Combine vs. Xen - Absolution

There actually isn't any explanation for the drained oceans. It's just assumed they were drained by the Combine for some reason. And I don't ever recall any reference to Xen by any of those characters, except perhaps in passing once or twice. Certainly not in any way I'd consider substantial.

Staying in the dark worked in the first game because you rarely had anybody to converse with, and they were all just as much in the dark as you were. But when you're placed in Half-Life 2 with far more NPC interaction and no way to conjure information from them, it becomes something of a problem.

No, I don't want the bible to go public. I just want more of it put to use. Believe me, I want to retain a sense of mystery. But when you're developing a sequel in a pretty drastic new direction, then I want to be informed. For all that's great about Half-Life 2, I don't think Valve quite pulled this aspect off.
 
Sources tell me that the relationship will be defined clearer before the end of the Episodes.

-Angry Lawyer
 
Rofl.
We WILL learn more about everything, VALVe will tell us someday (through their games). Even little things like Portal might explain a bit more, and I reckon we might see Xen in Episode Three (I hope so too, Xen -in the source engine *drools*). And the PC Gamer article mentioned we'ed learn a lot more about the Vortigaunts, so we will learn more about Combine and Xen.
 
We were told we would learn more about the G-Man in HL2 as well, but that arguably didn't happen.
 
Wasn't there something about Combine portals draing the oceans?

the G-Man in HL2 as well, but that arguably didn't happen.
Click to expand...
Ah, but we have learnt this much -
1. he is not human
2. he is not a government agent.
3. he is not helping Freeman, just using him as a tool.
4. he does not work for the Combine
5. he now hates vortigaunts too.
6. vortigaunts are stronger than him, despite all his power
7. Breen knows/knew about him, and possibly Kleiner did too.
 
99.vikram said:
Wasn't there something about Combine portals draing the oceans?


Ah, but we have learnt this much -
1. he is not human
2. he is not a government agent.
3. he is not helping Freeman, just using him as a tool.
4. he does not work for the Combine
5. he now hates vortigaunts too.
6. vortigaunts are stronger than him, despite all his power
7. Breen knows/knew about him, and possibly Kleiner did too.
Click to expand...

QFT except "vortigaunts are stronger than him, despite all his power". If this was true, why did it take eight to stop him, and two to get you away?


Gordon-Shepherd said:
what is marc laidlaws email?
Click to expand...

I don't understand what you mean. :(
 
99.vikram said:
Ah, but we have learnt this much -
1. he is not human
2. he is not a government agent.
3. he is not helping Freeman, just using him as a tool.
Click to expand...

You also easily learned these things from the first game. There's nothing new here.

Everything else is of fairly minor detail. When I say I want to know more about the G-Man, I want to know motive, purpose, what he is, and how he works. Things like "Oh, well other people might (with a certain interpretation of words) know about him" hold little value, and "He doesn't work for the Combine" is so blatantly obvious it's not worth mentioning.

The only time we learned anything substantial about G-Man was during his little encounter with the vortigaunts in Episode 1. That brief scene said more about the G-Man than HL2 did in its entirety.
 
(first post) nice conclusion... answers A LOT of questions...
 
*just a random note*
I emailed the writer of the Half Life saga guide, and he replied saying that he knows of the evidence but is too busy to change it, although he says he will update sometime in the near future.

Maybe there is progress after all :p
 
That's not fair!

When I mailed him I never got a reply :frown:
 
Ahem just to throw in my little enterpretation of hl1 / hl2:

Pre HL1;

G-man; human or alien being with great powers. Rise through government ranks. Gets high rank unofficially. Advisor maybe for the us government og maybe somesort of secret society.

Breen; Administrator of Black Mesa, under the authority of perhaps us military (since the facility is top secret this is unofficial). Unofficially unofficial he is a pawn for the G-man.

Gordon; MIT graduate and having some potential (as the gman is looking for).

Adrian; Soldier, initially in the gmans spotlight too.

HL1;

Earth (US Black mesa) initiates a small conflict with the xen controlling race. The nihilanths party...

Earth wins as the g-man states in the end of hl. "We are in control of the xen for the time being."

Gordon; is selected as the g-mans pet or weapon...

Adrian; detained?!??!?!?

Pre hl2:

Combine in pursuit of the nihilanths race / whatever. Comes to xen. Finds earth forces there. Beats us there them moves on to earth itself and beats us here.

HL2:

G-man; uses gordon against the combine.

Combine wants to use the human race / planet. Ressources and well uhm .. meat for the grinder i guess.

