Since, I think plot twists are really why HL1 was so great, I've been thinking. When you really get down to it, Gordon Freeman has been indirectly and directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Is it possible that eventually he's going to have to "own up to humanity"? Is it possible that eventually people begin to hate Freeman despite everything he has done? I just think it would be an awesome plot twist.
Gordon's Retribution??
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How is he indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths? If you're refering to the test chamber then if he hadn't done it Mossman would have. If you're refering to the rebelion then humanitly would have been stalkerised if he didn't do it.r2000 said:
Killing soldiers in HL1 was self defense. They were sent in to kill anything that
related to the alien infestation, including scientists.
The CPs in HL2 were self preservation, especially once you put the HEV suit
back on, and were obviously recognizable as the symbol of he rebellion.
related to the alien infestation, including scientists.
The CPs in HL2 were self preservation, especially once you put the HEV suit
back on, and were obviously recognizable as the symbol of he rebellion.
im just bein a devils advocate...
But you see, people don't care. All it takes is one charismatic man twisting around to the idea that Gordon caused this. But then again, what if the combine reached Earth because of the Satelite? He never had to launch the satelite, theoretically. Yet he did.
And then theres the fact that everywhere in HL2 that Gordon went left chaos and death to everyone. All the resistance stations are being overrun. The people in the apartments were probably sent to Nova Prospekt. The capture of Black Mesa East.
But you see, people don't care. All it takes is one charismatic man twisting around to the idea that Gordon caused this. But then again, what if the combine reached Earth because of the Satelite? He never had to launch the satelite, theoretically. Yet he did.
And then theres the fact that everywhere in HL2 that Gordon went left chaos and death to everyone. All the resistance stations are being overrun. The people in the apartments were probably sent to Nova Prospekt. The capture of Black Mesa East.
kupocake
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Show me one shred of evidence that links the Sataliete to the Combine invasion.r2000 said:
Mossman wouldn't have: she never even worked at Black Mesa, hence she exclaims that she "would have loved to have worked with Eli and Dr Kliener in their Black Mesa days" (paraphrase). The more likely canidates for taking Freeman's job would be Gina, Collette and the Trolley Attendent in the Sector C MesaMartRiomhaire said:
Absinthe
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Adabiviak said:
"Innocent" may not be the appropriate term, but I'm going to reiterate a point I made in the other topic.
The soldiers were following government orders and it's reasonable to assume that quite a few of them had issues with the mission. In HL1, right before you launch the satellite, you overhear two marines conversating.
"I didn't sign on for this shit."
"Monsters, sure. But civilians? Who ordered this operation anyway?"
This also indicates that the soldiers were just as in the dark as Gordon Freeman was. In the end, they came off to me as clueless troops that were simply doing their jobs. Given the nature of their mission, there's no telling what refusal would have brought them. Their objective of containment could have been to silence everybody involved, but perhaps they didn't want to take the risk of some kind of alien disease or infection spreading outside the walls of Black Mesa, so they killed those that were present during the resonance cascade.
Anybody remember dialogue between two grunts before the aforementioned conversation? Went something like this.
"So who is this guy, Freeman?"
"They say he was at ground zero."
"Science team? You think he was responsible? Sabotage, maybe?"
"Yeah, maybe. All I know for sure is he's been killing my buddies."
"Oh, he'll pay. He will definitely pay."
As far as they know, you purposefully set this whole thing off. You are the enemy. Not them.
Laivasse
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This retribution thing has crossed my mind a couple of times, actually. To be honest I don't see many other ways it can go. Sure Gordon didn't *intentionally* do anything wrong, but whether he's fighting for good or not, he's left 100's of dead people and masses of destruction in his wake.
It could also possibly be that he has been manipulated all along by GMan to cause maximum damage - perhaps it was the death of Nihilanth that triggered the portal storms? Plus inflaming the wrath of the Combine towards humans, causing a reactor explosion at the end of HL2 in which many innocent people WILL die...OK so it all seemed so natural and justified at the time, but who is to say that he isn't just an unwitting tool in a larger picture of destruction. With all the death that has followed Gordon I honestly can't see him having a happy ending.
