Follow TV Tropes

Following

Video Game / Half-Life: Opposing Force

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hlopposingforce.jpg

"Government cover-ups were not in my job description!"
—- HECU Marine

Half-Life: Opposing Force is the first Expansion Pack to Valve's Half-Life developed by Gearbox Software.

Taking place shortly after the Resonance Cascade at the Black Mesa Research Facility, Opposing Force follows the perspective of Corporal Adrian Shephard, a member of the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit that Gordon Freeman fought during the events of the first game. When his squad is set to contain the alien outbreak at Black Mesa, Shephard ends up separated from the rest of his team when their Osprey is shot down. Upon learning that the military is ordering a complete evacuation of the facility, Shephard attempts to reach the extraction point while shooting any alien that crosses his path. However, he soon learns that Black Ops, another military unit sent into Black Mesa to contain the aliens, has different ideas on how to handle the remaining soldiers...

Opposing Force featured several new weapons for the player to use, as well as the ability for the player to control A.I. squad members to aid them during certain set pieces. A new faction of aliens, referred to as "Race X", appear as enemies hostile to both Shephard and the aliens from Xen, forcing the player to figure out new strategies in how to deal with these beings.


Half-Life: Opposing Force contains examples of:

  • Admiring the Abomination:
    • Shephard seems weirdly affectionate towards the spore launcher, even petting the thing when you have it equipped and he's left idle.
    • There are two scientists in the first level examining headcrabs and dead zombies. They both express fascination with the abilities of the headcrabs. One of them also offers some Foreshadowing when he discusses the "next stage of mutation" for the zombie.
  • Anti-Villain: Many of the HECU personnel are of the well-intentioned variety. This game makes it clear that, while they indeed performed less-than-desirable actions against the Black Mesa personnel, it turns out that they're just as in the dark as the former are about what is happening. They're all in for stopping the Alien Invasion, but unfortunately, they have little idea on how to stop the aliens from pouring in aside from shooting whatever creatures they come across. By the time Shephard receives the order to pull out, many of the HECU just want to get out of Black Mesa alive and in one piece together, rather than indiscriminately slaughter the scientists and security personnel for no gain.
  • Armies Are Evil:
    • Zig-zagged with the HECU. While they are ordered to and do silence witnesses like in Half-Life, they are also shown to genuinely care for one another, won't back down in the face of hostile aliens or traitorous Black Ops, and will make it a point to escape Black Mesa together or die trying.
    • The Black Ops play this trope straight to a T. They have none of the HECU's redeeming qualities and are established to be cold-blooded killers whose only concern is killing as many aliens and remaining witnesses as possible.
  • Artificial Brilliance: In the base game, HECU Marines wouldn't care about one of their squad mates suddenly dying to a crossbow bolt. Here, the Black Ops. soldiers immediately go on alert and scan the area if one of their comrades goes down without hearing a gunshot. The friendly marines also immediately jump into action to defend you when you take damage from enemies.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Friendly NPCs tend to get lost, stuck in rooms, refuse to follow you after a while and shoot you in the back. HECU Marines, in particular, suffer from this quite badly at times, forcing you to double back if you need them. Their usage of grenades also seems heavily reliant on scripting, which often results in them chucking a frag into a room that you've already rushed into and cleared with a shotgun.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • The HECU. They go from generic antagonists to being the main focus of the expansion, down to the Player Character being a member. For starters, they're now known as the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit, while in Half-Life they were known only as "the military".
    • The Black Ops. In the original game, they only came in female variants, and only a handful of personnel were fought, with no explanations for their presence in Black Mesa beyond them presumably being another HECU unit. Come this expansion, they now get a male variant, additional equipment in the form of unmarked black trucks and Apache attack helicopters, are encountered much more frequently, and they are revealed to be a separate faction.
  • Badass Army:
    • The HECU. Even after their commanders abandon them, many remaining HECU units, in sheer desperation and bravery, continue to fight the invading Xen and later Race X aliens and better-equipped and more numerous Black Ops troops while trying to make it out of Black Mesa alive.
    • The Black Ops. Compared to the HECU, they have access to roughly the same equipment but are also far better trained and specialized. And they do a much better job at handling both the Xen and Race X invasions, managing to be on equal footing with them for a while longer. Like the HECU, however, they're eventually overwhelmed as well and resort to nuking the facility.
