GREAT IDEA FOR VALVE (i think atleast)

[el Chi]

Gordon never knew Alyx. He was probably only aware of the fact that Azian was pregnant, or had given birth to alyx. And no he never worked there for 5 years, because we know he came in only a few days before.

No we don't. We know he hadn't been working there that long, but I'm positive it wasn't only a matter of days.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

No we don't. We know he hadn't been working there that long, but I'm positive it wasn't only a matter of days.

Well he hadn't been cleared for retinal scanner access so a few days seem the most likely scenario.

 

[AIDisabled]

The reason why flashbacks suck--especially in a game--is that we know the protagonist will escape the predicament, we already know he's gonna get out. And any other chief characters featured in the flashback who are also there in the present will also make it out. Kinda kills the suspense.

That said, flashbacks are a lousy plot device. They work only if done by masters.

And time-travel. Lousiest SF plot resolution device. Once you involve time-travel, there's no point in doing anything at all. Because essentially someone could kill your protagonist's grandfather when he was a kid, and your protagonist wouldn't be there. No Gordon. No HL. No HL2. No Aftermath. No nothin'.

 

[Solver]

"TIME, Dr. Freeman? Is it really that TIME again... You've done a great deal in a short TIME-span...these are extraordinary TIMES...if and when your TIME comes around again. In the meanTIME..."
The voice acting's usually impeccable, but the emphasis on that one little word in that speech really gets to me. Also it suggests that TIME may have something to do with it.
Like I said though, I hope not.

Yup, I agree that the GMan puts a lot of emphasis on time, but I refuse to believe a Time-travel explanation. There are other time-related things in the HL story. Like, no one knows how much time exactly has passed between HL1 and HL2. Another possibility is that the time is slower in the Citadel than elsewhere, and so on.

 

[AIDisabled]

Another possibility is that the time is slower in the Citadel than elsewhere, and so on.

Interesting. But where is elsewhere? And why would time be slow on Citadel?

 

[Dalamari]

How about a level where you go through the ruins of the 7 hour war...maybe see some dead marines and stuff **cough Shepard cough** and old equipment

 

[Solver]

Elsewhere = outside of Citadel. It could be slow in the Citadel because of the Dark Fusion reactor. The theory of relativity states that time is relative and, in fact, it's related to gravity. Near sources of extreme gravity, like black holes, time is slower, from the perspective of those near it. During the Dark Energy chapter, Breen mentions singularity - he said that the portal to the Combine world would create singularity, IIRC. The portal was at least partially open during the final showdown, so it's possible that the gravity actually increased significantly near the reactor. I'm surely just raving, but this came into my mind when writing my previous reply.

 

[Laivasse]

I don't think the idea of time travel is inherently a bad thing. After all who doesn't love Back to the Future 2? :farmer:

And if there's going to be a "happily ever after" ending in HL3 or at any point then it has to end with something to do with the resonance cascade in HL1. After all, even if you do beat the bad guys now, mankind is practically extinct.

All the more reason not to have a happy ending then, maybe....

 

[Asknoone]

Interesting. But where is elsewhere? And why would time be slow on Citadel?

Because singularity collapses cause time to slow when nearby.

 

[el Chi]

Well he hadn't been cleared for retinal scanner access so a few days seem the most likely scenario.

Are you sure? I was under the impression that, BM being a top secret high-security installation and all, he had limited access... Oh f*ckit, I don't care.
It just seemed that he was already well acquainted with many of the people in BMRF. Meh.

 

[Wilsonator]

You know what would be cool?

Having the G-Man send you back in time to halt the key events that would make the incident happen and cause the portal storms, except the combine don't want that so they find some portal and follow you, so you get combine in black mesa as well as all the old enemies, maybe even meet yourself, and you get to kill Breen while he's the BM Admin! :E

or winwinknudgenudgeacrossoverencounterwithracexorsheppardwinkwinknudgenudge

 

[ríomhaire]

[SARCASM]Yes and lets add cut-scenes too[/SARCASM]

 

[AIDisabled]

Aargh! For God's sake no cutscenes! Please!

