the same age, mentally and physically, because he skipped the last twenty years. So Gordon's still basically a fresh college grad and Alyx is both a badass and a genius, judging by the fact that she majorly upgraded Dog, and judging by one line she says to Judith, she's just as good a theoretical physicist as the other four, possibly better than Judith.
  • He knows about the G-Man and was probably able to deduce that Gordon was in stasis, if he didn't know already.
  • Plus if this took place in real life, Gordon would have been able to tell Eli that he was in stasis, plus even without him telling anyone anything, it's obvious that he hasn't aged.
• Alyx did not mind killing Stalkers in the citadel. So why doesn't she use her pistol to put the ones on the train out of their misery?
  • Presumable mercy-killing is different in her mind from killing Stalkers that are directly messing with her. It may just not have occurred to her.
    • She's a mass of conflicting impulses.
    • So she's a normal teenager?
    • Psychologically damaged twenty year old, more like.
  • Related question: Why is Alyx so disturbed after having a Stalker pod land on her ("catching her breath", yes, right...), but apparently has no problems fighting Zombines in the dark?
    • Simple. A zombine, until you shoot off the headcrab, is just a Combine soldier with a headcrab stuck to it, and is generally less psychologically terrifying than a fullblown zombie. The stalker, on the other hand, is concrete, direct evidence of just how messed up the Combine are.
    • They're also very scary-looking and disturbing in a way that Zombines just aren't.
    • The commentary track for that scene says that having Alyx show visible distress after that incident was intended, to "humanize" her and make the player empathize with her character. The 'give Alyx a damn hug you heartless bastard!' comment above is exactly the reaction they were aiming for. In-game, it makes more sense that seeing a stalker march quietly about its business some dozens of feet of away would be less traumatic to Alyx than, oh, almost being crushed to death by one while it writhed and shrieked in horrible agony right up against her face.
• What was Gordon thinking when he climbed into a 'prisoner pod' in the Combine citadel, not just once but twice? Is there any rationalization that doesn't paint him as the dumbest protagonist in videogaming?
  • Well, there was no other choice.
    • In 'reality' he could backtrack and look for a different route, or find a way to climb down or up, or just regroup and battle evil again tomorrow. Even in videogameland, doing nothing would have been smarter than saying "Maybe I'll be saved by a deus ex machina... twice!"
    • "Well, it worked the first time."
    • He did it for the same reason forcefields that are intended as a mere temporary obstacle have some way to switch off or circumvent them, while those that are there merely to allow Combine to come through doorways Gordon is unable to pass through cannot. Of course, this is poor design by Valve; there was no reason to force the player to do that save parading the interior of the Citadel, but that could just as easily have been done with a tram or elevator.
    • Don't forget that he's also on a time limit. The resistance is outside fighting for their lives against bad odds. The longer Gordon takes to shut down the Citadel, the more people die. Maybe he just figured "screw it" and hopped in, figuring he'd figure something out. I mean, he is supposedly brilliant, after all.
    • Well it worked didn't it? Can't criticize something that works. Also, he probably realized that he'd be taken to Breen if he was found, knowing Breen would want to give him a speech and try to convert him to the Combine's side. Which of course, is the perfect setup for Gordon to own him.
    • "What was Gordon thinking when he climbed into the prisoner pod?" What were YOU thinking when YOU climbed into that pod? You're the one who made the conscious decision to climb into it. You can't call Gordon an idiot without being an idiot yourself because YOU ARE GORDON.
    • This is just stupid, but since the question was asked, I was thinking there is obviously no other gameplay choice and I would like the damned game to continue.
    • Since you asked: I saw one conveyor of coffins getting sterilized by lightning, and took that to mean the same would happen to the other conveyor. All I could guess was that I was supposed to somehow bust the conveyors and open a new route. Climbing into the coffin was such a stupid idea that it never occurred to me at all, and I had to look up a hint guide to know what was expected. What I was thinking at the time was "I want another choice" and "I wonder if this shows up on the But Thou Must! page."
• Given that the zombies are oblivious to the very obvious traps he has created and he apparently has plenty of supplies, why is it that Father Grigori hasn't cleared out Ravenholm or at least part of it yet?
  • Grigori is good, but he's no Freeman. Anyway, I get the feeling he HAS cleared out most of Ravenholm—things were just that bad.
• Where the hell is Barney in Episode 2? He's never even mentioned. It's like Valve forgot about him.
  • There really wasn't any place in the plot you could stick him in. He's probably enjoying doing his part for the revival of his species on his train wherever.
    • Barney being around for the White Forest battle would have totally changed the dynamic, given that he's another walking death machine like Gordon - they had to leave him out to preserve the gameplay.
  • Barney getting laid? Yah right.
    • He seems to be the leader of the soldiers until Gordon turns up. I'm sure being a hero of the resistance has...advantages.
  • He isn't in the area. Maybe he's escorting a few hundred refugees and couldn't find enough motor transport, so they have to walk. He'll probably show up at White Forest sometime next week.
    • Alternatively, he's off sacking City 16. While his security guard background was useful for working undercover, Barney's primary role in the resistance seems to be their chief military commander, and he escaped City 17 accompanied by a few hundred rebel soldiers. He didn't know about the sizeable Combine force that also survived, so he figured the biggest threat to White Forest was the nearest Combine city.
    • Or he could be in Asia. This is an entire planet we're talking about, you know. He doesn't have to be on the same continent as Gordon Freeman.
  • Shepherding people away from city 17, and likely still walking to White Forest with the remains of his group after his train was derailed by the citadel exploding.
  • For all we know, he could be dead. I'm only saying it to put it out there. At the start of Episode 2, we saw the state of the train Alyx and Gordon were on, plus the other kind of far-reaching damage the portal storm could do. It's not impossible to consider Barney's train was crushed by a collapsing bridge with everyone aboard being killed, or some other such tragic fate. As it's not brought up it's all up in the air, again just saying since nobody else said it. Barney might just be dead.
    • That sounds like the perfect setup for a "half-life 2: Blue Shift 2" Expansion.
• Why does Dr. Kleiner have an HEV suit all ready for Gordon, and why do they keep referring to it as "your old suit?" I thought that the G-Man let Gordon keep the HEV at the end of the original game.
  • If you assume the Resistance hired Gordon, Kleiner received it from the G-Man and fixed it all up for Gordon.
    • Which means at some point between HL1 and Half-Life 2, G-Man had to strip and redress Gordon. Hmm, I think I've read a fanfic about this.
    • At the point where Gordon gets his HEV, Kleiner says "We better get you out of your Civvies", indicating he's wearing the generic blue outfit everyone else is. G-Man probably wanted to keep Gordon's insertion low-key, which kind of got royally screwed when Gordon decided to run through a building and across the rooftops, but that's Gordon for you.
    • Except that it was not Gordon's decision, but an unfortunate coincidence that prevented Barney from letting Gordon get into City 17 safely. And after the CP discovered that a passenger got off the train but never left the trainyard building, they grew suspicious and started searching for him, leaving Gordon no other choice.
  • The G-Man specifically referred to Gordon as 'the right man in the wrong place' that could make all the difference. Plus, considering what we've seen of him in other games (both earlier and later), it's fair to guess he's playing a game of cosmic chess, moving everything around as he wants to. The G-Man could have 'arranged' for Kleiner to find the suit in a scrapyard somewhere, or for Barney to come across it in a Civil Protection evidence locker or something similar. Everything does seem to be pointing Gordon towards finding Kleiner's lab at the start, doesn't it? The G-Man was no doubt behind it all the entire time, pulling the strings to have things play out just the way he wanted them to.
• Why are the Resistance, Barney included, guys such major Jerk Asses? I mean, seriously, giving me a crowbar to fight baddies with Dark Energy machine guns?! Thank you, helpy helper! The same goes for the boat's gun - why didn't they install it right from the beginning, and why don't they give Gordon something more useful like, say, a bazooka? (Apparently because they like to bring irony to a firefight. Ain't that just great?) Adding insult to injury, the crane operator who not only drops your car in a veritable sea of man-eating locust monsters but shouts at you to get the car upright and clear out afterwards seriously made me wish it was possible to kill civilians.
  • Actually, i think there's a mod that allows that. It's here
  • Having developed a particular fondness for the crowbar during the original HL, I actually cheered and experienced a rush of Duke Nukem "Come get some!" when he was tossed the weapon by Barney.
