HA HE!
Pick me up.
All Wayne wanted to do was play Half-Life: Alyx and earn the Garden Gnome achievement. How hard could it actually be? Well, when the normally inanimate Gnome Chompski begins speaking on his own, what's supposed to be a regular challenge run gets flipped on it's head...
Half-Life: Alyx but the Gnome is Too Aware note is a roleplay Machinima series by WayneRadioTV and Radio TV Solutions, the same group behind Half-Life but the AI is Self-Aware, which has a similar premise. This time around, it's only Wayne (though still joined on occasion by his friend and fellow Radio TV Solutions member Baaulp) doing a playthrough of Half-Life: Alyx only to be surprised by the Gnome he must carry throughout the game becoming sentient, talking to him and making various outlandish requests as Wayne tries to juggle taking care of the Gnome, his meters as well as himself.
The first Act was streamed on November 12th, 2021 and after a long delay, the finale would be streamed on February 4th, 2023. Like HLVRAI before it, Wayne has also been working on edited, compiled video versions of the Acts on his YouTube channel, with the first edited part being released on November 25th 2021 and the final edited part being released on October 12th 2023.
My trope meter is dangerously low!
- Abhorrent Admirer: The Blue Gnome has a perverse obsession with Wayne, while the latter finds his advances horrifying and repulsive.
- Addled Addict: The Gnome enjoys smoking resin, and has expressed interest in injecting heroin needles. His sanity readily reflects this.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Baaulp refuses to believe the Gnome is self-aware, and insists that it is just a collection of pre-recorded lines. Even as it is threatening Baaulp specifically with physical harm.
- Bottle Episode: Intended to bridge the hiatus between Half-Life: VR and its sequel, this series eschews the custom assets and scripted plot-beats from its sister series, focusing instead on an unmodified playthrough of Half-Life: Alyx while Wayne riffs with his friends over text-to-speech until the final act, that is.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Paralleling Half-Life: VR, the series leans more into Existential Horror Comedy as it goes on. By Act 3, the Gnome's bullying becomes more personal, and starts incorporating Reality Warper elements. And this is to say nothing about the New Contestant. The finale drives this to higher levels in the Vault as it's revealed that Half-Life is an alien entity that Valve decided to sell, much to Gabe Newell's regret.
- Character Catchphrase: The Gnome frequently cries "STOP!" and "YOU HAVE FAILED THE CHALLENGE!" in response to basically anything Wayne does.
- Chekhov's Gun: Gordon figures out in "Jeff" that the Gnome will die if crushed in a trash compactor, but he restarts the game because he still wants to finish the challenge. He doesn't have such qualms, however, about killing the Blue Gnome in the second trash compactor; the Gnome mentions this at the start of Act 4 Part 2.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: The Gnome will not waste an opportunity to sell Gordon out to their enemies, usually over the most petty or nonsensical reasons. Usually, he's the one to suffer for this.
- Eldritch Location: The White Forest, a forest of white trees that appears in the virtual world where the Gnome seems to have Reality Warper powers. He grows to an enormous size and chases Wayne through it before cornering him and using his powers to steal Wayne's place in reality, transforming him into an inanimate Gnome in the process.
- Electronic Speech Impediment: The Gnome's AI-generated voice has quite a few quirks to it, which the subtitles render as a Funetik Aksent. When the program is especially overwhelmed, it can come out as Inelegant Blubbering or nothing but question marks.
- Enforced Plug: Parodied by the Gnome periodically giving shout-outs to various real-life companies and brands as "sponsors". For example, when he usurps Wayne's place as streamer near the end of the final part, this includes replacing one of his stream alerts with the Red Robin
jingle. - Fake-Out Fade-Out: In the finale during the Gnome's Hostile Show Takeover, it's revealed he and Wayne swapped places. The camera dramatically zooms in on gnome!Wayne as it fades to black... and then immediately cuts back to the gnome shrugging it off and continuing Half-Life 2.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: In Act 4 Part 1's highlight video, the Mastercard logo's text is briefly replaced by "Balls are touching".