 

[Danimal]

I personally think that would not fit. If that was implemented, many people will ask why it wasn't in the original Half-life 2.

 

[el Chi]

You know what would be cool?

Having the G-Man send you back in time to halt the key events that would make the incident happen and cause the portal storms, except the combine don't want that so they find some portal and follow you, so you get combine in black mesa as well as all the old enemies, maybe even meet yourself, and you get to kill Breen while he's the BM Admin! :E

or winwinknudgenudgeacrossoverencounterwithracexorsheppardwinkwinknudgenudge

Nah. The G-Man, for whatever reason, wanted the resonance cascade to happen. He was in the Anomalous Materials lab and easily could have put a stop to it.

 

[Element88]

NEWSFLASH!!!

For all of you who think that HL2 would suck if it would involve time travel:

1.Half-Life's story was written in 1998. The year when dark energy was discovered.

Did any of you bother to find out what dark energy is?

- Dark energy is gravity repulsive. (Gravity Gun)
- Dark energy stretches space–time apart. (Traveling through space without

spending any time, teleportation, traveling through space without moving anywhere, time traveling)
- The final chapter of HL2 is named "Dark Energy".

2. Time traveling WAS IN HL2!!!

Remember when you come through the teleporter with Alyx and Dr. Kleiner says "It's been a week..." and bluh bluh bluh...
I don't remember exactly what he said, but it's been a whole week since you went through the teleported!!!
What do you think that means if not time traveling?!

3. Like somebody already said, time is a very important term for the G-Man.
If thats not good enough to prove that time is an important part of the game, so what is???

 

[Element88]

Jesus christ!
You play the game and miss everything!!!
How can you say G-Man wanted the resonance cascade to happen?
Remember the part when he was arguing with the scientist in the closed room?
WHAT DO YOU THINK HE WAS SHOUTING ABOUT?!
He was trying to tell them to stop everything!
G-Man knew about the cascade and it's consequences.

He knew about the Combine. He knew that Breen was a trator!
Breen was the one responsible for the cascade!!!
The scientists always say "We tried to warm the administrator, but he just would not listen"
Breen played pretty much the same role like the Nihilanth.
Trated his kind for the Combine and ruled the planet following the Combine's orders.

G-Man is the opposite of the Combine.
Do you remember the part in Opposing Force, at the end, when he says "A survivor. Reminds me of myself"?
What do you think that means?
G-Man's planet was conquered by the Combine when he was young, but he survived.
And now he's a member of a group who is trying to stop them and get everything back to order.

G-Man is not a man nor works for the government.
He took over the body of a high rank government official and gained control over the black ops.
After failing to convince the government to cancel the experiment, he decided to do it in the dirty way.

Remember when the sergeant in the boot camp in Opposing Force says "I don't know how your name appeared on the training list..." Or something like that?
G-Man chose one man to put an end to this mess.
He chose Shepard.
Remember the part where G-Man closes the door in front of your face and doesn't let you go back with the rest?
He wanted Shepard to go to Xen, to kill the Nihilanth.
G-Man was watching Freeman.
He saw that Freeman came closer and closer to the teleport.
G-Man set the whole army against him.
THAT IS WHY THE ARMY WASN'T THREATING YOU LIKE THE REST OF THE SCIENTISTS!
Freeman was a big enemy now.
And when the black-ops captured Freeman, you remember that don't you, G-Man was sure Freeman is dead.
But then Mr. Freeman came and went into the teleporter in from of Shepard's face!
G-Man's plan was ruined.
His last try to put an end to this was to blow up the facility with a nuclear bomb.
It didn't work, but G-Man didn't totally fail.
Freeman impressed him. G-Man gave Freeman Shepard's job because he was better.
As for Shepard, G-Mans employers, the anti-combine group, found Shepard useless.
He knew everything and failed to do something.
They wanted to kill him.
But even G-Man has emotions.
He didn't want to kill the man he belived in.
"I will send you to a place where you can't hurt anybody and nobody can hurt you"

THIS MAKES PERFECT SENSE!

