At the start of the game a lot of strange and freaky events occur in a short amount of time that really get the ball rolling.
The first, and most obvious is that you magically appear on a train with perfect timing: Barney is not only on duty in the train station, but he is also next in line to receive a random citizen that needs to be given a thorough beating. Gordon is basically dropped right into Barney's lap by what seems to be sheer fluke to everyone except Gordon. Ofcourse we all know it's the G-man's handy work here, but I believe the G-man did so much more than just that.
You see, the game would have been extremely different had Lamar not jumped into the teleporter with you. You would not have been seen by Dr Breen, and so the citadel would not have gone on full alert, and the combine would not start openly attacking you in the streets. Not only that, but the underground railway network would not have been discovered by the combine, and you wouldn't have led the combine forces directly to Black Mesa and to Eli's secret base. Had Eli not been captured by the combine, you would have never had to launch a rescue mission, and had you not appeared to a matyr after the destruction of Nova Prospekt, the citizens would have never risen up into full scale revolt. Had the full scale revolt never begun, you never would have been able to been able to reach the citadel in such an amazingly short amount of time, nor would you have been given any motivation to do so. The G-man stresses the lack of time at the end, which leads me to believe time was of the essence.
This leads me back to Lamar, who is the sole reason for Gordon's cover being blown so quickly. Am I the only one crazy enough to think that perhaps Lamar's actions aren't quite so random as they seemed? It's too big a plot twist to have been caused randomly. Remember that at first we all thought the resonance cascade was a random occurance, and some of us even thought that Gordon had simply screwed up the experiment somehow! Now we all know that Dr Breen rigged the experiment and that the cascade was meant to happen. So then, just how random do you think Lamar is then? Especially considering the G-man's power to make people see things, it wouldn't of been hard for him to make the headcrab think it was hunting a bird that flew into the vent and then onto Gordon's head just as the teleport sequence was starting up...
The first, and most obvious is that you magically appear on a train with perfect timing: Barney is not only on duty in the train station, but he is also next in line to receive a random citizen that needs to be given a thorough beating. Gordon is basically dropped right into Barney's lap by what seems to be sheer fluke to everyone except Gordon. Ofcourse we all know it's the G-man's handy work here, but I believe the G-man did so much more than just that.
You see, the game would have been extremely different had Lamar not jumped into the teleporter with you. You would not have been seen by Dr Breen, and so the citadel would not have gone on full alert, and the combine would not start openly attacking you in the streets. Not only that, but the underground railway network would not have been discovered by the combine, and you wouldn't have led the combine forces directly to Black Mesa and to Eli's secret base. Had Eli not been captured by the combine, you would have never had to launch a rescue mission, and had you not appeared to a matyr after the destruction of Nova Prospekt, the citizens would have never risen up into full scale revolt. Had the full scale revolt never begun, you never would have been able to been able to reach the citadel in such an amazingly short amount of time, nor would you have been given any motivation to do so. The G-man stresses the lack of time at the end, which leads me to believe time was of the essence.
This leads me back to Lamar, who is the sole reason for Gordon's cover being blown so quickly. Am I the only one crazy enough to think that perhaps Lamar's actions aren't quite so random as they seemed? It's too big a plot twist to have been caused randomly. Remember that at first we all thought the resonance cascade was a random occurance, and some of us even thought that Gordon had simply screwed up the experiment somehow! Now we all know that Dr Breen rigged the experiment and that the cascade was meant to happen. So then, just how random do you think Lamar is then? Especially considering the G-man's power to make people see things, it wouldn't of been hard for him to make the headcrab think it was hunting a bird that flew into the vent and then onto Gordon's head just as the teleport sequence was starting up...