    • Race X's aliens. Their Shock Troopers are arguably tougher to take down than the Alien Grunts, and their Pit Worms and Gene Worms are shown to be just as tough, if not tougher, than the Gargantuas.
  • BFG:
    • The Displacer Cannon is very obviously inspired by the trope namer.
    • In terms of conventional firearms, the M249 SAW is this, being able to rip apart even the largest Race X aliens with a burst.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: Aside from the HECU and Xen Aliens in the first part, there's now the additional problem of the Black Ops, whose Fiery Cover-Up mission now involves silencing the HECU, and Race X, another alien race taking advantage of the Resonance Cascade for its purposes.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Far more bitter than sweet, if not a Downer Ending. On the sweet side, Adrian can prevent Race X from invading, taking over and terraforming the entire world to strip its resources, and manages to survive against all odds. On the bitter side, he is placed into stasis as a detainee, with the G-Man implying he'll be frozen for a very, very long time. Also, Black Mesa is destroyed in a nuclear blast, and practically all of Shephard's fellow Marines remaining in the area are killed trying to escape. Moreover, despite defeating Race X and saving the world, it isn't long after that the Combine invades and inflicts roughly the same thing upon the Earth anyway.
  • Black Helicopter: The Black Ops, fittingly enough, field all-black AH-64 Apache helicopters against the Race X invasion, in contrast to the green ones fielded by the HECU.
  • Book Ends: The game begins and ends with Shephard on an Osprey military transport aircraft.
  • Boss Battle: The Pit Worm and the Gene Worm.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Voltigores. They're fought semi-regularly by the last few levels, have massive HP pools, and have attacks that potentially One-Hit Kill Shephard and other allied NPCs should they connect.
  • Cavalry Betrayal:
    • Shephard discovers that the HECU aren't in Black Mesa to rescue the personnel there, but to silence them, no thanks to a surviving scientist telling him. Fortunately for them, Shephard himself can be played as a subversion.
    • Shephard, and by extension several other HECU Marines find out that the Black Ops aren't there to help them get out of Black Mesa but to silence them.
  • Combat Medic: One of two new HECU classes introduced. His task is mainly to heal you and your fellow Marines when they're injured via syringes. Downplayed in that, while he does have a handgun for combat and can gun down the more lightly-armed enemies, he's still highly vulnerable to enemy fire due to his mediocre health.
  • Continuity Nod: Opposing Force is full of them, being an Interquel, starting from the opening chopper ride (where you see the mountain pass Freeman navigates) to witnessing Freeman enter the Xen portal!
  • Cut and Paste Environments: When using the Displacer Cannon's alt-fire, you can teleport to a random location somewhere in the Half-Life universe, and these locations are different any time you load into a new story map. However, after discovering the first five or six maps, you come to realize that the later maps will reuse the previous locations with a slight variation on the items in the area. If they don't spawn you over a bottomless pit, that is.
  • Darker and Edgier: This expansion is notably more bleak than Half-Life. For one, the game starts as the Xen invasion overwhelms the HECU's hold on Black Mesa, and by the time the first level proper starts, most of the facilities that Shephard treks through are already overrun with aliens, heavily damaged by the fighting and subsequent bombings, and many HECU units are dead or dying by the time Shephard makes contact with them.
  • Deus ex Nukina: Happens to Black Mesa at the end of the game, when the Black Ops and later the G-Man successfully activate a Mk. IV Thermonuclear Device.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • One part has Shephard finally catching up to Freeman and seeing him just as he jumps into the Xen portal (which the player does in the main game). Should the player chase after Freeman through the portal, Shephard ends up warping into thin air not far from where Freeman first lands in Xen. Though Freeman is visible in the original game's warp zone, Shephard doesn't have long to see him before he falls into the endless abyss and the game grants a Non-Standard Game Over for breaking story canon:
      SUBJECT: SHEPHARD
      STATUS: EVALUATION TERMINATED
      POST MORTEM:
      Subject attempted to create a temporal paradox.
    • There's very little incentive for doing so, but every time Shephard shoots the Pitworm in the eye with a hitscan weapon, it blinks.
    • Although highly unlikely for both Black Mesa personnel and HECU marines to appear at the same time, the latter are still coded to engage the former in combat.