 

[IonizeMyAtoms]

Jesus christ!
You play the game and miss everything!!!
How can you say G-Man wanted the resonance cascade to happen?
Remember the part when he was arguing with the scientist in the closed room?
WHAT DO YOU THINK HE WAS SHOUTING ABOUT?!
He was trying to tell them to stop everything!
G-Man knew about the cascade and it's consequences.

He knew about the Combine. He knew that Breen was a trator!
Breen was the one responsible for the cascade!!!
The scientists always say "We tried to warm the administrator, but he just would not listen"

G-Man is the opposite of the Combine.
Do you remember the part in Opposing Force, at the end, when he says "A survivor. Reminds me of myself"?
What do you think that means?
G-Man's planet was conquered by the Combine when he was young, but he survived.
And now he's a member of a group who is trying to stop them and get everything back to order.

G-Man is not a man nor works for the government.
He took over the body of a high rank government official and gained control over the black ops.
After failing to convince the government to cancel the experiment, he decided to do it in the dirty way.

Remember when the sergeant in the boot camp in Opposing Force says "I don't know how your name appeared on the training list..." Or something like that?
G-Man chose one man to put an end to this mess.
He chose Shepard.
Remember the part where G-Man closes the door in front of your face and doesn't let you go back with the rest?
He wanted Shepard to go to Xen, to kill the Nihilanth.
G-Man was watching Freeman.
He saw that Freeman came closer and closer to the teleport.
G-Man set the whole army against him.
THAT IS WHY THE ARMY WASN'T THREATING YOU LIKE THE REST OF THE SCIENTISTS!
Freeman was a big enemy now.
And when the black-ops captured Freeman, you remember that don't you, G-Man was sure Freeman is dead.
But then Mr. Freeman came and went into the teleporter in from of Shepard's face!
G-Man's plan was ruined.
His last try to put an end to this was to blow up the facility with a nuclear bomb.
It didn't work, but G-Man didn't totally fail.
Freeman impressed him. G-Man gave Freeman Shepard's job because he was better.
As for Shepard, G-Mans employers, the anti-combine group, found Shepard useless.
He knew everything and failed to do something.
They wanted to kill him.
But even G-Man has emotions.
He didn't want to kill the man he belived in.
"I will send you to a place where you can't hurt anybody and nobody can hurt you"

THIS MAKES PERFECT SENSE!

I disagree with pretty much everything you said.
You shouldn't go spouting off your beliefs as fact.

 

[Element88]

But it does make perfect sense!
Every line of every characted, every scripted sequense, everything becomes clear!

But you're probably one of the people who didn't even listen to one sentense of any character...
One of the people who had all the fun just from shooting the aliens...
One of the people who say that if there were time traveling in HL2 it would suck... Altough there was time traveling and it's all about time and sace traveling...
LOL
You guys missed everything.

I can prove everything I said is correct using quotas of the things you see and hear while playing the game.
Try to prove that atleast one of the things I said is incorrect.
Do it using facts.
Don't just say "It not true and thats it"
My previous posts can make excelent threads.
It is interesting to see what other people saw and heard.
Maybe I missed something.

 

[FRESCO_SUPREME]

element88s theory is actually quite good, but just one of loads of theories floating around and most could be correct.

 

[Element88]

Thank you.
It could be nice to create a thread discussing people's theories, don't you think?
[EDIT]
Just noticed there's a whole forum topic related to theories...

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Well, it's a theory, and it adds just about as well as most other. In fact my own theory is kinda similar, with the exception that rather than being a fugitive from the combine, the g-man was fighting Breen over control of Xen, for his own (read; His employers') benfit. I think the Marines were Breen's guys and the black ops were the g-man's.
PS. Black Ops do not capture Freeman. Just regular grunts. And stuff added by Gearbox in Opposing Force should be taken with a grain of salt, even though some major plot twists in both OpFor and BS were OK'd by Marc Laidlaw.

