Gonome theory

[Danny_ZQ]

If you've played Opposing Force, then you probably know that if a headcrab is in control of a human for long enough, it becomes mutated (A.K.A. a gonome). But, when I played Half-Life 2 (and it's episodes) I think we all noticed there were NO gonomes. My theory is that the Combine noticed how dangerous a gonome was, so they created a new Surpression Field... but to stop zombie mutation. What do you think?

 

[Higlac]

Either that or Opposing Force was not made by Valve and therefore anything found within the games isn't necessarily considered Canon?

 

[ríomhaire]

The actual reason: Opposing Force was made by Gearbox and Valve didn't want to use Gonomes as an enemy type in HL2.

My preferred reason: A zombie will only transform into a Gonome given a huge supply of food and all the areas we find with zombies in in HL2 just have too much zombies and not enough food so none have gotten enough mass to continue their transformation. When you go to Ravenholm initially for instance all the zombies are hibernating.

Other people theorize that the Combine genetically engineered the headcrabs they put in their shells to prevent it.

 

[Kyzr]

The actual reason: Opposing Force was made by Gearbox and Valve didn't want to use Gonomes as an enemy type in HL2.

My preferred reason: A zombie will only transform into a Gonome given a huge supply of food and all the areas we find with zombies in in HL2 just have too much zombies and not enough food so none have gotten enough mass to continue their transformation. When you go to Ravenholm initially for instance all the zombies are hibernating.

Other people theorize that the Combine genetically engineered the headcrabs they put in their shells to prevent it.

The problem with the combine engineering the headcrabs is that combine are also victims of headcrabs. If they can engineer headcrabs not to become gonomes, they why not make it so they don't attack other combine? Although there are holes in this idea as well. Just throwing ideas out there.

 

[Ennui]

Didn't Laidlaw say at one point a while ago that the Opposing Force and Blue Shift storylines are not considered canon (what with Race X, etc)?

 

[Vegeta897]

Canon or not, I think all HL fans considered them awesome additions to the roster of enemies, and Valve knew it. No, Valve's reason for not including them in HL2 was not because they weren't 'canon'. It's because they didn't fill a unique enemy type. Instead of having normal zombies and then gonomes which were basically just faster and stronger zombies with a ranged attack, Valve invented 2 new zombies (paired with 2 new headcrabs) that fleshed out that enemy type role. That's just good game design.

 

[ríomhaire]

The problem with the combine engineering the headcrabs is that combine are also victims of headcrabs. If they can engineer headcrabs not to become gonomes, they why not make it so they don't attack other combine? Although there are holes in this idea as well. Just throwing ideas out there.

Headcrabs probably aren't intelligent enough to distinguish beyond "food" and "other headcrabs, leave them alone". You might as well ask why they didn't give Overwatch troops giant lasers in their faces.

As for canon:

hi, daniel, i won't be able to clear up much. It was a deliberate decision to have gearbox never call him barney in blue shift, only calhoun. Raising the bar is not a game, so material is presented differently there; manifestations differ in every medium. Gearbox took our barney and did their own best version, but i'm not sure that barney is the same barney i'm picturing when i picture valve's barney. In the time bs was created, there were many barneys. Only gradually have the redundant creature and character types slowly settled into iconic individuals...it's an ongoing process. Gearbox did what was right for their games. Even though they had feedback and guidance from us, they didn't always listen to it, and they steered by their own lights, etc., etc. I wasn't very close to the creation of the expansion packs, and much more concerned with how to move the story forward and open up the universe; so i only take the games created by valve into consideration when i am working on the story...there are more than enough potential contradictions in our own designs without me worrying about contradictions in the inventions of other developers who were not part of our initial creative meetings. I know this is confusing to fans; it's partly a byproduct of the way expansion packs were created, the way they were packaged and published, and also i was very new to this whole concept at the time. It never occurred to me that large chunks of the story would be taken out of our hands, changes made beyond our control, and then have the stuff handed back with some odd unexpected kinks in it. So try not to worry about it, and simply do my best with material directly in my control. However, as to your last question, there was pressure on us to set half-life 2 at black mesa, which a lot of us felt would be creative death; it was important to break new ground. Nuking black mesa was a good way to ensure that we had a way to avoid setting half-life 2 there. You might say i gave the g-man his orders. The whole issue of canon is something the fans came up with. I guess you will be able to identify as canon those story elements we continue to build on and develop and mention repeatedly as the story progresses. Others might fall by the wayside once they've served their purpose. Couldn't you say the same of us all?
Marc laidlaw

hi, ben, i am going to swear off contributing to this bizarre argument
about canonical versus noncanonical works. If we can make good
entertaining use of the elements of opfor in future games, then we may
well do that, and at that time i guess folks will have a better idea of
where we stand on all this. We can't speak about story ideas outside of
the games themselves--it's meaningless. The games must stand on their
own, contradictions and all. My only hope is to keep unreeling the
story in such a way that it will continue to please the fans and spark
interesting conversations. Thanks for writing!

Marc laidlaw

I've seen some people take these quotes as "it's not canon unless we decide to use it in a future game." I generally take it to mean "it's part of the world and canon unless we contradict it in future, which we may do."