It could also possibly be that he has been manipulated all along by GMan to cause maximum damage - perhaps it was the death of Nihilanth that triggered the portal storms? Plus inflaming the wrath of the Combine towards humans, causing a reactor explosion at the end of HL2 in which many innocent people WILL die...OK so it all seemed so natural and justified at the time, but who is to say that he isn't just an unwitting tool in a larger picture of destruction. With all the death that has followed Gordon I honestly can't see him having a happy ending.
I can just imagine Breen in Aftermath, turning the population against Freeman.
"Look around you, look at the damage you're so called "One free man" has inflicted. Open you're eyes, do not be a slave to his wrong doings anymore..."
Or something like that
"Look around you, look at the damage you're so called "One free man" has inflicted. Open you're eyes, do not be a slave to his wrong doings anymore..."
Or something like that
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I didn't say she had a job there. I was merely trying to say that if Gordon hadn't been in the test chamber someone else would have. And since they were going up for the same job so I used her as an example because if Gordon didn't have the job then Mossman may have gotten it so then Mossman would be the that was in the test chamber.Samon said:
Laivasse said:
Except the other survivors of Black Mesa (Barney, Eli, Kleiner, and others),
credit him with having saved the day. Or at least being important enough
in the events at Black Mesa to have formed the inspiration for the resistance. And this many years after the portal storms and combine takeover, there are not likely to be a lot of soldiers starting a
"Black Mesa veterans for truth" campaign against him.
G-man set off a nuke, I don't think what Gordon did while trying to
survive and escape from BM counts as maximum damage compared to
that and what happened after. G-Man does seem to have a particular
"liking" for Gordon, but he could just as easily have manipulated other scientists and personnel at Black Mesa to accomplish what he wanted.
There are other reasons for him wanting to keep Gordon around.
Nobody (aside from Gordon and G-Man) should be aware that he even
fought Nihlianth. They know he survived long enough to get to Xen,
and that he went to fix the problem that caused the resonance cascade
in the first place.
We cannot be sure of what will happen with the Citadel, until
Aftermath is released. What we can infer from the trailer is that the
explosion at the end of HL2 was not quite as devastating as we
assumed.
The writers and coders at Valve are to say.
And I don't think they view Gordon's adventure as quite so dark.
On the larger scale, HL is as much a story of change and discovery
as it is of destruction; we just see it thru one limited perspective.
The vortigaunts will protect the Freeman, if nobody else with stand up for him.
Laivasse
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I think you're slightly misunderstanding the point of my post, or if not then I'm not understanding why you have such problems with it, at least.
I'm not claiming that Barney, Kleiner, Eli Alyx are suddenly going to berserk and nail Gordon to a cross. Simply that from a certain perspective Gordon could be seen to have caused a lot more harm than good, and what with karma and everything the saga might not just end with Gordon and Alyxriding off into the sunset on a motorbike.
Those aren't meant to be separate points. If you take it that G-Man set Gordon up to kill Nihilanth, and that the Nihilanth's death triggered the portal storms, then Gordon is "just an unwitting tool in a larger picture of destruction", as I said. In that case Gordon made Earth uninhabitable, doomed humanity, and perhaps even attracted the attention of the Combine in one fell stroke. I don't know what GMan setting off a nuke has to do with anything, but nuking Black Mesa is small fry compared to what Gordon may be responsible for (although he is, of course, unwitting...). Potentially the same scenario at the end of HL2.
Well I doubt it's going to turn into a bouquet of flowers. It should be obvious.Destroying the reactor may have seemed like the most natural and righteous thing to do at the time, but how do we know the outcome is going to be beneficial in the grand scale of things? Who would have predicted at the end of HL1 that HL2 would be set on a totally ruined Earth under alien rule? What if we come back to something even worse, or potentially worse, in HL3, like the threat of subjugation by whatever force GMan represents?