  • Do you think Barney carries around an entire armory just to give to people? His weapons are Civil Protection standard issue. Police officers today have to file out reports and things when they lose their weaponry, so Barney can't give you a better weapon without blowing his cover. Besides which you are wearing bullet-resistant combat armor and did very well with just a crowbar last time. The airboat wasn't supposed to have the entire army chasing after it, it was an option the Resistance didn't think you'd have to use, and we don't know what they would have used that gun for if you hadn't shown up.
  • You did fine with it in black mesa. Besides, he was in a hurry, and you could always just steal a gun from a metrocop.
  • On the car—the Resistance does help fire on the antlions from their two guns on the dock, but a lot more than usual were attracted by the car (and you) falling onto the sand. There was quite literally nothing they could do. Throw grenades? Fire more bullets? OK, but both would run the risk of injuring Gordon and damaging the car. The best option for Gordon was quite literally to just plain get out of there.
  • I'd also like to point out that that Airboat gun is the most powerful usable weapon in the game. The Rocket Launcher takes four hits to down an APC, for example. The Airboat Gun? About three seconds of concentrated fire. Add that on to the fact that it has infinite ammo and is incredibly accurate, and it's easy to see why they gave it to you instead of the Rocket Launcher you get later in the game.
  • Because nobody thought Gordon would have to use the sneaky back way out of City 17. Remember, they thought he was going to teleport straight to Black Mesa East, where they have actual equipment and a gravity gun. And they didn't even know that CP was looking for him, they just thought he showed up outside instead of Black Mesa East, they had no idea he'd made a detour through Breen's office. Since I highly doubt Kleiner has an armory in his lab, the only gun around would be Barney's and he was already in trouble with CP. So they figured that Gordon Freeman in an HEV suit with a crowbar could pretty easily bludgeon a cop and steal his weapon. Which, you know, is exactly what happened. The airboat being unarmed is because it's what they use to sneak people out of City 17, not to run from the entire police force and an attack helicopter. That helicopter gun they install is probably the biggest thing they have, especially since regularly using high explosives in a tunnel would be a really bad idea, but a machine gun would work pretty okay.
• How was Mossman able to make it to the Arctic in just a matter of hours in Episode One? She and Eli escaped the Citadel at the end of Half-Life 2, and then Magnusson was able to send her and some Resistance fighters to the north long before Gordon and Alyx stabilized the reactor only hours later. They would have had to be unconscious for a long time and nobody acts like it's been a long time since they've been seen.
  • They either used one of their teleporters, or the escape pod they used to get out of the Citadel, or the Vortigaunts did it.
  • Just how long was Gordon unconscious? In that time, Judith got out of the Citadel, got out of the city, got to White Forest, secured transport to the research site, travelled to the research site, performed some preliminary research and almost finished a video report (although the hidden data may imply it was sent at a time even later than it was recorded). It doesn't really add up that Mossman teleported out, since as we know, the Combine hadn't mastered "local" teleportation (the Nova Prospekt teleporter being built by Mossman and destroyed, presumably before the Combine could develop an understanding of it) and they required a massive reactor with a long warm-up time just to send Breen to the Combine Overworld. The Vortigaunts can probably help Mossman on her journey, and yet "A Vortigaunt Did It" doesn't seem quite right. Given that Kleiner assumes Alyx to be 'well out of harm's way', a substantial amount of time must have passed.
    • A human teleporter. You know, the ones they've mastered enough to use as weapons deployment platforms?
    • Word of Laidlaw says it's a few days between Half-Life 2 and Episode 1, although he admits they conveyed that poorly.
  • Do we even know where City 17 is in the world? For all we know, it could be in Russia or Canada and the Artic could be just a hop, skip, and jump away. Easy to make in a train, car, or stolen Combine machinery.
    • Word of God and subtle in-game hints indicate it's somewhere in Eastern Europe, but nothing more specific is really provided.
    • In the first draft of the story Gordon starts off on the Borealis in the Arctic, which is on its way to city 17. Assuming Valve hadn't planned on moving the city since the first draft, we can assume City 17 is very very close to the arctic circle.
  • Going by the game's timeline 12 hours at most passed between the destruction of the teleport core and Gordon waking up at the beginning of Episode 1. It seems a little stretchy that Magnusson would be able to task Mossman with a secret mission and put a team together to accomplish it, and that she could then reach the destination by that time. Episode 3 might shed some light on why the Borealis is so important all of the sudden, but it still seems strange that Mossman could pull a heel face turn, escape the Citadel with Eli, travel to White Forest and then on to the Arctic in less than 24 hours.
  • They climbed into an advisor pod and filled the very young advisor with lead. Or a razor train. Honestly, there are plenty of transport methods inside the citadel and, as per the answer above, plenty of time to use them.
  • Given that the Borealis was an Aperture Science vessel... Perhaps Mossman just learned to "think with portals"? :P
  • I assumed Mossman used a teleport (either in the Citadel or after they got back to a Resistance base) without telling anyone where she was going, since Kleiner and Eli were surprised when Alyx told them about the transmission from her and were shocked to hear about the Borealis. The base and some research staff were probably already there and trying to find the Borealis, Mossman just joined them (the original story for Half-Life 2 included "Kraken Base" in the Arctic with a Helena Mossman stationed there). Mossman also might be an ex-Aperture employee (she lost her bid for employment at Black Mesa to Freeman), which is why she knew about the Borealis and where it might be.
• Assuming The Resistance did hire out Gordon for mercenary work from whatever group the G-Man works for, then why are they so damn coy about it? No one ever say "Thank God we hired you." or "We got a good price for you." or something like that. Listening to any of them, including the leaders, you would think Gordon just randomly dropped out of the sky.
  • The plot is All There in the Manual, of course. The Resistance leaders may only be feigning their mild surprise at Gordon arriving after being dead twenty years. I would have let this go as an excuse to get the action going, but ever since we found out that Eli probably made a deal with the G-Man... well, the implications of that could potentially be enormous, and nobody wants Gordon (or the players) to know about that yet.
  • Obviously, Cubbage was the one who made the deal.
  • How is this a headscratcher at all? You're Gordon. After missing twenty years of your life, you've been dropped in the middle of a Crapsack World. You've been fighting aliens nonstop for days, and have come incredibly close to losing your life on several occasions. You almost definitely will develop PTSD after what you've experienced. Would you be happy to find out that the people whose lives you've been saving are the ones who engineered the whole thing? And do you think they would be happy to be on the receiving end of your wrath? Probably not. Much better, and much smarter, for them to have the untouchable G-Man be the sole target of your rage.
  • I never got the impression that the Resistance did hire Gordon out from the G-Man. What would they even pay him with? And why wait for so long before they tried to get him back? Why did the contract only last until the Citadel exploded? It seems more likely that the G-Man had his own reasons for bringing Gordon back at that specific time, which just happened to also be beneficial for the Resistance. They do seem to be less shocked than you'd think when Gordon returns, but the G-Man could have warned them somehow without working directly for them. Or maybe the Vorts told them - they seem to know about his schemes to an extent.
  • Didn't Kleiner say that they didn't expect him so soon?
    • No, Kleiner said that he would have expected more warning. Maybe a note, or a transmission, saying he was in town and ready to work with/for Kleiner.
  • Even if they did make a deal with the G-Man or his people, it might have just been for help, not specifically for Freeman.
• Why does Eli Vance sound like he's constantly drunk? Especially check out when Gordon first gets to Black Mesa East. In fact, along with his stubble and generally ratty clothes, give him a whiskey bottle and a newspaper blanket and he'd probably look more at home sleeping on a park bench than working in a lab.
  • Hilariously enough, his character design and face was actually modeled after a genuine hobo. The Valve guys went out, found a guy holding up a sign asking for work, and brought him in. As for his voice, there could be any number of reasons - Eli's getting pretty old, for one. He talks a little bit like my grandfather used to. What, do you expect every person everywhere all the time to have absolutely perfect standard diction?
  • His voice Actor is the same as Rafiki from The Lion King (1994). It's possible that it's his natural voice. Also, look at everyone else in the games, duct taped clothing abound.
  • Also keep in mind that he was originally going to be Eli Maxwell, who basically was a hobo who holed up in a scrapyard doing science-y stuff for the resistance. The hobo-ness may simply have remained after that was discarded in favor of merging him with Captain Vance.
  • He is drunk. It's what keeps him sane.