  • Drought Level of Doom: The entire second half of the game is stingy with health and armor. It's not uncommon to be at half or less of both for most of your playthrough. The displacer can be used to find additional health, armor, and ammo, but it uses up a lot of relatively rare ammo and has a chance of teleporting you into a bottomless pit.
  • Earth Is a Battlefield: On top of the already large conflict between Black Mesa staff, HECU, and Xen, two other factions are showcased in this expansion: a more elaborate Black Ops. team (which, while featured in the original Half-Life, are given a greater degree of presence here) and the opportunistic Race X.
  • Elite Mooks:
    • The Alien Grunts and Alien Controllers from Half-Life return. And unlike in Half-Life, here they're encountered only a handful of times.
    • The Black Ops as a whole are this, being much tougher to take down than the HECU Marines, while also coming in a stealthy female variant.
    • Race X gets the Shock Troopers, their equivalent of the Xen Alien Grunt, which hits just as hard, if not harder, and is just as tough to take down.
  • The Engineer: One of two new HECU classes introduced here. His job is to destroy barricades hindering the HECU's progress, such as locked doors or steel bars. For combat, he has a Desert Eagle to protect himself.
  • Evil Versus Evil: The encounters between the Black Ops and Race X aliens later in the Black Mesa incident. One is an elite US military unit tasked to Leave No Witnesses behind, human or alien, while the other are Planet Looters intent on exploiting Black Mesa's and later Earth's resources for their own needs.
  • Eviler than Thou: The Black Ops to the HECU. They look down on the latter as "grunts" doing dirty work, and silence any Marines they encounter, apparently because they now know too much to be left alive.
  • Expansion Pack: The first of three that Half-Life would receive, in fact.
  • Eye Beam: The Pit Worm shoots one from its sole eye. Players who Go for the Eye can cause it to flinch, but won't otherwise harm it.
  • Fluffy Tamer: Shephard can use weaponized Barnacles and the Spore Launcher, essentially an infant version of the Shock Trooper being captured and studied by Black Mesa Scientists. And then there's the Snarks from the original game, which Shephard gets access to later on.
  • From Bad to Worse: You'd think that with Gordon dealing with the Nihilanth on Xen, things in Black Mesa would improve, right? Wrong. It gets much worse. Race X, a new alien faction, begins their own invasion once the Xen invasion begins to peter out. They promptly fight not only the HECU and the Black Mesa Science team but also the Xen aliens AND the newly arrived Black Ops. The latter are continuing to cover up the disaster by killing any more witnesses they come across, which now include the HECU stragglers left behind in Black Mesa. By the final chapters of the game, it gets so bad that even the better-trained Black Ops are being overwhelmed, so they resort to setting off a nuclear warhead in an attempt to stop the invasion for good.
  • Go for the Eye: The Pit Worm can be briefly stunned this way, and the key to destroying the Gene Worm involves shooting its eyes repeatedly.
  • Grappling-Hook Pistol: The detached Barnacle, but only to biological matter. It also doubles as a lethal weapon, heavily damaging organic enemies (or in the case of headcrabs, reeling them in and instantly killing them).
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Race X as a whole gets little elaboration, and they're unlikely to get more due to Valve discontinuing their use. All that is known about them is that they're an alien faction separate from Xen, and they want to capitalize on the Resonance Cascade for their own purposes.
  • He Knows About Timed Hits: In the boot camp, one of the instructors mention use key when there is tutorial about medics.
  • He Knows Too Much:
    • Many HECU stragglers trapped in Black Mesa become targets for the Black Ops, probably because now they're viewed as liabilities.
    • Shephard is detained by the G-Man, thanks to knowing about too many details regarding the Black Mesa Incident. The other option would've been being killed per the G-Man's employers' orders; the only reason he's spared is that the G-Man took a liking to him.
  • Hellish Copter: Shephard's Osprey, as well as another Osprey in their flight at the start of the game, is shot down by Xen alien craft not long after arriving over Black Mesa, resulting in the former crashing down and the latter exploding mid-air.
  • Hidden Mechanic:
    • In the singleplayer campaign, you don't get your hands on several weapons from the main game but they are still available on most multiplayer maps. There is also a secret weapon - penguins with grenades strapped to them. They function the same way as Snarks but their explosion is far more deadly. They're only availiable on the CTF map dubbed Wonderland. The pickup is a crude snowman holding a sign reading "Beware of penguins", so you're likely to assume it's a useless decoration.