Post hl2 / episode one;

G-man; it is insinuated that the g-man will hire out ur services...

Gordon; is ripped from the g-mans control.

So I think there are a lot of sides.

Humans, want to have babies and be free and have dogz.

Gordon, presumably likes dogs, and humans too.

Adrian, worked for the us government, now?

Vortigaunts, eternal slaves for the nihilanth now free and now fighting the combine.

Nihilanth party, a galactic (or dimensional power) enslaved the vortigaunts got whupped by the combine and in the end by earth.

Combine, invaders and assimilators. I guess they want ressources and want to rule the world(s).

G-man unknown motives, seemed to want to have earth win in hl1, seemed to not care for earth in hl2. Im thinking he wants the xen world. That is if he wants something and not just the $$$ from renting gordon out...
 
We've known most of this for some time. As for the rest:

G-man; human or alien being with great powers. Rise through government ranks. Gets high rank unofficially. Advisor maybe for the us government og maybe somesort of secret society.
Click to expand...
He's the second one, as far as we can tell. We don't really know anything else about him.
Breen: well, yeah, but we don't know his relationship to the G-Man.
Gordon: yes.
Adrian: no, the G-Man didn't really see him coming.
The G-Man wasn't neccessarily referring to Earth when he said "his" party controlled Xen.
Everything else: pretty good summary.
 
Lotsa people know about the Gman, Colonel Cubbage, Dr. Breen, Gordon Freeman, (well he is his employee, I wonder how much he's getting paid to do this job?)
 
To be honest I think any theory associating G-Man with Black Mesa is ill founded. I don't think G-Man's employers are the Combine, Earth, Nihilanth etc. They're someone/something we haven't even seen yet.

Either that or there's such a mindfvck of shifting alliances that it's not worth typing out.
 
My pen-pal recently played HL2 and came up with *drumroll* the Gman is God-man theory :rolleyes:
 
Well, if you look at it from the point of view where Half-Life 2 had not happened yet, we we're never aware of the Combine. Thus, an additional race was not widely thought of. Half-Life 1 left me with this: xenians attacked earth, earth tried to contain the situation, portal opened, a guy in a suit follows me around and makes me say "WTF ARE YOU DOING?!" several times, i see him at the end, the credits roll and i think to myself "wait...what?"

so what if gman is from yet an additional race huh?
what if im getting sloppier because my puncuation and capitalization is sucking huh?
oh and more importantly, how the hell did one MIT grad pwn a bunch of combine soldiers with a crowbar? godmode thats how

therefore
gman = godmode

wait...wtf?
*edit*
sorry i forgot this was about combine and xen

combine sucks
xen doesnt technically exist on our plane of reality
so how can we take over something that we cant define?

once again

godmode with a crowbar

*double edit*
gordon pwns combine soldiers, creatures of xen, the usmc, and a couple of annoying npcs in hl1 with the crowbar.
 
It's a borderworld, dude. Who's to say it doesn't exist on our plane of reality? Anyway, for something that didn't technically exist, there was a ****load of jumping puzzles on it.
 
Oops. Let me restate what I meant. It doesn't exist on our plane of reality. It does exist, but as a borderworld it is somewhat of a different dimension or at least a sort of station between dimensions. Then again I'm a noob, but correct me if I'm wrong. Like I said, I still have no idea wtf happened.

In other dimensions they apparantly don't believe in walkways though (I hear you on the jumping puzzles).
 
Another possible answer to the Xen vs Combine debate is that the Combine didnt know about the existance of Earth until after Black Mesa.

According to the Prima Game Guide (which was written with the help of Signor Laidlaw), the Combine were 'attracted to Earth by the dimensional Rift caused by the Black Mesa incident, a Galactic infection of Catastrophic proportions launched an invasive force that over powered Earth'

In my opinion this would explain a few things. For example how come the Combine can't teleport if they have access to Xen but instead have to use drop ships? Why are they so determined to steal the teleportation technology developed by Kliener/Vance/Eli if they had just teleported to Earth from Xen?

The Teleport that was being used by Dr Breen to escape to the Combine planet at the end of HL2 was massive, and used almost all the power of the Citadel. It would seem that entering the Combine dimension from Earth (and vice versa) takes a large amount of energy and not an easy exercise. I think that the the Combine are possibly in a different dimension to both Xen AND Earth. This is why everything we fight seems to be manufactured on Earth and not just telported in from the Combine Homeworld, also why the Nihilanth fled to Xen to escape....the Combine couldnt get to it easily.