I'm not saying Gordon's going to be sent to hell or anything, but maybe HL3 will end with some kind of life-for-everyone sacrifice to set things right, or the kind of ending where the hero ends up missing presumed dead (but people are free to speculate on how he might have survived). Something like that, or an ending that shows everything has turned out rosy for everyone but Gordon, who is condemned to forever waft around the universe as GMan's replacement, or something of the same flavour but less corny...
For all this to work well you'd need an expository scene, though, where GMan actually explains how your actions worked more towards the bad than the good, in a pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you, "haaa, sucker!" kind of way. And then you kick his arse and get the bittersweet ending, or whatever.
Come on, the story IS dark. State one happy thing that has happened throughout all of HL1 and 2. HL1 ends with Gordon being locked in some intergalactic cellar, HL2 starts with Earth uninhabitable and mankind buggered, and then HL2 ends with a big explosion (which later gets played down, but whatever). There's nothing to suggest a Matrix Revolutions ending yet, thank God, and I haven't seen any "change and discovery" either.
I'm not claiming that Barney, Kleiner, Eli Alyx are suddenly going to berserk and nail Gordon to a cross. Simply that from a certain perspective Gordon could be seen to have caused a lot more harm than good, and what with karma and everything the saga might not just end with Gordon and Alyxriding off into the sunset on a motorbike.
+Laivasse said:
Laivasse said:
Those aren't meant to be separate points. If you take it that G-Man set Gordon up to kill Nihilanth, and that the Nihilanth's death triggered the portal storms, then Gordon is "just an unwitting tool in a larger picture of destruction", as I said. In that case Gordon made Earth uninhabitable, doomed humanity, and perhaps even attracted the attention of the Combine in one fell stroke. I don't know what GMan setting off a nuke has to do with anything, but nuking Black Mesa is small fry compared to what Gordon may be responsible for (although he is, of course, unwitting...). Potentially the same scenario at the end of HL2.
Well I doubt it's going to turn into a bouquet of flowers. It should be obvious.Destroying the reactor may have seemed like the most natural and righteous thing to do at the time, but how do we know the outcome is going to be beneficial in the grand scale of things? Who would have predicted at the end of HL1 that HL2 would be set on a totally ruined Earth under alien rule? What if we come back to something even worse, or potentially worse, in HL3, like the threat of subjugation by whatever force GMan represents?
I'm not saying Gordon's going to be sent to hell or anything, but maybe HL3 will end with some kind of life-for-everyone sacrifice to set things right, or the kind of ending where the hero ends up missing presumed dead (but people are free to speculate on how he might have survived). Something like that, or an ending that shows everything has turned out rosy for everyone but Gordon, who is condemned to forever waft around the universe as GMan's replacement, or something of the same flavour but less corny...
For all this to work well you'd need an expository scene, though, where GMan actually explains how your actions worked more towards the bad than the good, in a pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you, "haaa, sucker!" kind of way. And then you kick his arse and get the bittersweet ending, or whatever.
Come on, the story IS dark. State one happy thing that has happened throughout all of HL1 and 2. HL1 ends with Gordon being locked in some intergalactic cellar, HL2 starts with Earth uninhabitable and mankind buggered, and then HL2 ends with a big explosion (which later gets played down, but whatever). There's nothing to suggest a Matrix Revolutions ending yet, thank God, and I haven't seen any "change and discovery" either.
Absinthe
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HL2 was a far darker game than its predecessor, IMO. The charred bodies, the subjugation and conversion of the human race, Ravenholm... Hell, just take one look at a stalker and go from there. If you look at some of the old hand-drawn map layouts, you'd know there was a time when Valve considered putting the corpses of children in the game.
I can only believe that the HL games will get darker, especially when we begin to glimpse at the hidden plan the G-Man is enacting.
I can only believe that the HL games will get darker, especially when we begin to glimpse at the hidden plan the G-Man is enacting.
I gotta agree.Laivasse said:
Personally here's my plot progression.