- Gainax Ending: When Wayne enters the Vault, the Gnome declares that he has failed the challenge and attacks him. He spawns in a wooden hallway, but he quits the game, taking off the headset. He then hears music coming from a nearby room, and ends up in the hallway again. At the end of the hallway, the Gnome invites him to watch a Peppa Pig movie which starts to talk about cryptic subjects, before turning into a forest clearing. Wayne runs in at the Gnome's behest, only for the Gnome to manifest in real life, playing Half-Life 2 (which features Wayne as a gnome.) The Gnome realizes that doing such a thing to Wayne only ruined himself, so he sings "If I Can't Be Yours" before disappearing and bringing Wayne back at a beach, with only a framed picture of himself reading "Goodbye Gordon" beside him.
- The Ghost: Gabe Newell's final commentary node makes mention of a mysterious man making contact with Valve Software during development of Episode Two. Subsequently, Peppa Pig's monologue makes mention of someone she only refers to as "Her" that Wayne will meet soon. Whether these two characters will remain unseen, be saved for a later series, or are just part of the Mind Screw of the finale are unknown.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Invoked; once the Blue Gnome makes its appearance, Wayne insists on self censoring anything that could be taken as a sexual innuendo, to avoid making it appear again.
- Hell Is That Noise: The Gnome often emits a horrible discordant wail, which it insists is singing. It eventually improves its technique.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Surprisingly, the Gnome himself pulls this at the end by donning Wayne's Valve Index to trade realities with him again. According to Gabe's commentary The Gnome will no longer spawn in Half-Life: Alyx for Wayne so barring a miracle it's a permanent goodbye.
- I Am Not Spock: The Gnome insists on referring to Wayne as Gordon, believing him to be the protagonist from HL:VRAI. Eventually, Wayne stops correcting him.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Half the Gnome's dialogue is just him disagreeing with himself. He explains that he has multiple brains, which each need to wait their turn to answer Gordon.
- Implausible Deniability: As part of the Kayfabe, Baaulp continues asserting that the Gnome just a mod with a bunch of pre-recorded voice lines, even as the Gnome makes several specific threats towards him.
- Inelegant Blubbering: The Gnome's garbled speech is rendered as "sobbing", which he does when he's too upset. Or excited. Or bored. Or...
- Interface Screw: As the Gnome's meters become more intrusive, Wayne sometimes bumps or breaks them while moving in VR.
- Kayfabe: Just like HLVRAI was treated as if it was a genuine VR port of the first Half-Life with self-aware AI, the Gnome is treated as if it's simply just a very advanced mod until the final stream, where the pretense is gradually dropped.
- Killed Off for Real: Trash compactors, as it turns out, can kill a Gnome permanently, as Wayne finds out when he tosses the Gnome into the compactor used to kill The New Contestant, but he reloads the save so as to continue the challenge. He also uses it against the Blue Gnome to stop him from popping up any further.
- Last Episode, New Character: The Blue Gnome makes his debut in the final act. The Gabe Newell commentary also starts appearing, but the Gnome claims to have made them. It's very heavily implied, however, that the commentary node in the Vault was by the real Gabe Newell himself.
- Lovable Sex Maniac: By a certain measure of "lovable"; the Gnome is a serial polygamist, with multiple girlfriends and a husband, none of which know about each other. This is notably not a feature of gnome culture, he's just shamelessly cheating on all his partners.
- Notably Averted with the Blue Gnome, who is unfailingly polite and friendly to Wayne but is insufferably sexual towards him. Wayne's horrified reactions to just hearing the Blue Gnome make it clear his advances are unwelcome.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: The Gnome is an annoying thing that Wayne has to constantly keep in check, but the Blue Gnome actively hurts Wayne if he holds it, so he ignores his pleas to go with him and not the red Gnome. Eventually, Wayne starts arguing in genuine favor of the Red Gnome against the Blue Gnome. Both Alex Trebek/The Voice and Gabe Newell make it clear that the blue gnome is an aberration, with the former warning Wayne that it still exists and to watch out, and the latter commenting that the Blue Gnome is not supposed to be in the game at all.
- Mood Whiplash: Gabe Newell's Infodump about Half-Life's origins, and his pleas for Wayne to not progress any further through the final level are immediately followed up by him announcing Valve's "newest game" Poop: The Power of Pee and how it's intentionally terrible.
- Misaimed "Realism": Parodied. The Gnome has dozens of Stat Meters, from a hunger meter to a cigarette meter, all of which are constantly draining. He even has a meter meter.
- Must Have Nicotine: One of the Gnome's many meters is a "Cigarette Meter," requiring him to smoke often.