• Mossman. Let's look at the facts: the human race is facing an alien occupation whose entire purpose seems to be to strip the planet bare while waging a campaign of gradual genocide against those humans who choose not to become Combine cannon fodder. In such circumstances, Mossman sells out La Résistance, for apparently no reason larger than her 'feelings' for Eli Vance and hope that the Combine will spare him if he can be talked into working for them...demonstrated by the fact that she makes a Heel–Face Turn when it becomes clear Breen won't be protecting him. I'm sorry, but no matter how fortuitously timed her final decision to oppose the Combine was, there is no way any sane resistance outfit would be sending her on any important missions to the arctic afterwards. More likely, she would be taken out and summarily shot once they got to White Forest, and frankly, given that she sold out her entire species over a crush, it would be a lot better than she deserves.
  • I was under the impression that Mossman was playing the long-con the whole time. Everyone but Eli was left out of the loop, so that there was minimum chance of exposure.
    • I considered the idea that she was The Mole, but the evidence seems to point in the other direction. What is to be gained from teleporting the head of the resistance and herself right into Breen's clutches in an enormous, nigh impenetrable citadel, while leaving Gordon and Alyx behind in Nova Prospekt with the hope that they'll be able to teleport to safety on their own afterwards? Whatever long-term scheme Eli and Mossman may have had cooked up, wouldn't having Alyx and Gordon pointing very large guns at her in the middle of a Combine prison after seeing evidence she's a traitor be a better time to fess up about The Plan? If she's actually always been in league with the Resistance, why does she only show it after Breen makes it clear he has no intention of bargaining with the Combine for Eli Vance's life, and in a circumstance when Breen ends up only being vulnerable by the sheer improbable luck of the Gravity Gun being turned into a godlike weapon of pain and death? It's possible she never turned traitor and had a plan to help her original allies but to me the game seems to imply heavily that it was a genuine Heel–Face Turn.
    • I'm also convinced it was a long con - one that Breen messed up when he captured Eli Vance. What the precise aim was I'm not sure, since the perspective is limited to Gordon's point of view. It might have been gaining Breen's trust and getting into the Citadel so it could be sabotaged covertly, which would explain her teleporting there with Eli - what she didn't expect was Gordon Freeman suddenly appearing again, the Resistance going "WHOO REVOLUTION" once Gord and Alyx blew up Nova Prospekt, or Breen deciding to send the Vances on a 'permanent offworld assignment', which prompted her deciding to screw the plan and openly rebel. I think, if anything, leaving Gordon and Alyx behind was a pragmatic decision - they don't know about the plan and could mess it up more, their combined combat prowess means they're likely to survive, she does warn them the 'porter has a long warm-up time, she knew Kleiner had his own teleport running, and she didn't sabotage it and trap them there, which I'm sure she could and would have if she really wanted them dead. It was harsh, but this is war against extinction - what are two lives against the human race? And Alyx did keep cutting her off whenever she made an attempt at explaining, which could have contributed to the decision to leave them behind. Do note that this all resulted in City 17 getting obliterated, Breen's apparent death and the main Combine forces cut off from Earth, a major, major victory and the likely deciding factor in her continued survival. If all of that was in the plan, and Eli was in on it, then she's not a traitor, she's an incredibly smart and valuable agent of the Resistance, and they'll send her to do any goddamn thing - and the fact that they did and Eli obviously still trusts and admires her enormously to me says that was case. If it was genuine Heel–Face Turn it would have played differently. Besides, do you really get the impression that this resistance is the kind that executes people? They're nowhere near as ruthless as the Combine, which is partly why their fight is so hopeless - they need to try and keep as many people alive as possible, while the Combine don't themselves give a piss... Phew. This is, of course, just my interpretation.
    • Consider the implications of this interpretation, though. Eli Vance was captured in a surprise attack on Black Mesa East, in which you see a number of resistance members stationed. In order to play out their long con that they had told nobody about, not even Alyx and Gordon, Eli Vance and Judith Mossman would have had to purposefully allow such an attack to take place without giving prior notice. Very likely resulting in the deaths or Fates Worse Than Death of any number of resistance members. You can see them scrambling around behind the rubble when Alyx tells you to go through Ravenholm. To my eye, that's actually much more ruthless and cold-blooded than a simple execution of a proven traitor.
    • Ah, but the thing is that they didn't know that attack on Black Mesa East was going to happen, because way up there I said that Breen messed it up by ordering it, remember? They didn't let anything; Mossman chews Breen out for it. Ostensibly because it meant that the Combine lost Gordon: "If you'd just waited for my signal..." but it's possible that at some time in the future, if Gordon hadn't turned up, Mossman would have contacted Breen and said, "Here, take this (mostly evacuated) rebel base and pick up me and Eli (with minimum loss of rebel life)," or something; I don't know, I'm only guessing. However, Gordon and Breen, by just popping up to spark a revolution and by attacking the Black Mesa East to get Gordon, respectively, threw a spanner in the works - which, yes, meant that people died, but that wasn't part of the plan. Everything that came after that was improvisation. We do know that Eli Vance was capable of keeping things from his daughter, because he made a deal with the G-Man for her, and seemed to be aware that Gordon knew the G-Man as well.
  • I don't understand why everyone considers the long-con theory to be so far-fetched, or why they are assuming that Eli had to be in on it. My interpretation: Judith's plan all along was to get Gordon inside the Citadel so she would have the backing she needed to oppose Breen ("We're doing what I could never do alone. We're stopping you"). Her plan went awry when the Combine attacked before her signal, and captured Eli instead of Gordon. But this actually worked to her advantage, as in the end this brought not only Gordon but Alyx into the Citadel. That's why she teleported with Eli into the Citadel — it was the only way she could get Gordon and Alyx into the Citadel as well ("I'm sorry, Alyx. It's the only way."). When they were all perfectly placed, she betrayed Breen. As for why she didn't teleport Alyx and Gordon into the Citadel with her at Nova Prospekt, well if you were paying attention when Gordon and Alyx were standing in it, there's barely even enough room for two people.
• Why does everybody in that world treat Gordon like he's a savior and/or a special marine? Okay, by Episode 2, he's more or less proved himself, but in the very beginning of regular Half-Life 2, everybody is worshipping the ground he walks on. Did they somehow forget that he's just a scientist?
  • Who saved the world all by himself? Who has an entire alien race that he freed that worships the ground that he walks on? Did you even play Half-Life?
    • Expanding on that, we're talking about the man who singlehandedly not just survived the Black Mesa incident, but took out countless alien invaders (notably including the Vortigaunts) and similarly numerous human armed forces sent to kill him, is the sole reason that ANY of the Lambda team survived to tell the tale, went into an alternate dimension (Xen), fought his way to and killed the apparent leader of that dimension (Nihilanth), and is subsequently credited by the Vortigaunts (now invaluable allies for the resistance) as the reason for their freedom. By all accounts, the Vorts and those who knew him at Black Mesa should by all accounts have been telling tales about Freeman being an unstoppable force.
    • Hold on a second; thinking about that, why is Gordon Freeman considered to be the person who "saved the world all by himself" instead of the guy who caused the world to become so messed up in the first place? Wouldn't the US Government (who I assume sent the soldiers into Black Mesa) be able to promote that opinion? And why wouldn't they, with a bunch of dead soldiers on their hands? All I can assume is that once the Vortigaunts were living side-by-side with humanity, they spread the word of Freeman's killing of Nihilanth.
    • That's the most likely explanation. The HECU insertion into Black Mesa was a covert op - even as their soldiers were dropping like flies in the face of both Gordon and the aliens, the government wouldn't have said anything about it unless they absolutely had to. And any and all chance of that happening dried up when the Combine invaded. The Vortigaunts, meanwhile, were freed from the Nihilanth's control when Gordon killed it (the fact that they had the choice to ally with humanity at all is a result of that) and the portal storms caused by the resonance cascade are presumably why there's so many of them on Earth. Hence, most people's knowledge of what happened at Black Mesa probably came from the Vortigaunts, who didn't care about a bunch of nameless grunts coming in and dying like animals when they could instead talk about the man who freed them.
  • I didn't see much ground worshipping at the beginning of Half-Life 2, actually. Kleiner and Co. are all pleased to see him sure, but they know him personally and as already said they probably got info about his exploits from the Vorts. The regular citizens, however, don't even know who he is to begin with (the guy who gets swarmed by Manhacks in particular assumes you're just a regular old nobody and that the "poor bastard" the Combine are looking for is essentially a dead man walking), and only start to call him by name after they've received radio transmissions from Alyx. By the time they start revering him he's already massacred a ton of Civil Protection officers and other Combine troops, so their reverence makes sense.