    • The long-jump module is also coded in the game proper but is only availiable in multiplayer (or via cheating).
    • You can actually pick up more Shock Roaches by firing the one you already have. If at least a single unit of ammo is missing, the other roach serves as an ammo pickup.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Adrian Shephard has a Pipe Wrench, Combat Knife, a weaponized Barnacle, Glock-17 (Beretta 92FS in the HD Pack), Desert Eagle, MP5 (M4 in the HD Pack), SPAS-12, a guided Rocket Launcher, Grenades, Satchel Charges, Laser Tripmines, Snarks, M249 SAW, the Displacement Cannon, an M40A1 Sniper Rifle, Spore Launcher, and a Shock Roach. Plus with a certain cheat code, he can also equip the unused weapons from Gordon's arsenal (Crowbar, Colt Python, Crossbow, Tau Cannon, Gluon Gun, and Hivehand) from the main game.note 
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: If one looks carefully during the Friendly Fire chapter, a nuclear missile is seen lying next to a Black Ops truck, with a panel missing. This implies that the nuclear warhead that destroys Black Mesa came from one of their own missiles. Strangely, the missile can still explode if shot, similar to the tripmine maze from Half-Life.
  • Interquel: The game takes place roughly halfway through the first game.
  • It's the Only Way to Be Sure: HECU's intervention in the Black Mesa facility against Xen proves to be fruitless, so the Black Ops are summoned to take care of things instead. They are not only tasked with killing everyone involved—including any remaining HECU members—but they also opt to nuke the Black Mesa facility to resolve the Xen alien invasion for good. Shephard almost foils the Black Ops' last plan in "The Package," but unlucky circumstances force him to watch helplessly from a locked room as the G-Man reactivates the bomb.
  • Justified Tutorial: The game's tutorial takes place at a boot camp—Shephard is one of the HECU recruits, and he must pass the specialized training course to participate in the upcoming expedition.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Happens to the HECU as a whole. Many of those left behind during the evacuation of Black Mesa slowly come to realize that they are now no different from the Black Mesa personnel when the Black Ops begin killing them for knowing about the disaster.
  • Late to the Tragedy: By the time Shephard's team arrives over Black Mesa, the Xen invasion is already trampling the military hold over the facility, given that there are no fighters to cover the Ospreys, and that there are no other HECU units near the crash site to back Shephard's squad up. By the time Shephard wakes up and recovers from his injuries at the crash, his superiors are already giving out orders to pull out of the facility entirely.
  • Leave No Witnesses: The Black Ops, aside from continuing the HECU's Fiery Cover Up mission, are also tasked with silencing any HECU stragglers left behind.
  • Living Weapon: The Spore Launcher, Shock Roach, and Barnacle Grapple. All three are, in reality, living alien organisms that can either fire projectiles capable of killing enemies or in the case of the last one, pull its user closer to living matter (or, in the case of smaller enemies like Headcrabs, the other way around).
  • Loose Canon: The franchise was licensed to Gearbox for this instalment, who opted to invent their own enemy faction, Race X, to not interfere with whatever Valve's intended cosmology for the game was. This faction has not appeared or been mentioned in the franchise since, as Marc Laidlaw has stated they don't fit into his vision for the Half-Life multiverse, and thus Valve decided to leave Race X alone in case Gearbox ever decided to make more Half-Life games. It would seem that Gearbox wound up contradicting Valve's intended ideas anyway, though, as they included in this game a creature called the Gonome, which appears to be a further-mutated version of the Headcrab Zombie, none of which appears in Ravenholm in Half-Life 2. Black Mesa getting nuked, however, has been declared canon.
  • Manual Leader, A.I. Party: You're regularly teamed up with a squad of AI Marines which you can direct, and use to perform certain functions (but you can't directly play as one of them).
  • Mêlée à Trois: In total, there are five separate factions fighting each other in the Black Mesa incident. There's Gordon Freeman and the Black Mesa staff, the Xen aliens, the HECU marines, the Black Ops, and Race X.
  • Non-Standard Game Over:
    • Trying to use the self-teleport function with the Displacer Cannon on certain mapsnote  will send Shephard over a void on Xen, leading to a game over. Dying this way offers a unique game over message:
      SUBJECT: SHEPHARD
      STATUS: ACCIDENTAL DEATH
      POSTMORTEM: DISPLACER SELF-TELEPORT MISHAP
    • Following Gordon Freeman in "We Are Not Alone" through the teleporter will also give you a message with shades of Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
      SUBJECT: SHEPHARD
      STATUS: EVALUATION TERMINATED
      POSTMORTEM: SUBJECT ATTEMPTED TO CREATE A TEMPORAL PARADOX
  • "Not So Different" Remark: Invoked by the G-Man towards Adrian Shephard.