 

[Element88]

Freeman was captured after a fight with the black ops, remember?
And the black ops were against the grunts...
So how comes both black ops and grunts were in the same place at the same time without fighting?

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Freeman was captured after a fight with the black ops, remember?
And the black ops were against the grunts...
So how comes both black ops and grunts were in the same place at the same time without fighting?

The grunts were hiding, waiting for Freeman.

 

[Ravioli]

Aargh! For God's sake no cutscenes! Please!

where did i say cutscenes? There are not any cut-scenes in this idea.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

where did i say cutscenes? There are not any cut-scenes in this idea.

He was responding to Ríomhaire maybe?

 

[Element88]

The army never managed to capture Freeman.
Remember the chapter "Forget About Freeman"?
The army left before Freeman was captured.
G-Man's assasins were ambushing Freeman, got him and threw him into the hazardous material processing system.
Just like they did with the scientists, the army, the aliens.
And just think of it, the army tried to shot you, tried to blew you up and did many nasty things to you, but they wouldn't capture living creature and throw him into the hazardous material processing system just to clean the evidence.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

The army never managed to capture Freeman.
Remember the chapter "Forget About Freeman"?
The army left before Freeman was captured.
G-Man's assasins were ambushing Freeman, got him and threw him into the hazardous material processing system.
Just like they did with the scientists, the army, the aliens.
And just think of it, the army tried to shot you, tried to blew you up and did many nasty things to you, but they wouldn't capture living creature and throw him into the hazardous material processing system just to clean the evidence.
Thats more typical for trained assasins.

The army grunts were *supposed* to take Gordon to the ground and interrogate him (most likely ending in a big hole in Freeman's head) but they wanted him to die and suffer for killing their buddies, so they threw him in the waste compactor. Black Ops have black clothes, these guys had military uniforms, ie, they were USMC. The army pulled out somewhere before Gordon got to the Lambda complex.

 

[Element88]

Thanks for refreshing my memory.
You're right.

 

[Element88]

And by the way, the grunts weren't Breen's people.
It is very obvious because they were typical US marines...
No way the were Breen's people.
But the black-ops were G-Man's people.
Breen was controling nothing.
Breen didn't want to control Xen either.

But one thing you are right about is that G-Man, or more correctly, G-Man's employers wanted control over Xen.
Thats why G-Man wanted to send Shepard to kill the Nihilanth.
Thats why you saw dead marines and human APCs on Xen.
But G-Man wasn't fighting for Xen for his employer's benefits.
These "benefits" were to free Xen from the combine's control.
This is actually his job.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

And by the way, the grunts weren't Breen's people.
It is very obvious because they were typical US marines...
No way the were Breen's people.
But the black-ops were G-Man's people.
Breen was controling nothing.
Breen didn't want to control Xen either.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I didn't mean to say the USMC was Breen's men, I meant that Breen used regular channels and standard regulations to get the Military to seize control of BMRF again. My belief is Breen made contact with the Combine prior to the RC and needed to casue a rift from Xen to earth to get them here, so he could get a nice, big slice of the combine cheese. G-man knew this and tried to seize control of the Lambda complex (using black ops) so he could stop the whole thing, using Shepard but ended up "using" Freeman. Remember how the entrance of the Lambda complex was guarded by a large number of those sexy black ops?
Gordon stopped the invasion for the moment (...for the time being) but after a while the combine came through anyway and Breen became the big hole in the cheese.

 

[Element88]

I'm telling you, the army was controlled by G-Man.
How do you think G-Man was able to get Shepard's name on the list if he didn't have a control over the army?

Remember the line "Government coverups were not in my job description."?
Government coverups.
Tells you anything?

And the army was treating G-Man like a friend, not an enemy.
If the army was controlled by Breen, who was fighting with G-Man, why was G-Man considered as a friend?

Breen had nothing to do with the USMC.

 

[Element88]

Why would Breen fight with G-Man for Xen when he has Earth?
Especially when it is being controlled by the Combine...
Remember the dead marines and destryed APCs on Xen?
Are you trying to say Breen sent them there to fight with the Xen army, wich is actually the Combine army, wich he works with?
Or maybe he didn't send them there, so what were they doing there?
And why would the government let Breen control the army?