    • It's safe to assume that most members of the Resistance have never met Gordon in person and, outside of those who frequently work with the science team, most probably haven't seen pictures of him either. If all you'd heard of Gordon Freeman were stories, you wouldn't necessarily realize who he is until word started to spread that he's the guy wearing Kleiner's upgraded HEV suit.
  • My take was, it was all due to the Vortigaunts. As we found out from supplementary materials (as well as the Black Mesa remake showing it in detail), the Vortigaunts in the first game were slaves, forced into acts of violence against their will. Then the Free Man appeared and killed their master, freeing them from their shackles. Yes, Earth was lost in the process, but the Vortigaunts still hold Freeman in high regard for what he did for them. Plus their unique way of speaking (referring to him as 'the Free Man') and their penchant for dramatic flair ('the Combine's reckoning has come' basically meaning 'good to see you'), it's safe to assume they basically spread rumours of Gordon's legendary prowess simply by telling the story of what happened, and over time the humans began to continue the legacy of 'the Free Man'
• Why does it seem that the developers feel showing Gordan Freeman is so taboo? Not only is is appearance pretty common knowledge, he also appears on one of the boxes of the game. Yet it still feels like they actually went out of their way to prevent him from ever being shown. No reflections, no cut scenes, nothing more than an old photograph of him with his previous workers.
  • It'd take more work to put those in than leaving them out.
  • It also adds to the feeling of immersion. If you could see Gordon's face in a mirror or a pool of water, you'd immediately disassociate yourself with actualy being Gordon Freeman. In this way, you ARE Gordon Freeman. Him having an actual image is purely for marketing purposes. (That is, so you actually recognize him when you see him.)
  • Look into a reflective pool of water in any other Source-engine game - Team Fortress 2, for instance - and you won't see your own reflection. You'll see everything else's, but not your own. The engine, when these games were developed and possibly even now, can't draw your world model AND your view model at once.
    • And even if it could, Gordon doesn't have a world model on the Source engine. Every video and screenshot-comic that has him actually show up has had to make or find a fan-made model.
• Why does Alyx say her dad is Odessa Cubbage in Episode 1? It occurs right after Gordon goes through a vent crawling-trip mine avoiding puzzle series involving a busted elevator. When Gordon and Alyx get to a room full of Resistance members, someone asks if she's Kleiner's daughter but she says Cubbage is her dad. Maybe I missed something, but this strikes me as really confusing.
  • Um, she was being sarcastic.
  • Actually, that was probably a callback to early in the development cycle- Alyx was originally intended to be the daughter of "Captain Vance", who was one of the heads of the resistance, and actually another double agent for the resistance.
• Just WHAT exactly is Dr. Kleiner thinking, keeping Lamarr around? What if a wild headcrab got in, he mistook it for Lamarr, and tried to feed it melon or present his head for perching?
  • Kleiner has been dodging headcrabs for twenty years. Besides, you don't think he can tell the difference between his pet and other headcrabs?
    • I always thought the he should at least paint her some bright color, or put glittery sequins on her, if only so other people know she's not a threat.
    • Are you kidding me? Disco Zombies, how could anyone not see that as a threat?
    • Also, why is Lamarr covered in blood? Wouldn't Kleiner think to clean her up a bit, particularly considering that as a pet she wouldn't have been able to kill anything since he adopted her? It would be like your pet dog having blood all in and around its mouth!
    • It's not blood, it's watermelon juice. As for why he doesn't clean her - he's got to catch her first, and he's probably to busy working on teleport tech to worry about that.
• During the trip through Nova Prospekt, Alyx uses a Combine computer to look for her father. During which, we get to see several other prisoners trapped inside those pods. Now, why did Alyx not attempt to rescue any of the other prisoners? There were probably enough prisoners to form a small army, and they could've easily overwhelmed the combine forces due to the antlion infestation. Alyx could've easily released said prisoners, ensured they got their hands on some weapons, and evacuated them via razor trains. Instead, she decides to only rescue Eli. Why?
  • Note that Alyx, at no point, was actually capable of releasing him. She could move his pod, but that was it. It would be a tedious and dangerous process to reroute and unlock every pod, and she didn't have time for that.
  • Also, she was taking an incredible risk just getting her father out of there. It's quite likely the Combine kept a central log on the network of all prisoner movement. Any significant activity would be noticed quickly. Really, their only chance to get Eli out was to move quickly and hope their actions would go unnoticed long enough to escape.
• Why was Barney the rebel field commander at the battle of City 17? I know that no one, no matter how stupid, could screw this fight up (basically the entire population of the city was armed and rising against the combine), but still, he is a security guard, aren't there any former soldiers left after the seven hour war? Even a corporal or a seargant would make a better commander than a security guard (one who killed dozens of marines and a tank in "Blue Shift", but still just a security guard.)
  • Odessa Cubbage was also just a security guard. The only difference between him and Barney is that Barney actually worked at Black Mesa and is assumed to know aliens better then someone that was trained in the military.
  • Correction, Barney was just a security guard, and one that have proven himself during Blue Shift as a highly resourceful and capable combatant. Some fifteen years have passed since then, during which Barney was a probably a core member of the Resistance. Plus, I imagine the combine would have killed\stalkerified most military personnel that survived the Seven Hour War to prevent trained personnel from potentially rebelling against them.
  • The Combine turned most of the soldiers they captured during the Seven Hour War into Overwatch Soldiers.
  • Just thought of another possible answer this morning—Barney may have just been a security guard, but he was a security guard at a super-duper top secret high security facility, where they have PhDs doing grunt work (pushing samples into dangerous laser beams sounds like the perfect job for a particularly annoying intern ;)). I'm willing to bet they hired people with prior military experience, as many high security places actually do. So there's a good chance Barney actually does have military experience (even if he wasn't an officer).
  • You're asking why Barney, a security guard, is the rebel field commander, but not why Gordon Freeman, a frickin' theoretical physicist, is tasked with taking down the Combine?
• It bugs me that I had to go through Ravenholm at all. It was one of the most dangerous places in the game, and Eli had specifically said not to go there. I know the roof collapsed, but I had Dog with me! Dog has shown multiple times in the series just how good he is at digging through rubble. Even if he couldn't break through the rubble, perhaps that would have risked a larger cave in, dog circled round and found another way. But no, don't stick with the agile, strong robot that can take out a strider and throw a car, go by yourself to a zombie and death trap filled town that you were specifically told not to go through.
  • Dangerous, yes, but also very fun. Ravenholm exists for gravity gun carnage. In-story, Dog was only told to get you there. He had to guard Alyx, which is his mission in life.
  • It bugged me more that there was another door back there, with stairs going up, logically to either the rest of the base or the surface. So Gordon could still access another area (granted, the door was locked, but otherwise alyx could have taken the long route to unlock it, or dog could have ripped it out the hinges.)
• Griggs and Sheckley in Episode 2 are great characters but story-wise what are they doing in those mines? They had a pretty impressive set-up down there (turrets, hopper mines, antlion detectors, huge supplies of ammo) but from a story perspective there's nothing down there worth protecting and they don't seem to be there to destroy the antlion hive so... why?
  • My guess is a deliberate Contrived Coincidence set up by the G-Man before actually letting Gordon know he's still around. Kind of hard to send Eli a message through his own daughter if she doesn't live through the hunter attack, after all.
  • They might be running a base from which the Vortigaunts can go out and extract pheropods/extract/whatever other useful substance the antlions produce for the rebels.
  • Considering there's a larger rebel base a short walk from the mine entrance, it's likely they were sent to secure the site with others (we find zombies and corpses as well as lots of weapons in some of the formerly inhabited areas) so that the rebellion could get a supply of the various types of Antlion produce, which is why the Vorts were involved; Antlion husbandry is their ancestral practice. As for what they were trying to farm, pheropods are a valuable weapon and allow travel in Antlion territory without risk of attack, the bus themselves are likely edible, grubs are used to make medkits and the extract is clearly capable of downright supernatural things, that's probably why the Combine also had troops and thumpers in the mine.
