Da Funkey Gibbon
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Death eVADER I think that would be a bit too outlandish for a plot, I think we will probably see Alyx in a time period before Gordan ever came to city 17. Though playing as barny during that week long gap is a good Idea, IMHO.
I think you are reading way too much into this, at no point does anyone traval back in time. (Unless you count quickloading
) The thing gordan freeman goes into between "assignments", is just like going to sleep IMO, the teleporter thing was because it blew up just as you were being teleported, maybe G-man had a hand in it so you would turn up at a time that suited him, but at no point in any HL do you deviate from normal time traval (i.e. moving forward), this is silly speculation. But heh carry on anyway .
I think you are reading way too much into this, at no point does anyone traval back in time. (Unless you count quickloading
) The thing gordan freeman goes into between "assignments", is just like going to sleep IMO, the teleporter thing was because it blew up just as you were being teleported, maybe G-man had a hand in it so you would turn up at a time that suited him, but at no point in any HL do you deviate from normal time traval (i.e. moving forward), this is silly speculation. But heh carry on anyway .
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CMG
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Da Funkey Gibbon said:Death eVADER I think that would be a bit too outlandish for a plot, I think we will probably see Alyx in a time period before Gordan ever came to city 17. Though playing as barny during that week long gap is a good Idea, IMHO.
I think you are reading way too much into this, at no point does anyone traval back in time. (Unless you count quickloading
Yeah but see - it wasn't just because - The doctor noted there was another instance of delay in transmission on another teleport jump and he specifically said something that i remember made me pause.......I can't remember the line but it was something like "Hmmm we need to look into this the device may have properties we aren't fully aware of".......I'm not remembering it well - but the point is the game designers were either just using the delay as an excuse to kill the intervening days so we can get to the end or they were foreshadowing something.......the development of a machine that allows a kind of time travel - something very plausible like maybe the teleporter shoots you into a high speed warp causing a time delay that was foressen by Einstein. It's feasible........
Hell it's a game - blaming it on elves high on speed is plausible lol.
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tranes
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I thought i heard Breen say somthing about beings made of pure energy somewhere toward the end of the game, anybody else remember that?
TriggerHappy
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tranes said:
The exact quotes are:
Carbon stars with ancient satellites colonized by sentient fungi
Gas giants inhabited by vast meteorological intelligences. Worlds stretched thin across the membranes where the dimensions intersect.. impossible to describe with our limited vocabulary.
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CyrusIV
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Eh, I think you people are looking into the whole week-teleport thing too much. While I would agree there is a good deal of speculation you could make towards HL3 with it, I don't think it will be all that important in the future...
I, personally, took the event as an explanation of why Gordon had been gone so long. It kinda makes more sense when you consider that at the end of HL1, you see human tanks at Xen. Now, I may just be a bit ignorant here, but I severely doubt that tanks would arrive and be destroyed on Xen in the two hours Gordon had left the surface to find our Nihil boy. Sooo, I assume that some form of teleporter on Xen was a similar 'slow-teleporter', the most obvious being the death of Nihil.
Oh, and, thinking about time traveling is fun. I am not really an expert, but I have always thought that if time travel did exist, it would never become very large scale, as otherwise we would be seeing a lot more folks from the future. Either that, or space men are living among us, in secret, living out their daily, no-longer futuristic lives…
As for ‘changing the past’ – I consider that impossible, almost as impossible as explaining why… basically, I cannot see you changing the past, as whatever you changed would have already occurred in the future. Therefore, you are in reality changing nothing, but only ensuring that the future that you lived in came to be.
I, personally, took the event as an explanation of why Gordon had been gone so long. It kinda makes more sense when you consider that at the end of HL1, you see human tanks at Xen. Now, I may just be a bit ignorant here, but I severely doubt that tanks would arrive and be destroyed on Xen in the two hours Gordon had left the surface to find our Nihil boy. Sooo, I assume that some form of teleporter on Xen was a similar 'slow-teleporter', the most obvious being the death of Nihil.
Oh, and, thinking about time traveling is fun. I am not really an expert, but I have always thought that if time travel did exist, it would never become very large scale, as otherwise we would be seeing a lot more folks from the future. Either that, or space men are living among us, in secret, living out their daily, no-longer futuristic lives…
As for ‘changing the past’ – I consider that impossible, almost as impossible as explaining why… basically, I cannot see you changing the past, as whatever you changed would have already occurred in the future. Therefore, you are in reality changing nothing, but only ensuring that the future that you lived in came to be.
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tranes
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TriggerHappy said:
Damn, forgot about the whole dimensional thing. Guess that really rules out inter-timeal warfare. Oh well, maybe I'll just pretend thats whats going on
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lowercase
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I think time travel (or, more likely, non-linear time) is an integral part of the story. One thing I like about HL2 (that a lot of people don't like) is that none of the story is directly explained, it all has to be put together with plenty of debate. Like a David Lynch movie. I think it's fantastic.
So, where to begin. Gordon Freeman, I think, is in the employ of the gman - we learn that at the end of the first HL, when it says "Subject: Gordon Freeman. Status: HIRED." How long he's been working for this guy we don't know, but it seems Gordon's been sleeping for a while - or perhaps out of time. I don't think the gman is human, and a lot of people seem to get this idea too. I think he's probably the projection of some other trans-dimensional entity, being, or force. I would believe this even if he wasn't often translucent and seen slowing down time. Whatever it is about Gordon, he's special enough to be used as an agent. Perhaps because he exists outside the timeline... I'll get to that.