Aftermath: Humanity is saved but at terrible cost. Almost all of civilization is destroyed.
HL3: Gordon obliterates the combine for some reason. Unfortunately his actions cause other evil entities (the people the g-man works for) to rise to power.
Hl4: Gordon returns to Earth only to be an enemy. His only friends are the vortiguants.
HL5: The good ending... Freeman helps Earth fight off the G-Man's empire, and ultimately destroys the G-Man.
Laivasse said:
I think Laidlaw has the skill to prevent a matrix-esque ending.
That said, I do believe that the satelite combined with the efforts of the nihilanth had brought the resonance cascade under control. If you notice, few wild creatures are there at the end of HL's Black Mesa parts. But when we kill the Nihilanth, portals open up, and all hell begins to break loose. And thus the portal storms started. Causing Xen and Earth's dimensions to share in each other. And that attracted another dimensional race, the combine. And they invaded our dimension, and enslaved our dimension. And thus we are where we're at.
Its inevitable that Gordon will be viewed as an enemy. People will blame him for the RC, the Portal Storms, the destruction of C17. It would really suck if Aftermath ended with what appeared to be the destruction of C17 with all the people in it. And Gordon surviving because he was pursuing Breen or someone else into the wasteland.
You said earlier:
But I think you are basing what you see on the wrong source of literary inspiration.
You seem to be painting Gordon as a Prometheus figure, one who is required to
make a great sacrifice in return for the terrible gift he chose to give mankind.
But that's just it, Gordon didn't choose. He had events thrust upon him. And the
"terrible gift" (the existence of portals and understanding that other life forms
exist in the Universe(s), was something that others were already setting up
behind the scenes. Gordons seems to be one of the few scientists at Black
Mesa who was not in on all the alien experiments.
To me, HL and HL2 set Gordon up as an "everyman" figure. Somebody who does
not appear that remarkable, but who can accomplish things they may not have
thought themselves capable of when pressed. HL even establishes that the
other scientists consider him as something of a hired intern at the start
(one who seems to be habitually late for work). And in HL2 even Barney can't
help hacking on you: "That MIT education is really paying off, here's your crowbar".
But, when the crisis of both stories occurs, Gordon is set on a path of survival and
rescue. In HL1, not just of himself and the other personnel of Black Mesa, but
thru the events of the story, of the rest of the world from ther potential of a terrible
threat. He does have to make choices then, but those choices are made to get himself out of danger (which a sane person would try to do); to provide a path
of escape for others, and to work with his fellow scientists to fix the problems that have occured. In both stories he is the right man in the wrong place.
In HL2, he is still that everyman, in fact he emerges as just another refugee
from one of the other City developments.
Compared to Half Life 1, sure; compared to Resident Evil, Doom, or even Duke Nukem, not so much. The stories are definately bleak, but never hopeless.
From Gordon's point of view?
HL1:
He got out. (although he did not get an "I survived Black Mesa" T-shirt.)
He helped stop an alien invasion. He helped other scientists and personnel
to escape from Blank Mesa. He discovered hidden talents, and learned
a great deal more about the BM project than he was supposed to.
He got to travel to new and exotic places, save another race from slavery,
finish the important work started by other members of his team, and
even got a job offer out of it at the end.
suppostion, we don't know if he had any perception of time passing while he was
going thru that last portal, and in fact indications from the other main characters
would indicate very little time passed for him at all. So I don't think he would be
aware of it as a "cellar".
HL2:
He found out that some of the people that he had to leave behind while trying to clear a path out of Black Mesa actually did make it out themselves. And that
they did not seem to think the Earth was a total loss yet.
He finds (to his potential embarassment) that the race he saved seems to hold him
in some high regard (despite what he had to do to help them out in the end). And
that somehow the Lambda team (of which he was a part) became the symbol of
an underground resistance that still believes humanity has a chance at survival.
He finds out that his old suit still fits, and that he still has a chance to get that
beer somebody owes him.