• When Barney gives you the crowbar at the end of "A Red Letter Day", he says, "I think you dropped this back at Black Mesa". But since G-Man confiscated all of Gordon's weapons at the end of Half-Life, if Barney found the crowbar at Black Mesa then that means G-Man deposited it there, which seems strange. Not to mention that Barney escaped from Black Mesa quite some time before Gordon went to Xen, and likely did not go back. Plus Black Mesa exploded. And even if we assume that Barney is just magical and somehow (and for some unknown reason) went back to Black Mesa, navigated through enemies and obstacles, happened upon Gordon's crowbar, and left safely before the place exploded... How did he know it was Gordon's crowbar? Gordon found it in a wall-mounted case, so there were probably others to be found in the facility. Of course if we assume the Resistance are the ones who employed the G-Man, my question is moot (obviously G-Man gave it to him to give to Gordon!), but I don't particularly like that theory to begin with, so I'm searching for an alternative explanation.
  • He's trying to lighten the mood, maybe? It's supposed to be a witty remark as a farewell to his friend. I don't think it's something we need to read too much into.
    • I read into everything. I don't think it's too much to ask that the character dialogue at least make sense in the context of the story. But I like the "witty remark" explanation. I'll bet even Gordon wouldn't have caught the discrepancy right away anyway. I can picture him riding along in the airboat, and then suddenly going, "Hey, wait a minute." And then he probably would have concluded that it was just a witty remark.
    • Actually, Barney may have picked up the original crowbar. At the end of blue shift, he was briefly present at the time freeman was captured, disarmed and stuffed in a trash compactor. That would bring Barney's total crowbar count to three (one used by himself, one from freeman and one used by the scientist at the very end), so Gordon may just get a new one in episode three/half-life 3
  • He's making a joke. He heard about Gordon's affinity for crowbar use back at Black Mesa, so he references that while giving him another one to use in a similar fashion. I don't think he's saying that it's literally the actual crowbar Gordon was using (there were two, anyway - the HECU confiscated the first one).
• At the end of "Entanglement", just before "Anticitizen One", how does the teleport in Dr. Kleiner's lab seemingly turn itself on when they show up a week later? Surely he didn't leave it running the whole time. Doesn't the teleport need to be prepared to receive someone?
  • Maybe the Nova Prospekt teleport still worked sort of like every other Combine teleport - it didn't need Kleiner's one active to be able to teleport to it, it was just a convenient set of coordinates to put in so they didn't end up with half their bodies merged with one of Kleiner's walls or something. If that is the case, then the real question would be why it took them a week in realtime to make the trip.
    • Probably something to do with the Nova Prospekt teleport exploding right after sending them.
• Why didn't Dr. Kleiner test the "resurrected teleport" before sending Alyx to Black Mesa East? Something very awful could have happened to her if something had gone wrong as it apparently did with the cat. I know they were short on time, but if you're a caring and science-minded person who isn't working at Black Mesa or Aperture Science, time constraints don't take priority over safety, especially when you're dealing with technology that distorts spacetime and could therefore kill or permanently disfigure someone in an instant. It would have taken all of two minutes to test the teleport on a watermelon or something — in fact, if they had been in a constant cycle of modifying and then testing the teleport, they ought to have had a cage of rats to test on or something.
  • Maybe they had done some preliminary testing, but obviously your first human test is going to be a lot different.
    • That was what I had thought too, but it certainly didn't sound like they'd tested it recently. And even if they had, we're talking about technology that could kill someone horribly if it went even a little bit wrong. You'd think they'd find another cat, at least, and test it right before sending Alyx, just to make absolutely certain. The more complex the organism they can find to test, the better. What's funny is that Lamarr would be ideal for this purpose, but of course Kleiner would never allow anyone to test the teleport on her. Ohhhh no, not his Lamarr. Oh, but Alyx, you go right on ahead, and don't you worry about that cat, we have made major strides since then. Major strides.
  • There is the mini teleport near the entrance. Presumably they'd done enough testing with that, that they were satisfied the larger one would be safe enough (and it was, or would have been if Hedy hadn't jumped out and messed with the wiring). Also, Kleiner is an ex-Black Mesa employee, so perhaps he continues the progress-over-safety philosophy they had there.
• So Dr. Breen is the head of Black Mesa. How exactly does he become the Administrator of Earth? Isn't it a bit too much of coincidence that the protagonist's former boss and the head of the organization that accidentally causes the Combine invasion becomes the leader of Earth? He's just a leader of scientist organization, why did they make him Administrator of Earth?
  • I can't argue against the coincidence of yet another Black Mesa employee just so happening to be the one who got such an important position, but how he got it is explained in-game if you look at a newspaper clipping in Eli's lab about the Seven-Hour War - Breen was the one who negotiated Earth's surrender to the Combine before they could wipe us out entirely, and they rewarded him with power.
  • It's also implied that Doctor Breen had contact with the Combine prior to the Black Mesa incident, and deliberately engineered the catastrophe in order to facilitate their invasion.
• Why did they change the G-Man's eye color in Half-Life 2? Is it just due to better graphics? Also does anyone in real life have eyes that exact shade of green? I've never met anyone.
  • I'm assuming better graphics are the reason for the color change, yeah. Also, I always thought his eyes in 2 were a mix of blue and yellow that, combined with the unnatural glow they're given in some cutscenes, make them look green from a distance - mine are pretty similar, though they're primarily blue with small yellow spots here and there, rather than the G-Man's irises entirely shifting colors from the outside to the inside.
  • G-man is clearly not a normal human. Quite possibly he's not human at all, and the image we see is just A Form You Are Comfortable With. So it's not surprising if his eyes change color for no reason, or if they have a color that no real-life human has ever had.
• Why are there Headcrabs running wild in the basement of Nova Prospekt?
  • They can't get into the main section of Nova Prospekt, they can serve as an additional layer of security, and there is no reason for the Combine to clear them out.
  • I haven't played Episodes 1 or 2 yet, but in Half Life 2, Nova Prospekt wasn't exactly under complete Combine control. There were antlions running around everywhere, who says some headcrab shells couldn't have been set off, accidentally or otherwise? That brings up the question of why there would be headcrab shells in Nova Prospekt, but hey.
    • There were antlions everywhere because YOU let them in, prior to that it was just headcrabs, which are like oversized and deadly cockroaches more than anything, they'll always turn up in dark and run down places; the Combine, being lazy, just go "eh set up a couple sentries in the area, that'll do"
    • The game quite clearly established that the Combine didn't care much for the old Nova Prospekt building (the one you visit first): it's in visible disrepair, and most of the Combine business (including prisoner pods) is located in the new complex, built by the Combine, which you explore in "Entanglement".
• As was pointed out in an episode of Concerned, why do the Combine sometimes load Headcrab shells with the fast and poison varieties, creating zombies that are considerably more dangerous to Combine soldiers than the regular kind?
  • Umm, for the same reason they load the shells with headcrabs at all? Because it's a weapon. Fast zombies may be harder for combine, but they're also harder for rebels, and there's no reason they can't clean up all zombie infestations they create from their enemies with a strider or a gunship, which are pretty safe from any type of zombie. They do know where they shoot their own bombs, after all. I'm really more concerned with the fact that they stick headcrabs in the bombs at all—it kinda makes sense in the city environment since it won't damage the place like explosives, but if Ravenholm was entirely rebel (or close enough to be the same thing to them) and they wanted to kill the entire town anyways (which they did), and weren't planning on using it afterwards (which they didn't), wouldn't it be faster to nuke it, or at least use real explosives? I suppose zombies could eventually finish off people in bomb shelters though, or pin them down until they starve...
    • The combine are more concerned with assimilation than destruction - hence the name. It's clear from other parts of the game that they're steadily "eating" their way over the planet, from the drained oceans and the slowly advancing tooth walls. If they can open giant portals and build giant citadels, surely they'd just pave the planet if they really wanted to.
    • This editor sees the headcrab shells as primarily a terror weapon. Fiery death is one thing, but the ability to cause a full-blown zombie plague in minutes is a pretty terrifying idea. Conventional weapons are undoubtedly more efficient than rounding up enough headcrabs to infest an entire village, so I figure that the shells are designed to scare the populace into line.
    • Ravenholm was also quite close to City 17. Nuking it or using other large explosives would risk damaging their assets. Headcrab cannisters are pretty low-risk by comparison.
  • You have to keep in mind that mass-zombification of an area doesn't simply clear an area of rebels, it also renders that whole area a no-entry zone. Had the Combine burned Ravenholm to the ground, there would still be survivors and the Rebels could still use the mine shafts and ruins in a variety of ways. As it stands, Ravenholm is full of zombies, impossible to break through without skills, luck or heavy firepower. If the Rebels try retaking Ravenholm, it's gonna cost them troops. If the Rebels forget Ravenholm, they will be denied valuable underground access routes. It's a win-win for the Combine.