    G-Man: I admit, I have a fascination with those who adapt and survive against all odds... they rather remind me of myself.
  • One Bullet Clips: A neat aversion with the M249 SAW since you can see the last of the belts leaving the box once you reach the last few rounds.
  • Planet Looters: Race X, who are clearly shown capturing humans for experimentation and taking as much of Earth's resources as they can, in addition to terraforming several areas to suit their physiology. Ironically Race X seems to be not too different from the Combine, if less militarily and technologically advanced, and heavily organic life forms instead of synthetic.
  • Plasma Cannon: Much like the Alien Grunts, all Shock Troopers come equipped with a creature that they use as a weapon: the Shock Roach. While it can regenerate ammunition like the Grunts' Hivehand, the Roach doesn't fire homing hornets; rather, it functions as an organic plasma cannon, producing slightly stronger, much faster, and strictly linear electric bolts. Meanwhile, when not attached to a host, the Shock Roach can only impotently lunge at threats, which is exactly what helps Shephard gain one of his own when it detaches itself from the first Shock Trooper that he encounters and kills.
  • Powered Armor: The HECU's Powered Combat Vests serve as these, being functionally similar to the HEV suit used by the Black Mesa Science Team (minus the High-Jump Module). In addition to protecting against bullets and explosives, they also allow their soldiers to operate in the hazardous environments they were meant to operate in, such as radiation-filled areas or burning buildings.
  • Press X to Die: You can get an electricity-firing weapon called the Shock Roach. You're fully capable of firing it underwater, even though doing so kills you immediately.
  • Previous Player-Character Cameo: Shephard briefly witnesses Gordon Freeman jumping into the portal to Xen when the latter attempts to escape through the Lambda complex.
  • Prison Dimension: At the end, G-man detains Shephard aboard an Osprey flying through seemingly endless black void.
  • Pun: Shocktroopers are first-in-last-out alien soldiers leading an invasion into Earth who catch both the HECU and Black Ops off-guard. They're armed with roach-like living rifles that fire lethal bolts of electricity. In other words, they're literal Shocktroopers.
  • Puzzle Boss: The Pit Worm. It's defeated by activating the surrounding machinery to flood its nest with harmful chemicals, which requires the player to sneak or run past the boss several times to reach the necessary switches.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: The Black Ops succeed in their goal to destroy Black Mesa so they can cover up the incident, but the world still finds out what happened there anyway and the Combine invade Earth shortly thereafter.
  • Radio Voice: Zigzagged. Unlike in the base game, when Shephard is talking with other HECU Marines in person, they have normal human voices. When using an actual radio to communicate with them, however, their voices are overlapped with static.
  • Recoil Boost: Firing the M249 pushes you back a little bit, this can give you a significant speed boost and effectively replaces the Tau Cannon's own recoil boost.
  • Replacement Flat Character:
    • The Black Ops fill the void that the HECU played in the first game: Human enemies that use squad tactics. While the main Mooks use only MP5s as opposed to the occasional HECU Shotgunner (in addition to the Sniper Rifle that one time), they have a lot more health. Their motives are also sinister and are never portrayed sympathetically.
    • While you still fight the aliens of Xen in the early game, they quickly get phased out in favor of the new Race X aliens, who have more HP and are generally deadlier. Similarities can be found between the Vortigaunt slave and the Pit Drone, and the Alien Grunt and the Shock Trooper.
  • Retcon: In the original game, the assassins seem to be on the side of the marines, as Gordon first gets attacked by them right before getting ambushed by marines and left to die in a trash compactor. In this game, they are working for the Black Ops and hate the Marines (which makes more sense, as both the Black Ops and assassins wear all-black ninja-like clothing, but is still a retcon).
  • Scenic-Tour Level: Shephard takes a ride aboard an Osprey (Goose 7, to be specific) with his squad at the beginning of the game.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: By the start of the game, the HECU have opted to just abandon Black Mesa and their vengeance quest against Freeman altogether, with Shephard himself and several of his surviving comrades attempting to get the hell out of dodge throughout the story. While he manages to get out of Black Mesa thanks to the G-Man's intervention, the other Marines aren't so lucky, with many of them presumably dying in the nuclear blast.