He gets to travel to even more new, exotic, and heavily rendered places;
make new friends, see parts of the world he had never thought to visit before,
and he didn't have to renew his passport.
We don't know if it got played down, we didn't see the extent of the blast, only the
precursor. It was obvious that Valve wanted us to make assumptions on the severity
as a result.
//scrolls back up to the top of the screen.
Yup, this is being posted in rumors and speculation all right. Not to be pedantic, but
you and we would not be posting here if things had not changed over the course of the stories, or if there was a lack of discoveries and questions as to thier meaning.
And ríomhaire, you got me on that point... Yes indeed, the surviving voritgaunts would have related the story of "the Freemans mighty battle againstsss he who oppressed us". But that would represent a net positive in Gordons karmic balance.
What we are also overlooking, is that Valve has it within thier power to do the same
thing they did with HL1, offer two (or more) endings based on how you acted during
the game, and what you ultimately choose as your path.
Is This Tea
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This discussion is getting good... This kind of debate is the whole reason I came back to these forums! :thumbs: Please continue…
TheMtR
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Absinthe said:
Well darker it gets, its better to me!! Call me crazy but i just love darkness in games, feeling that your totaly hopless, feeling that everyone is dead or crippled till the dead except u,feeling that ur alone, feeling that you will die in the end...
I just hope that next halflife games will be dark like pitch from inside till out! No more mercy!!!
Laivasse
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cquinn said:
I actually agree with you a lot here with the 'everyman' type evaluation. That's certainly a massive part of Gordon's appeal for me, and it's the twist that makes Gordon such an interesting hero in many ways. Certainly, the idea of 'one ordinary man against the odds for the sake of everyone else' doesn't necessitate a dark ending for that guy. However, that 'one ordinary man against the odds' idea is not quite what happens in HL1, and definitely subtly different to the role Gordon plays in HL2 - it seems that you are largely disregarding the role that the GMan plays in events.
If it was just Gordon fighting for his life against a bunch of man-eating aliens, then definitely he should be destined for the most glorious of triumphant endings. But what actually happens is Gordon fighting for his life against man-eating aliens with a mysterious and sinister figure shepherding and observing along the way. Of course there are many ways that you can interpret GMan's appearance, but one of the most obvious is that he is popping up to make sure everything is going to plan - in essence, that Gordon is doing what GMan wants him to do. And when you consider that Gordon is no longer fighting solely for his own survival, and that he may just be working to help a far larger evil to come to pass, then it changes the whole perspective of his 'hero of the day' role.
Doesn't matter! :E You know and I know that Gordon is an unwitting tool (because we are Gordon, and we don't know what's going on), but karma might not make that distinction at the end, if it turns out that Gordon has been more of a mercenary for destruction than a hero for mankind. I personally think that would make for a cool, sad, bittersweet ending.
I disagree with you here, too:
In HL2 it is clearer than ever that Gordon is not just your average average-man-turned-saviour. He has acquired an almost messianic reputation in some quarters - but noone knows (or very few people know, and the ones that know aren't telling) about the existence of GMan and the fact that Gordon is not just the 'right man in the wrong place'. He has turned into an out and out mercenary! In HL2 his destructive power has become more of a phenomenon than a happy accident, something that GMan can count on and unleash when he needs it - when he needs things to be destroyed, basically.
Again, I'm not saying Gordon has any choice in the matter - part of GMan's genius seems to be that he makes Gordon think he's fighting for himself and his friends. What actually happens is that he ends up setting City17 up for enormous destruction, just for the sake of stopping one man (Breen) who probably had very little effective power anyway. Again, it could be seen as a triumph against the Combine - but the end of HL1 could have been seen as a triumph against the Xen forces and portal disturbances, until HL2 came along and we found out what really happened.
Some elements of the game are, frankly, hopeless. For instance, Earth IS ruined. I can't possibly see a way in which it could be restored. Tea straining the oceans for carnivorous leeches, and rat poison for the antlions...? No...