So the interdimensional rift opens on Earth due to the Black Mesa incident,eventually causing the Portal storms which were dropping Xen wildlife everywhere - this large dimenstional disturbance is then noticed by the Combine who then prepare an invasion. Im guessing the invasion force is probably quite small....but with the Xen wildlife causing havoc plus Dr Breen selling the Human race out they probably don't need to fight much. Im guessing they then wanted to build up a large force on Earth (Overwatch etc)and then use that force to invade and take over Xen. Klieners teleport technology was essential for this part. So in a way, the Combine only really invaded Earth as a stepping stone towards Xen.
 
You are absolutely correct in what you say Shade. The Combine was attracted to Earth due to the resonance anomaly. They forced the portal storms wider in order to transport their Citadels, and it just so happened they managed to find the 'Xenian' rebels as well.

However, I've good reason to believe that due to Gordon's actions they no longer have any problems with Xen. As you can see, the Vortigaunts are stranded on Earth. The Combine invasion force was huge, but most if it was shipped off world once they had taken control of the large population centres.

And again, Shade, you are right - the Combine reside in an entirely different dimension to ours.
 
G-Man said that Xen was under human control in the HL ending.

EDIT: Actually, he said that Xen was under "our control". And considering the Nihilanths "He is not man" it gets kind of weird.
 
shade70 said:
the Combine were 'attracted to Earth by the dimensional Rift caused by the Black Mesa incident, a Galactic infection of Catastrophic proportions launched an invasive force that over powered Earth'
Click to expand...

Then how did the combine contact breen before bm incident before they even noticed it existed.
 
Piers89 said:
Then how did the combine contact breen before bm incident before they even noticed it existed.
Click to expand...
Where is there any evidence to suggest that the Combine had any form of contact to Breen prior to the BM incident?
 
I dunno, i just thought thats what was, i mean if you want evidence, theres breen wanting to push the thingymajigs to 105% in the test chamber, and also the fact he prepared the satelite which would make the portal storms large scale...
 
Piers89 said:
I dunno, i just thought thats what was, i mean if you want evidence, theres breen wanting to push the thingymajigs to 105% in the test chamber, and also the fact he prepared the satelite which would make the portal storms large scale...
Click to expand...


Of course he wanted the Anti-Mass Spectrometer (yeah!) to be at 105 percent. He's a freaking scientist!

And Gina made the sattelite. (and the other woman, whose name i can't spell)
 
We don't know how much of Decay is canon, so I think the only Black Mesa events that can be taken into account are HL1's at this stage.
 
Samon said:
We don't know how much of Decay is canon, so I think the only Black Mesa events that can be taken into account are HL1's at this stage.
Click to expand...

As long as Valve doesn't say it's not canon, we can probably assume it is. I hope that's how it works. ;)
 
Samon said:
That isn't fact.
Click to expand...

Well ok then it doesnt necssarily tie it to breen, but the satelite is still relevant, it would seem a bit too convenient for it to be there just for the sake of it being there.
My point being that surely the combine must have contacted someone??
Also, the military seemed to be on pretty strict orders for it to be prevented from being launched from whoever gave them their orders.
 
Piers89 said:
Well ok then it doesnt necssarily tie it to breen, but the satelite is still relevant, it would seem a bit too convenient for it to be there just for the sake of it being there.
My point being that surely the combine must have contacted someone??
Also, the military seemed to be on pretty strict orders for it to be prevented from being launched from whoever gave them their orders.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life said:
[...]riding across the facility on a railway system in order to reach a satellite rocket that must be launched in order to reverse the resonance cascade
Click to expand...

The "fact" that Breen prepared the satellite for the Combine invasion is stated here. However the theory is flawed, because it states that Breen was contaced by the Combine even before the resonance cascade, which is impossible since the Combine learned about Earth after that event.
 
Samon, Decay offers a feasible explanation for the satellite, one that is not contradicted in any shape or form by other Half-Life canon, (The continuation of the portal storms could easily have been caused by Nihilanth's death seeing as, A, he was the one holding the portals open, and B, because you see portals fly out of his head as he dies), so why assume it was wrong? Should the benefit of the doubt not be given and Ottoman’s Razor be applied? Why assume it could be wrong?

And BTW, Piers, the offical Half-Life 2 stratagy guide says that the Combine were attracked to Earth by the energy given off by the portal storms. It may only be a stratagy guide but surly Marc Laidlaw or someone else at Valve had a read-through before it was published?
 
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