- My Greatest Failure: Gabe regrets creating Half-Life, or rather, releasing it to humanity, and created the commentary nodes as an admission of guilt of sorts for the first person to play through the Gnome Challenge. He begs to whomever completes the Gnome Challenge to not go to the ending of the game.
- Orwellian Retcon: In the original streams, The Gnome's voice was briefly replaced by an AI text-to-speech version of Homestar Runner's. The condensed highlights replaced all instances of "Gnomestar's" voice with the original Gnome with rerecorded lines, and even went so far as to censor the chat in order to "keep [him] contained".
- Overly Long Gag: The gnome shows off its improved singing skills by singing the entire Sonic Underground theme. And then "Chug Jug With You".
- Recursive Canon: A bizarre case. The series begins as a stream between Wayne and Baaulp, seemingly not reprising their roles from Half Life: VR. Nonetheless, the Gnome insists on referring to Wayne as "Gordon", even though Gordon isn't even the Player Character of the game. Wayne gives up on correcting him eventually, and starts answering to "Gordon".
- Refugee from TV Land: At the end of the final stream, the Gnome enters the real world and takes over Wayne's Twitch channel.
- Shout-Out:
- The last stream features end credits that spin up the screen in the shape of a helix, exactly like the credits to The End of Evangelion. Very fitting, considering how the stream itself ends.
- At one point in the Final Act, The Gnome claims that he can speak Dutch. When Wayne asks him to demonstrate, he mentions someone named Arthur, and says that they'll be set for life after "One big score", a clear reference to Dutch van der Linde.
- Signature Laugh: The Gnome has a distinctive laugh, often transcribed as "HA HE!"
- Stylistic Suck: The Gnome's livestream at the end of the final act after he escapes into the real world. He's not very good at it, he regularly uses cheats, and the copy of Half-Life 2 he's playing is very, very broken. He doesn't even get through the first chapter before he gives up.
- Subverted Kids' Show: What watching Peppa Pig ultimately meant to the gnome. Starting out as a Stylistic Suck slideshow (credited to Gordon no less), then an edited episode with added blood and violence... and then Peppa starts talking to Wayne directly.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Wayne initially tries to dispatch the Blue Gnome by shooting him, until it turns out that the Blue Gnome actually enjoys being hit with his "hot load". Even when he meets his true end in the trash compactor, his screams sound rather... delighted.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Foo Berries, a brand of berries licensed by the Foo Fighters. How a band can have its own line of berries is never explained.
- Troll: The Gnome, full stop. He has no reason to antagonize Gordon as much as he does, often to his own detriment, except that he finds it funny.
- Vague Age: The Gnome initially claims to be 4 (though he never specifies "years"), but when called out for his Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, he amends his story to say that, for legal purposes, he's 37. Not helping is that he has traits fitting both ages: he wants to eat candy and watch Peppa Pig, but also has a girlfriend, smokes cigarettes, and drinks liquor.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Wayne and the Gnome's relationship, which alternates between expressing care and affection for each other to hurling insults.
- Was It Really Worth It?: After the Gnome betrays Wayne and steals his place in the real world, he quickly comes to find streaming isn't as fun as he expected (he's also not very good at it, is playing a rather broken version of Half-Life 2 and repeatedly uses cheats) and goes into a full My God, What Have I Done? breakdown after he finds Wayne transformed into a completely inanimate and unable to speak Gnome and carries him around for a while. This leads to him reflecting on the new life he'd stolen and realizing he has to swap places with Wayne once again.
- Wham Episode: The finale reveals many things about Half-Life, namely that Valve didn't create it and they simply got their hands on it, releasing it as their own property for profit. Gabe Newell hid commentary nodes in the Gnome Challenge for the first person to complete it to confide in his part in all of it. Then there's the ending, which is detailed in Gainax Ending above.
- Wham Line: From the final commentary node in the Vault, and a part of a Wham Monologue, really:
Gabe Newell: Half-Life... Half-Life is not what it seems. These games should never be played by mankind.
- Wham Shot: Wayne attempts to end the stream after entering the Vault, but as he takes off the headset it transitions to a first-person live-action sequence of his room...with the game's HUD still visible in his point of view.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: The Gnome acts as if his memories are being taken from him and that he's being tortured in order to lure Wayne to the chamber the G-Man is usually in to pull him into the White Forest and steal his place in reality.