Ever since the resonance cascade it's been downhill for mankind. Whatever small, 'happy' things occur in the games, and no matter how many battles Gordon has survived, the only thing that has been achieved so far has been the 'terrible gift' that you mentioned. Whether this was delivered by sheer bad luck, or by GMan himself, or by GMan using Gordon as a tool, is debatable, but if we pretend that HL1 and HL2 had been infinitely non-linear and it had been possible to do your own thing and refuse to play the GMan's game - ie. if we pretend it's the real world - then Gordon does bear at least a little bit of responsibility for the destruction that occurred in his wake.
Regardless of whether Gordon suffered or had a sense of time passing when he went through that last portal at the end of HL1, it was NOT a happy ending by any means - if you take the alternate ending into account, it might be the worst ending possible! By going into the portal he lost 10 years of his life and was consigned to captivity in the service of the GMan. Valve could have decided to teleport you back to earth and your scientist friends, and have Gordon emerging into the sunlight, but they didn't. The importance of GMan is emphasised.
Let's also analyse some of the dramatic implication of HL1's ending, too.
1) You kill Nihilanth
2) Gman is happy, job well done, he hires you
3) he locks you up
4) Earth and mankind have a really bad day
5) Gman doesn't let you out, and continues not to let you out for 10 years
I certainly think that one of the ways of reading that chain of events is that Gordon was set-up in HL1, and may not have been fighting for the right things. Throughout the game you think you're fighting for your life and everyone else's, then it ends and you realise you've been fighting for GMan. Then Earth gets ruined. The expository scene I mentioned, where GMan eventually reveals what a sucker you've been, is certainly possible.
Ah, that brings a warm tear to my eye...a man after my own heart! :cheers:
NO MORE MERCY!
TheMtR
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Laivasse said:
Welcome to the club lad!!! :thumbs:
One last thing, i hope to see more beautiful blood stripes in next hl games. Making stain of blood in wall is not a art!!! In half life 2 i laughed like a mad when sawed poison zombies, i thought that they are taking warm bloodbath twice a day!!
Sulkdodds
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I agree mostly with Laivasse on this.
The end of HL1, while positive in some ways, was negative in others. Well done, you've saved the world! But it was all for this G-Man, this shadowy puppet master. And look, he (whoever he is) now controls Xen. Is that good?
HL2 even more so: hooray, the wicked witch is dead. But hold on a sec: that reactor doesn't look too stable. Just as you think you've won, just as you think you've finally brought about some good, there's this huge explosion and everything fades out, leaving you assuming that Alyx might be dead, that City-17 might be nuked, and weakly murmering 'what have I done?' (for the record, I thought it was a great ending). Never mind that with Aftermath we find Alyx is alive and our worse fears aren't reality: my point is that this is the way that Valve chose to show their ending. Hope turns to despair. That was the mood; that was the point.
No, I don't think HL is completely hopeless. There's warmth in the human characters, and there's hope yet for the future of the human race (and more importantly, those members of the human race you've come to love and care for. Like Barney :naughty. But it's one of those bittersweet tales. The characters survive; life goes on, but all is not right with the world.
And I think that a downbeat ending, or a general turning of the tide of opinion against Gordon, seems to fit in very well with Half-Life. Especially if it's manipulated by Breen or indeed the G-Man.
What the Half-Life series says to me is that Gordon Freeman is a man with no free choice. In the original he was directed around by senior scientists, knew nothing, had really no choice in the direction of research or any ethical matters. He was told to start those rotors. That it went wrong, and that it's very unlikely that was an accident, only seems to solidify this belief of mine: that as Gordon, you are a tool. Not just of the game designers, but who knows what.
The intro and one entire level is set on a train - how much more linear can you get than that? There is one route to go in the games and there are multiple instances where, to continue, you must take a course of action that you KNOW is going to **** things up: like when you turn on the power in HL1 (there's a scientist on top of it who's going to get electrocuted. And there's no way you can save him. And that's deliberate) or when, near the end of HL2, you hop into a little coffin-pod, KNOWING that the camera up ahead will see you and direct you into danger. It's quite obvious that getting in that pod will alert the combine to your presence (it ends up taking you directly to Breen and captivity), but you do it anyway because it's the only choice offered to you.