    • But you're forgetting that Ravenholm is established as a former mining town, and that the Combine are ultimately on Earth to exploit its resources. Assuming that Ravenholm was used to mine coal or any other flammable mineral, if you set fire to it in an attempt to decrease resistance you'd risk creating an out-of-control underground fire that would burn through valuable resources. This is another reason why Headcrabs make sense.
  • A beta leak showed textures of a Gonarch (big testicle monster which birthed headcrabs in HL1) sac wired to machinery, so apparently they don't have to worry about catching headcrabs. Though the comical image of Combine soldier with net attempting to catch headcrabs is nice. I figure the Combine do this just to make the outlands less accessible to the rebels and other outcasts, so citizens have to stay in the cities to survive. Besides, if you headcrab a rebel outpost, then other rebels that show up have to fight against the zombies to retake it. Just an explosive wouldn't have the same effect. This isn't territorial control. They aren't trying to take rebel outposts for their own use, they're trying to make rebel strongholds uninhabitable. They control the planet already. You have your own occupation force if you headcrab shell an area, there is no need to even send in troops to hold it if you have to. Of course, now it occurs to me that they could just raze every habitable abode outside the cities, but eh, it's implied the Combine let the Resistance survive for their own ends (for example, to make the teleports).
  • It's also worth noting that not all aliens, including Headcrabs, are under Combine dominion. The portal storms after Black Mesa occurred frequently for several years (one is seen in Episode Two) and they teleport more aliens in from other dimensions/universes/etc. The Headcrabs can in some cases be just as much of a nuisance for the Combine than the Rebels, though it's also implied that the transhuman arm of the Combine is pretty damn expendable and the Advisors (or whoever else runs the show) don't care too much if they get wiped out as well, so long as they retain enough control of the planet to ensure they have a stable gateway to it and can send reinforcements as needed.
  • It's also also worth noting that at the beginning of Episode 1, you encounter the "Zombine" (Combine zombies). Alyx remarks that the Combine probably had some sort of suppression field that kept the headcrabs from attacking them, but with the fall of the Citadel, they were fair game.
    • I don't recall her saying that. She did say that they had some way of keeping Antlions out of City 17, but made no mention about headcrabs. The Combine soldiers didn't really have any reason to go into infested areas before Episode 1 (and if they did they managed to avoid being caught off guard), which is probably why we didn't see any until then.
  • Another possibility (combining with a headscratcher above)- 'Combine-ifying' humanity is proving hard. Turning them all into zombies and using those as shock troops would be easy. The only downside is that the zombies can't reproduce (I pray to God.) So, lets try it a little and see which works out better.
  • Headcrabs - even the faster varieties - probably don't pose any threat to Overwatch troops in normal circumstances. When they decide they need to clear out an infestation, they can always send in APCs, drone turrets, dudes in heavy riot armour, slow-moving shield walls, etc., and work on their own time, taking great care and using a lot of heavy protective gear (essentially meaning that headcrabs are only really a useful weapon because the Resistance don't have any of that stuff, and can never afford to work slowly or en masse). In the game we don't see normal circumstances, we see a rebellion in progress requiring rapid responses and reaction to human threats, with unprepared soldiers having to run through dangerous and destabilised areas on their way to somewhere else, and hope for the best.
  • As mentioned before, the Combine's MO is assimilation, and that phrase perfectly explains why they'd bother with headcrabs. The Combine don't just strip their conquests of resources or technology, they take the ecosystem itself too, weaponizing whatever's useful and leaving the rest to go extinct. In their current form as an invasive species, headcrabs work well enough as a biological weapon. In the future they might take an interest in turning them into synths for less indiscriminate facehugging, but for now their R&D on Earth is focused on putting humans through this process instead.
• Minor niggle, while doing an achievement sweep of Half-Life 2: why are there four Lambda Locations in Nova Prospekt? One of which is pretty far out of bounds for a resistance member (during "Entanglement"), but the other three aren't really in Resistance-friendly locations either.
  • Perhaps there was a resistance base in Nova Prospekt before the Combine converted it to their needs? Or maybe some citizens tried to infiltrate it and left caches before they got captured/killed.
• How did the Combine not notice a huge rocket launch site like White Forest for so long, and launch an ICBM at it or something? Its not that hard to notice, it's a really big facility with a missile silo. I know they launched an assualt at it during EP2, but if they attacked it about a month earlier when Gordon wasn't there and rebel levels were much smaller they probably would've taken it.
  • They've been deliberately ignoring rebel facilities since before the game started, to get them to develop more efficient portal technology so that they can steal it.
  • They could have simply assumed it was abandoned. There wasn't really any Combine presence in the area until after the Citadel's destruction. The Combine aren't exactly observant, anyway, they missed a whole underground resistance network in the flagship city until Gordon Freeman led them straight into it. (This is, of course, assuming they weren't just ignoring it as the above troper posited).
  • Plus, the point of hidden underground former Soviet missile silos is that they are, well, hidden.
• How do the Combine get on and off of the guard towers? You know, the ones without ladders?
  • If I remember correctly, there should be a texture which implies retractable rungs on the side. If I'm not remembering correctly, they probably rope themselves up.
  • I think i remember someone said that the towers can move up and down, some other maps i see there are slots below the tower, meaning that they are elvators
  • They do. If you look at the watchtower in the plaza as soon as you enter it in Anticitizen One, you'll see a rebel climbing a rope attached to it.
  • Dropships, perhaps?
• How come all the normal zombies wear white even though pretty much everybody was forced to wear blue?
  • They wear white undershirts under the blue overalls. Really.
  • Or, as per the WMG page, the headcrab-induced transformation from human to zombie causes the secretion of a bleach-like fluid.
    • I can explain the Ravenholm white, because it is a refugee town for people who made it through the canals. It would be sensible to change into something comfortable, like a white madras shirt. The others, white undershirt idea, probably.
  • From a character design perspective, blood shows more clearly on a white shirt than it would on blue denim. Its possible Valve tried making the zombies wear all denim like citizens at first but didn't think the gore was striking enough over the blue.
  • The original zombie model used the same C17 Blue jumpsuit, however it was later modified into a white shirt with jeans.
  • It's actually the same beige shirt you see some of the refugees wearing, with the contrast beefed up a bit.
• Why do the Antlions in Episode 2 nest in caves full of water when they immediately drown when submerged? Since they frequently jump straight in when aware of your presence, it seems unlikely they would know how to avoid them in other circumstances.
  • The only remotely intelligent Antlions are the Guards, who chase you relentlessly, break down walls to get after you, and even throw cars and other heavy objects from a distance. The others are literal cannon fodder who sacrifice themselves by the hundreds to protect their nest.
  • Antlions can't see, so they rely on their hearing, smell and touch. They might not even know that water is so prevalent around their nest.
  • Same reason real life eusocial insects, despite being fairly smart, do things that seem stupid to us: They don't need to be very smart, because there are a ton of them. They can afford to lose some of their number to stupidity.
    Also, they might be well aware there is water there, and maybe they even normally avoid it; but when the nest is in danger, they might just be more concerned with defending it than with self-preservation.
• How did the headcrabs infest Ravenholm so thoroughly? I can see how they spread in the city, I mean, it's no problem to fight them off with a weapon, but unarmed civilians would have trouble. However, if the infection is so horrible, why is Ravenholm pretty much the only place that's like that? Shouldn't they be everywhere?
  • Ravenholm got headcrab shelled pretty badly, dude.
  • It's no problem for Freeman to fight them off with a weapon, because for whatever reason they can't attach to his head. Even the heavily armed are vulnerable to them (See: Zombine)
    • That doesn't explain how Ravenholm is effectively quarantined. There's no wall around it or anything, Gordon just walks down the road. Why doesn't the Ravenholm infection, you know, spread?
    • It's not a plague. Headcrabs don't really travel around much.
    • Headcrabs aren't a kind of zombie infection. For every zombie, there has to be a headcrab, so once every headcrab has latched onto something, that's the limit for zombies.
    • Gordon doesn't just walk down the road; he walks through a heavily barricaded tunnel that had previously been sealed off with a huge metal door.
  • To me it seems like there were some small mountains around Ravenholm. Some Zombies did get through the mines but the Combine and Resistance probably took care of that.
  • I also seem to remember one place in Ravenholm where there was a large wooden wall braced up to prevent intrusion from the outside. I always figured the last act of the people of Ravenholm was to ensure that no one else would be affected by the infestation.