  • Sealed Orders: The incoming Marines are not given their Leave No Witnesses orders before arriving at Black Mesa. Shephard's squad, of course, gets shot down before they receive their orders.
  • Semper Fi: The HECU, who are explicitly stated to be members of the US Marine Corps. They are the protagonists of this game, are given a sympathetic perspective and are shown to be a Badass Army and a Band of Brothers despite the situation in Black Mesa going From Bad to Worse with each passing hour.
  • Shown Their Work: The M249's ammo belts are fully animated. They are properly removed and replaced when Shephard reloads the weapon, and the current belt visibly depletes as the weapon is fired.
  • Skybox: In the final scene, the skybox was cleverly used to present a teleportation event without breaking the flow with a loading screen. Since the player has a very limited view of "outside" through the open door of an Osprey, giving each side of the skybox a different texture was sufficient to create the illusion of seeing Earth one moment and Xen the next. An unseen side of the skybox contains a hidden message which alludes to this "hack".
  • Sniper Rifle: Replacing the crossbow of Half-Life is the M40a1 Sniper rifle, which previously appeared there as an unusable weapon used solely by HECU snipers. Here, Shephard is given training on how to use one during Boot Camp, and later obtains one after killing a Black Ops sniper in Foxtrot Uniform.
  • Stealthy Mook: As with Half-Life, female Black Ops are this. They use silenced weapons, never speak like their male counterparts, and on Hard Difficulty, use an Invisibility Cloak that the Male variants lack.
  • Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Just before taking the elevator down to face the Gene Worm, Shephard can stock up on plenty of ammunition from a nearby storeroom. The security guard guarding the area lampshades this by encouraging Shephard to take as much as he can.
  • Trash the Set: Black Mesa facility is destroyed by a nuclear warhead. Notably, Valve was happy to go along with this specifically because it would force them to create a new location for a potential sequel.
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable: Early in the game, there's a section where you need to use a firearm to blow up some explosives to clear some debris that's blocking a power loader from moving. If you somehow arrive here with no ammo for any of your weapons, it becomes impossible to progress the game. The game does give you a grenade and a mag of Desert Eagle rounds just before this room, but if you fire these at random into nothing for whatever reason, you're stuck.
  • Unique Enemy:
    • There is only one Black Ops soldier that uses the M40A1 Sniper Rifle; every other one uses the M4/MP5.
    • There is a total of only one Black Ops AH-64 Apache fought, during "The Package" just outside the parking garage.
    • The Alien Controllers only appear once here, despite being common endgame enemies in the original game.
    • A total of three Alien Grunts are fought, with their Race X equivalents, the Shock Troopers, quickly superseding them in later levels.
  • Unorthodox Reload:
    • The first is the M249 which, while averting One Bullet Clips, has an odd reload animation where Shephard tosses the belt over the bolt and closes the cover rather than inserting the first round.
    • The second is the M40a1 which is depicted as having a detachable box magazine rather than an integral one. Either it was overlooked by Gearbox or animating a reload animation of topping off the magazine would've been difficult.
  • Vader Breath: The "Gonomes", the final evolution of the Headcrab Zombies, can easily be identified by their rattling noise.
  • Van in Black: The Black Ops use unmarked black M35 trucks as transports. While lacking surveillance equipment, they still possess the ominous part.
  • Weaponized Offspring: According to Word of God, the Spore Launcher is an infant Shock Trooper.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Race X and poor Adrian Shephard. Marc Laidlaw has said that he doesn't want to develop further on Race X, saying that they were only experiments by Gearbox for future games and that Gearbox would have developed them further if they were still doing expansions for Half-Life. He has also jokingly called Adrian a case of Schrödinger's cat, as he is in a state of being both canonical and non-canonical at the same time. His ultimate fate depends on what Valve wants to do with him in the future. Gabe Newell has reportedly wanted to incorporate him in the canon for some time.
  • What Measure Is a Mook?: Here, you play as Corporal Shephard, a newly-inducted HECU Marine who's part of the military task force sent to silence all those involved in the Black Mesa Incident. While Shephard arrives and barely recovers from unconsciousness just as the military begins pulling out, your allies are all trying to work together to pull out.

Top