With the Resistance, you think perhaps you've found a cause worth fighting for. But hey, your contract is open to the highest bidder - and if that bidder happened to be Breen, you'd have to work for him. At the end of HL2, I was so furious at the G-Man: how dare you take me away from my friends and my fight? How dare you deny me this struggle, this battle to save humanity?
But you have no choices, and everything is orchestrated by him.
So I think that yes, turning the world against Gordon would be the perfect way for Valve to continue Half-Life. I don't know what's coming up, and I have no idea how they'll continue the story, but a plot move like that seems a very 'Half-Lifey' thing to do (if you'll forgive that little vageuness). I don't think Half-Life will end badly for humanity as a whole - and I do believe that it will all end one day - but I doubt it'll be an entirely happy ending for Gordon.
There was probably other stuff I wanted to talk about but I've forgotten it.
(Excuse my sloppy writing.)
The end of HL1, while positive in some ways, was negative in others. Well done, you've saved the world! But it was all for this G-Man, this shadowy puppet master. And look, he (whoever he is) now controls Xen. Is that good?
HL2 even more so: hooray, the wicked witch is dead. But hold on a sec: that reactor doesn't look too stable. Just as you think you've won, just as you think you've finally brought about some good, there's this huge explosion and everything fades out, leaving you assuming that Alyx might be dead, that City-17 might be nuked, and weakly murmering 'what have I done?' (for the record, I thought it was a great ending). Never mind that with Aftermath we find Alyx is alive and our worse fears aren't reality: my point is that this is the way that Valve chose to show their ending. Hope turns to despair. That was the mood; that was the point.
No, I don't think HL is completely hopeless. There's warmth in the human characters, and there's hope yet for the future of the human race (and more importantly, those members of the human race you've come to love and care for. Like Barney :naughty
. But it's one of those bittersweet tales. The characters survive; life goes on, but all is not right with the world.And I think that a downbeat ending, or a general turning of the tide of opinion against Gordon, seems to fit in very well with Half-Life. Especially if it's manipulated by Breen or indeed the G-Man.
What the Half-Life series says to me is that Gordon Freeman is a man with no free choice. In the original he was directed around by senior scientists, knew nothing, had really no choice in the direction of research or any ethical matters. He was told to start those rotors. That it went wrong, and that it's very unlikely that was an accident, only seems to solidify this belief of mine: that as Gordon, you are a tool. Not just of the game designers, but who knows what.
The intro and one entire level is set on a train - how much more linear can you get than that? There is one route to go in the games and there are multiple instances where, to continue, you must take a course of action that you KNOW is going to **** things up: like when you turn on the power in HL1 (there's a scientist on top of it who's going to get electrocuted. And there's no way you can save him. And that's deliberate) or when, near the end of HL2, you hop into a little coffin-pod, KNOWING that the camera up ahead will see you and direct you into danger. It's quite obvious that getting in that pod will alert the combine to your presence (it ends up taking you directly to Breen and captivity), but you do it anyway because it's the only choice offered to you.
With the Resistance, you think perhaps you've found a cause worth fighting for. But hey, your contract is open to the highest bidder - and if that bidder happened to be Breen, you'd have to work for him. At the end of HL2, I was so furious at the G-Man: how dare you take me away from my friends and my fight? How dare you deny me this struggle, this battle to save humanity?
But you have no choices, and everything is orchestrated by him.
So I think that yes, turning the world against Gordon would be the perfect way for Valve to continue Half-Life. I don't know what's coming up, and I have no idea how they'll continue the story, but a plot move like that seems a very 'Half-Lifey' thing to do (if you'll forgive that little vageuness). I don't think Half-Life will end badly for humanity as a whole - and I do believe that it will all end one day - but I doubt it'll be an entirely happy ending for Gordon.
There was probably other stuff I wanted to talk about but I've forgotten it.