    • I thought Ravenholm was shelled with headcrabs because it was holding out against the Combine? Those barricades probably pre-dated the infection.
  • Guys. It wasn't an infection. It was an infestation.
  • It's worth pointing out that once you escape Ravenholm through the mines, one of the first things you encounter on the other side is a large number of Combine snipers preventing the zombies from escaping. They probably have similar forces posted at all the other exits to Ravenholm.
  • Three main reasons. First, the area is not easy to navigate for every variant except fast zombies, making it harder for stragglers to filter out of the city (though you do see plenty of headcrabs that have filtered into the mines). Second, most zombies seem content to linger in one area in the absence of external stimulai or threats, meaning they're less likely to find their way out of town unless something actually attracts their attention. Third, there's still one very loud, proactive, prolific trap-setter and gun-toting maniac living in the town. If anything's going to stir the undead and get them moving in a particular direction, it's likely going to be Father Grigori attracting their attention towards him and his traps. Which means his efforts to tend to his "flock" aren't merely the ravings of a lunatic, but vital to keeping the infestation confined to just Ravenholm.
• Perhaps this was brought up in-game and this troper just missed it, but why are the Vortigaunts suddenly on your side when in the previous game they were trying to kill you like everything else?
  • Basically, the Nihilanth (the big evil monster at the end of HL1) was using the Vorts as slaves, using those collar things to keep them under control. When the Nihilanth was killed, the Vorts were freed, and they're very grateful.
    • That seems like a pretty major point, why the hell wouldn't they mention that, at least off-handedly, in-game?
    • You're right- the game is very vague about that sort of background information. (I believe it's because they wanted players to focus on gameplay- sort of backfired in my opinion, as it's left a lot of people confused.) There's a Vort who explains everything, but you have to go out of your way to find him, and he's kind of hard to get to. Here he is.
• Why aren't there any fast or poison zombines? If Combine soldiers can get zombified by the weakest headcrabs, why does that never seem to happen with the stronger kinds?
  • Maybe it does, and they just act like regular fast/poison zombies. If the usual zombine behaviour is due to their internal programming conflicting with the headcrab, and the fast and poison headcrabs are, as you say, stronger and therefore better able to control their host, the headcrabs might suppress that behaviour and so the zombies act like they normally do.
  • Alternatively, assuming the theory that the Combine genetically engineered the fast and poison headcrabs as biological weapons is correct, they may have also added something to those types of headcrabs that stopped them from zombifying their troops. The normal headcrabs haven't been altered, so they try to latch onto everyone as normal.
  • Fast zombies are always shows to be naked and are basically just a mutated, fleshy skeleton, so a fast zombine is indistinguishable due to its armour and most of its body modifications being discarded. No idea why the lack of poison zombines though, we just have to put them with zombie metrocops in the missed opportunity basket.
• Why the hell are Antlion workers more dangerous than the soldiers?
  • Workers defend existing hives, which is more important. Their acid attacks are also a side-product of what they use to dig out tunnels. The names soldiers and workers might not even be entirely accurate, anyway, since the Antlions' social structure may be quite different to that of Earth insects.
• What's with the hotel in Anti-Citizen One? There's random rubble lying around, and an unplugged TV playing freaky music while showing a picture of the G-Man with a crow on his shoulder. The hell?
  • That's kind of the point of G-man. He does creepy, completely unexplainable things. And no one has any idea why.
    • That was a non-canon easter egg.
  • Same reason he appears any other time - to check on Gordon and let him know that he's watching. Also it could be some kind of subliminal message Gordon doesn't know he's getting, e.g. "Would you kindly travel to the Citadel and blow it up?" - similar to what he did with Alyx in Episode 2. And of course it's canon, why wouldn't it be canon?
• There's something I can't figure out about the railroad between the end of Episode 1 and the beginning of Episode 2. In the former, Alyx and Gordon's train goes straight away from City 17, so that the railroad appears radial to the city. In the latter, after you manage to get off the wrecked train, when you get to the cliff with the "vista" of City 17 and the superportal, the railroad runs on a completly perpendicular direction (i.e. when facing City 17, the railway goes from your right to your left instead of facing you). While its orientation in Episode 1 is obvious (gives you a great view of the Citadel collapsing), and the one in Episode 2 is convenient (lets the devs show off their awesome work with the bridge holding the rails crumpled by the portal storm), I don't get how those two railroads are supposed to be the same. You could say the Citadel's destruction blew the wagons away until they hit this particular bridge, but Alyx and Gordon find themselves standing on top of a cliff. Blowing a train off its track on several kilometers, okay. Lifting it on top of a cliff? Not so okay.
  • Because they're on a cliff in mountainous terrain. The train has to deviate from a straight line in order to negotiate the mountains, or else make obscenely inefficient use of bridges and tunnels.
• Where do all the fresh corpses come from? Every barnacle, ant-lion grub and headcrab consumes or uses humans as primary prey, and can usually be found with one or more sets of human bones near them. Especially the ant-lion grubs have to eat a lot of human tissue to develop into adults, and there are millions of them just in the neighborhood of City 17. You'd think that after 20 years of eating the already scarce human population in the countryside, the corpses would start running out. Where do all the human-eating monsters get their food?
  • Not sure where all the in-game corpses come from (there do seem to be more than you'd expect just from the handful of rebels who travel through the canals and other unused areas), but it's likely most of those monsters can subsist on other foods. Barnacles can be seen eating just about everything, from antlions to birds (which still seem to be quite plentiful, even after the Combine invasion); we know at least Lamarr will eat watermelon so headcrabs may be omnivorous; and so on.
• How was Gordon able to stay alive on the Citadel roof at the end of Half-Life 2? The HEV suit didn't have a helmet, so how was he able to breathe or avoid having his head explode from the lack of pressure?
  • The Citadel is between 2 and 3 km tall. Enormous, yes, but still very much within the atmosphere.
  • Also, heads don't explode when exposed to vacuum, that's a myth.
    • Alyx got out and talked to you. The place has breathable atmosphere. And the HEV suit has a helmet, for the love of god. Where do you think the HUD is displayed? How do you think the zoom function works? How else did Gordon not die of radiation poisoning when he was in the Citadel core?
    • But in the official artwork (and the in-game model), Gordon is seen without the helmet.
    • Those are publicity shots! There is no in-game model. Unless you mean the one look we got of the suit in-game, to which I will point out that they don't show you getting into the suit either, and in the first game the model didn't even have the suit gloves. We've seen other people wear the suit, and we know it comes with a helmet. A really ugly◊ helmet. He's either wearing the helmet, or Alyx thinks a radiation suit without any head protection is astonishingly effective.
    • There was an in-game model in the first Half-Life. Gordon was not wearing the helmet there, either. If he was, they would have just used the helmeted HEV model from multiplayer to represent Gordon in singleplayer, too. As for where the HUD is displayed, one fanfic went with the idea that the suit links itself into the user's nervous system and displays it directly over their field of view; likely not Valve's initial intention, but I think it works well enough for fan-wank.
    • The HUD and zoom function are projected on Gordon's glasses, and his beard stops radiation. Q.E.D.
• Why the rush to breed right after the Combine supression field is destroyed? I know the Earth needs to repopulate, but all that would be doing right now is putting every single woman that takes part out of commission for nine months. And considering the small amount of the human population that's left, they need every man and woman they can spare. Wait until after you booted the Combine off your planet, if you even manage to do that.
  • It's been twenty odd years since people could last do it, most people probably wouldn't feel like waiting any longer, especially since for all they know if they were to put it off the Combine could come back and turn the suppression field back on. And it's not like being pregnant would put women out of commission for a whole nine months - women are still capable of working for a fair bit of that time AFAIK.
• If Gordon Freeman is wearing his HEV suit, which covers almost all of his body except his head, how come he can bleed through the suit and onto walls?
  • The same reason people blood goes through clothes when people are shot - bullets make holes. The reason the HEV isn't completely torn to shreds by the end of the game is because it's self-repairing.
• Why does the HEV suit lack head protection?
  • Other HEV suits do have helmets, so maybe someone stole Gordon's?
  • Alternate explanation: the suit DOES have a helmet. The HUD Gordon sees has to come from somewhere. The only place Gordon is actually seen without his helmet is in the artwork. The game is played in first person, meaning you never actually get a good look at yourself in-game. Gordon could easily be wearing his helmet during most of the actual gameplay.