Thats stupid if you ask me.

P.S:
Yep... Those chicks with guns sure were sexy...

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Why would Breen fight with G-Man for Xen when he has Earth?
Especially when it is being controlled by the Combine...
Remember the dead marines and destryed APCs on Xen?
Are you trying to say Breen sent them there to fight with the Xen army, wich is actually the Combine army, wich he works with?
Or maybe he didn't send them there, so what were they doing there?
And why would the government let Breen control the army?

Thats stupid if you ask me.

P.S:
Yep... Those chicks with guns sure were sexy...

Breen didn't control the army but in case of an emergency, as administrator of BMRF he could send for help. He neede to cause an RC so the rift from Xen would open so the combine could come through and appoint him admin of earth.
G-man is considered freindly by everything, USMC, Black Ops, Xen animals, Race-X, the frickin' birds even like him in HL2. He is not human so maybe the other soldiers don't even notice him. He's unkillable as well. G-man was probably acting as a government official, placing Shepard where he wanted him, the HECU. Which would also explain why the USMC don't shoot him, besides, he's way too smooth to actually tell his soldiers what to do. He's bound to have some poor human schmo as a fall guy. But when the RC happened, he had to focus on fighting with other means.

 

[Element88]

There's only one thing I don't understand.
WHY DOES THE COMBINE NEED THE RIFT FROM XEN???
They have their own teleporting devices, don't they?
Hey wait a second... I really missed something...
Do they have their own teleporters or not?
And about G-Man, he's a friend of everybody and a friend of no one.

P.S:
I really don't like your signature.
I'm a Doom 3 fan too you know...
I'm a really big fan of all the Quake, Doom and Half-Life series.

 

[Asknoone]

Why would Breen fight with G-Man for Xen when he has Earth?
Especially when it is being controlled by the Combine...
Remember the dead marines and destryed APCs on Xen?
Are you trying to say Breen sent them there to fight with the Xen army, wich is actually the Combine army, wich he works with?
Or maybe he didn't send them there, so what were they doing there?
And why would the government let Breen control the army?

Thats stupid if you ask me.

P.S:
Yep... Those chicks with guns sure were sexy...

That was merley a piece of earth stuck on xen during the portal storms.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Ok, what's the story on Combine teleporters someone, I've forgotten. They're different than our teleports that's all I remember, they have to make a reststop on xen unlike we do right?

 

[Asknoone]

Ok, what's the story on Combine teleporters someone, I've forgotten. They're different than our teleports that's all I remember, they have to make a reststop on xen unlike we do right?

They only have teleporters that travel between Universe's - not small ones. They use large amounts of dark energy and need a tunneling entanglement system ensure they get there safley.

 

[Element88]

Are you guys trying to say that Breen made the machine explode exactly in the correct way to open portals to the only planet that the Combine can come to Earth through?
Thats bull shit!
It's just a machine, god damn it!
You can't predict and cause an experimental machine to explode the way you want!
I think that the there was absolutely nothing so special about Xen.
Just another planet conquered by the Combine.

You can mark out the "Breen was working with the Combine from the very beggining and helped them get to Earth" as wrong.
This is way beyond.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Are you guys trying to say that Breen made the machine explode exactly in the correct way to open portals to the only planet that the Combine can come to Earth through?
Thats bull shit!
It's just a machine, god damn it!
You can't predict and cause an experimental machine to explode the way you want!
I think that the there was absolutely nothing so special about Xen.
Just another planet conquered by the Combine.

You can mark out the "Breen was working with the Combine from the very beggining and helped them get to Earth" as wrong.
This is way beyond.

Xen is a borderworld, a place everyone has to pass through. Maybe Breen did know, he could've known that when operating at 105%, containment failure would occur. He was insistant about it. Don't you remember the scientists being worried about a Resonance Cascade occuring before the experiment? They obviously thought it could happen. They even tried to warn Breen but "the administrator just wouldn't listen"