(Excuse my sloppy writing.)
SupaKoopa
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Sulkdodds said:I agree mostly with Laivasse on this.
The end of HL1, while positive in some ways, was negative in others. Well done, you've saved the world! But it was all for this G-Man, this shadowy puppet master. And look, he (whoever he is) now controls Xen. Is that good?
HL2 even more so: hooray, the wicked witch is dead. But hold on a sec: that reactor doesn't look too stable. Just as you think you've won, just as you think you've finally brought about some good, there's this huge explosion and everything fades out, leaving you assuming that Alyx might be dead, that City-17 might be nuked, and weakly murmering 'what have I done?' (for the record, I thought it was a great ending). Never mind that with Aftermath we find Alyx is alive and our worse fears aren't reality: my point is that this is the way that Valve chose to show their ending. Hope turns to despair. That was the mood; that was the point.
No, I don't think HL is completely hopeless. There's warmth in the human characters, and there's hope yet for the future of the human race (and more importantly, those members of the human race you've come to love and care for. Like Barney :naughty
And I think that a downbeat ending, or a general turning of the tide of opinion against Gordon, seems to fit in very well with Half-Life. Especially if it's manipulated by Breen or indeed the G-Man.
What the Half-Life series says to me is that Gordon Freeman is a man with no free choice. In the original he was directed around by senior scientists, knew nothing, had really no choice in the direction of research or any ethical matters. He was told to start those rotors. That it went wrong, and that it's very unlikely that was an accident, only seems to solidify this belief of mine: that as Gordon, you are a tool. Not just of the game designers, but who knows what.
The intro and one entire level is set on a train - how much more linear can you get than that? There is one route to go in the games and there are multiple instances where, to continue, you must take a course of action that you KNOW is going to **** things up: like when you turn on the power in HL1 (there's a scientist on top of it who's going to get electrocuted. And there's no way you can save him. And that's deliberate) or when, near the end of HL2, you hop into a little coffin-pod, KNOWING that the camera up ahead will see you and direct you into danger. It's quite obvious that getting in that pod will alert the combine to your presence (it ends up taking you directly to Breen and captivity), but you do it anyway because it's the only choice offered to you.
With the Resistance, you think perhaps you've found a cause worth fighting for. But hey, your contract is open to the highest bidder - and if that bidder happened to be Breen, you'd have to work for him. At the end of HL2, I was so furious at the G-Man: how dare you take me away from my friends and my fight? How dare you deny me this struggle, this battle to save humanity?
But you have no choices, and everything is orchestrated by him.
So I think that yes, turning the world against Gordon would be the perfect way for Valve to continue Half-Life. I don't know what's coming up, and I have no idea how they'll continue the story, but a plot move like that seems a very 'Half-Lifey' thing to do (if you'll forgive that little vageuness). I don't think Half-Life will end badly for humanity as a whole - and I do believe that it will all end one day - but I doubt it'll be an entirely happy ending for Gordon.
There was probably other stuff I wanted to talk about but I've forgotten it.
(Excuse my sloppy writing.)
you're totally right about the train thing--being on tracks is a recurring metaphor in the game (the intro to HL1, the On a Rail level, the intro to HL2, the pods, etc) that really ties into the plot very well.
"turning the world against Gordon would be the perfect way for Valve to continue Half-Life"
I'll have to continue to disagree, with that point as a particular pivot to the arguement. It stopped being Gordon alone against the world in HL1. Playing
the same story again would not be perfecting the theme.
Answering more of the questions of what made G-man take such an interest in
Gordon in the first place, and expanding the environment to other worlds/universes where solutions to Earths problems might be found would be a continuance of
Half Life.
I'll have to continue to disagree, with that point as a particular pivot to the arguement. It stopped being Gordon alone against the world in HL1. Playing
the same story again would not be perfecting the theme.
Answering more of the questions of what made G-man take such an interest in
Gordon in the first place, and expanding the environment to other worlds/universes where solutions to Earths problems might be found would be a continuance of
Half Life.
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