    • They why don't you see the helmet when you go to put on the suit?
• How does Gordon survive being shot in the head many times and yet continue on with no ill effects?
  • It's an anti-frustration feature. It'd be like giving the computer a random chance to One-Hit Kill you, provided the computer hit you in the head. In-universe, maybe Gordon is just that lucky.
  • WMG: His glasses stop the bullets.
    • Auto-deployed self-repairing "soft" reactive helmet, à la Schlock Mercenary, which we don't see deploying in-game for the same reason that Gordon's glasses never fog up,^note althought the developers did consider Gordon getting his glasses knocked off, causing the screen to go blurry the sprint function uses an infinite power supply but the reactive armor needs batteries, and the HEV suit has room to store a Gravity gun, Crowbar, Overwatch Standard-Issue Pulse Rifle, and Rocket Launcher with two rockets in reserve. The helmet is also why Gordon's suit gives him an extended dive time (jumping into water autodeploys the helmet, and the sprint power supply is used to power CO2 filtering devices), and why Headcrabs can't head-couple (fangs can penetrate the softsuit, but beaks can't gain enough purchase to latch on). Alternately, it's been rendered unnecessary by a force field.
• In Episode 2, during the drive to the launch site, there's a tunnel that's been blocked off by the Combine, forcing you to take a detour. During the detour, there's an ambush, and after blasting your way clear, you get to the other side of the tunnel, and it's collapsed. Now, why bother with the ambush when they could've just left the door open and shut it behind us?
• How exactly did Eli make it out of Black Mesa? Based on his dialogue, it's clear that he's the scientist that opens the door to the control room of the anti-mass spectrometer. Anyone that's played through the original game knows what lies between him and escape. Even assuming that he can take an exit that Gordon can't because he has scanner access, he would still have to make it past the instant-death beams in the anti-mass spectrometer's control room, as well as the laser hallway. Even then, that's just to get to the tram station, which thanks to the catwalk is completely unusable. I get that the G-Man probably helped him a bit, but we've seen that he's rarely direct, so Eli would still have to do a lot of the work himself. So again, how the hell did he get out of there?
  • WMG: Eli and Kleiner were one of the scientists that Barney escaped with.
    • In Half-Life: Blue Shift, Barney escapes Black Mesa with Dr. Rosenberg and two other scientists, but not Eli nor Kleiner.
  • Perhaps he's just that damn good.
  • The G-Man claims to have 'plucked' Alyx from where she was in the Black Mesa facility, and he's shown in Episode 2 that he can alter memories so people don't actually remember meeting him. It's possible he helped Eli (and maybe even Kleiner) teleport out of the lab, then simply wiped their minds of the event, as he knew they'd play key roles in then-upcoming events (the plot of Half Life 2)
• Canonically, Eli Vance is the father of Alyx Vance. Alyx is Afro-Asian. However, this makes no goddamn sense, because look at her for five milliseconds and you get why. While Alyx certainly shows her mother's genes, her father's genes are literally nowhere to be found in her look. It's even more irritating since the Beta leak shows that she looked that way when her father was still a different character, who was white. Valve literally put no effort in making her look like she has a black dad after changing her story to that. That's just lazy and kinda insulting. It's pretty sad when some of FakeFactory's models are more realistic in her genetic makeup than Valve's.
  • It makes sense when you know basic genetics. Not every Afro-Asian kid is going to look the same, and naturally there will be people that lean more one way or another, just like how a white kid might look more like either parent. Eli's genes are most likely more recessive whilst her mother's are dominant.
• Exactly how large is the Combine? We know that they control several universes, but how much of each universe they do control? They do not appear to have any interstellar travel technology. Their portals are explicitly said not to work for transporting within a single universe. It appears that they only can grab one planet per universe? This would make them horribly inefficient conquerors of universes. The notion that the Combine can be defeated at all hints towards this notion; if they would have complete control over several universes, this would make them a super-Kardashevian civilization and utterly undefeatable.
  • They likely repurporse local tech and are drawn to 'signatures' from high-tech stuff. They made the fatal mistake of assuming we're much further along than we are and assumed that if we're opening cross-dimensional travel, we must have stuff like decent space travel within our own universe.
    • The G-Man probably also supplied that Xen crystal in HL1 specifically to lure in the Combine. Ours just happened to be in the right zone to be undeveloped enough to cripple the Combine's presence here, but developed enough to see the experiment through and have a chance at reverse-engineering their tech (seen in the games) stopping them.
  • The Combine’s level of scientific advancement is enormous - Breen’s discussion with Eli concerning the things in the universe “impossible to describe with our limited vocabulary” speaks to that. They also possess such things as brain-uploading to host bodies. We also never see their primary military forces - they managed to pacify the entire Earth’s combined military might at the peak of their power in 1998 in only 7 hours. The forces that remain on Earth contain no proper Combine military units at all - it is only a garrison of manufactured synths and local humans who willingly joined them. As to controlling many planets: much like teleporting between Black Mesa and Xen, it is broadly possible to teleport anywhere in the target universe you want. That’s why the “Xen Relay” is possible - teleport to Xen, then back where you want to go on Earth. But as we see in Nova Prospekt, the Combine did not develop this innovation until recently, and their tech is inferior even to the cobbled-together ones in Kleiner’s lab and Black Mesa East. It’s strongly suggested that this, above all else, is what the Combine wants from Earth. It’s also why the series set up the Borealis as the thing the Combine and Resistance both want - do you know what Aperture Science developed that neither Black Mesa nor the Combine ever did? Local teleportation. Aperture developed local teleportation that does not require a separate universe “relay”, creates semi-permanent portals to move through, and has such low power requirements that it was testing a ‘’handheld prototype’’. The Combine’s massive military might is tempered by the logistical disadvantages it has moving forces around. The ASHPD would make them utterly unstoppable.
• How exactly did Alyx manage to single-handedly incapacitate (not kill) those metrocops when you first meet her?
  • A stunstick?
• Even on the highest difficulty setting, the Combine are still laughably poor shots who rely on sending in swarms of redshirts rather than any semblance of tactics.
  • Well they try to use tactics, you just kill them too fast for them to actually do anything
    • Also, they're only redshirts when they're up against a near-invincible time-traveling super-genius carrying an impossible arsenal of weapons. Lore-wise, they spend most of their time beating up Citizens and fighting the Resistance, and they seem somewhat effective in that regard considering how their crackdown during Route Kanal results in most of the Railroad dead either before you arrive or shortly after you leave. And during the Uprising, the Resistance have the advantage of numbers on their side.
    • But why do trans-human supersoldiers covered head-to-toe in Kevlar still die to a handful of pistol bullets, that seem to go right through their armor like it's nothing?
    • It seems like most of the guns in the game came from a Combine armory, since they're seen using the Pistol, SMG and Shotgun. They could have those guns loaded with an armor-piercing round, which would make this a case of Hoist by His Own Petard. Other weapons from non-Combine sources like the .357 Magnum and the Crossbow could reasonably penetrate body armor on their own. (They shoot Magnum rounds and superheated rebar, respectively.)
    • The MP-7, the real-world firearm that the SMG is based on, uses a round designed primarily with armor penetration in mind.
    • Tactics wise, the Overwatch are very capable, using flanking, suppression, flushing and other methods to tip firefights, the aim can be chalked up to their guns being inaccurate, just like Gordon's MP5. As for armour: a pistol bullet is pretty lethal to a person, taking multiple and living with no loss of combat ability is outstandingly good, even if game-wise they only have an extra 10 health on metrocops and rebels.
• How does Breen live in the Citadel? It seems like he never leaves his office, but it also doesn't look like a proper residence: no bathroom, no canteen or wherever he gets his food from (it doesn't seem likely that he would accept to eat whatever sustenance his soldiers are having), just a desk and chair with some Combine computers. Does he sleep under his desk or something?
  • Maybe he has doors to other rooms from his office or nearby room that you don't get to see. You don't really get the chance to explore the place.
• How does Breen know where to find Gordon after he accidentally teleports into his lair? All he did was appear for about a second and then teleport back. He'd have no way of knowing were Gordon went.
  • What makes you think Breen did know where Gordon was? He immediately sets City 17 on lockdown and a drone does capture a picture of Gordon, but that's implied to have just been unlucky timing.
• How did Barney escape from Gordon's interrogation? When Gordon first leaves on his own, there is a metrocop banging on the door, clearly trying to be let in. So what did he do? Did he let him in and just say that the citizen magically disappeared? Who would believe that?