Consider a theoretical world where the future can be seen. Whoever has the capability of doing this would, quite easily, come to dominate all other interests. If Gordon, due to the accident at Black Mesa (or even before, for other reasons) exists outside time he would be an _extremely_ valuable pawn for whoever controls him. This is the only way I can see how Gordon can elude the full force of the combine hunting for him. Gordon, like the Lambda symbol so prevalent in HL, is a force of change, a force of decay. The vortigont references Gordon's slaying of Nihlanth in HL1 saying "the lesser master has fallen, and so the greater master will fall too in time" (or something like that). My opinion is that nihlanth was enslaving the vortigonts and, when the earth and xen dimensions were thrust into juxtaposition by the resonance cascade, he attempted to overrun Black Mesa with his minions. Gordon put a stop to that and killed Nihlanth, but the alien himself was a slave to a larger group, the Combine.
Now, I'm sure the combine is a coalition of alien forces which travel world to world (dimension to dimension, if you prefer) and enslave the peoples and drain them of resources (we saw the vortis packing barrels of stuff as slaves in Xen). When they came to earth, they were ready to kill everyone, but Breen (fortunately for us) negotiated a surrender that would save our species. Breen thinks he's doing the right thing (may I remind you the only other option is the extinction of our species), but he doesn't realise how horrible it is (or he's in denial) and is getting a little crazy himself. He doesn't see how Gordon could possibly be doing anything good. And really, is he? Gordon's destroying the shackles of combine enslavement (and the police state of the cities), but what will that accomplish? The combine will simply return and destroy everything. Clearly, HL2 leaves more questions than answers.
Oh, and I think nitpicking over the location of City 17 is a bit silly. The whole fact that it has a number rather than a name and encompasses many different cultures makes it a semi-familiar anycity, which theoretically could be anywhere on the planet. Granted, I do lean to the idea it's eastern european / russian, but still, it's better than if they had overtly said "new york" or "kiev." I dunno.
Anyway, i kinda got sidetracked. just my 2 cents.
So, where to begin. Gordon Freeman, I think, is in the employ of the gman - we learn that at the end of the first HL, when it says "Subject: Gordon Freeman. Status: HIRED." How long he's been working for this guy we don't know, but it seems Gordon's been sleeping for a while - or perhaps out of time. I don't think the gman is human, and a lot of people seem to get this idea too. I think he's probably the projection of some other trans-dimensional entity, being, or force. I would believe this even if he wasn't often translucent and seen slowing down time. Whatever it is about Gordon, he's special enough to be used as an agent. Perhaps because he exists outside the timeline... I'll get to that.
Consider a theoretical world where the future can be seen. Whoever has the capability of doing this would, quite easily, come to dominate all other interests. If Gordon, due to the accident at Black Mesa (or even before, for other reasons) exists outside time he would be an _extremely_ valuable pawn for whoever controls him. This is the only way I can see how Gordon can elude the full force of the combine hunting for him. Gordon, like the Lambda symbol so prevalent in HL, is a force of change, a force of decay. The vortigont references Gordon's slaying of Nihlanth in HL1 saying "the lesser master has fallen, and so the greater master will fall too in time" (or something like that). My opinion is that nihlanth was enslaving the vortigonts and, when the earth and xen dimensions were thrust into juxtaposition by the resonance cascade, he attempted to overrun Black Mesa with his minions. Gordon put a stop to that and killed Nihlanth, but the alien himself was a slave to a larger group, the Combine.
Now, I'm sure the combine is a coalition of alien forces which travel world to world (dimension to dimension, if you prefer) and enslave the peoples and drain them of resources (we saw the vortis packing barrels of stuff as slaves in Xen). When they came to earth, they were ready to kill everyone, but Breen (fortunately for us) negotiated a surrender that would save our species. Breen thinks he's doing the right thing (may I remind you the only other option is the extinction of our species), but he doesn't realise how horrible it is (or he's in denial) and is getting a little crazy himself. He doesn't see how Gordon could possibly be doing anything good. And really, is he? Gordon's destroying the shackles of combine enslavement (and the police state of the cities), but what will that accomplish? The combine will simply return and destroy everything. Clearly, HL2 leaves more questions than answers.
Oh, and I think nitpicking over the location of City 17 is a bit silly. The whole fact that it has a number rather than a name and encompasses many different cultures makes it a semi-familiar anycity, which theoretically could be anywhere on the planet. Granted, I do lean to the idea it's eastern european / russian, but still, it's better than if they had overtly said "new york" or "kiev." I dunno.
Anyway, i kinda got sidetracked. just my 2 cents.
Is This Tea
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That depends on how much you see marc as a serious writer… cause serious science fiction writers take real science seriously. Yes according to Relativity Time Travel is only a mathematical possibility. Then again according to Newtonian Physics curved space isn’t possible… So to play the devils advocate… As much as I hate the idea of a time war…(I’m just sick of this plot cause its been done and you have to keep putting up with investing in characters and events only to find out they never happened….which of course makes no sense whatsoever.)smacky said:
Here is a link to a real life possibility…
http://www.walterzeichner.com/thezfiles/timetravel.html
In addition I will say this for a third time here. The G-Man can pause time, as we have seen. Portals can slow the passage of time down to an instant for the person who is being teleported. None of that says that travel forward or backward in time is possible using portals… I hope to high heavens it isn’t.
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Moth
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CyrusIV said:
Who's to say they're not here already, or have been for years? don't you think that someone who claimed to be 'from the future' would be put in an asylum straight away? they wouldn't be walking around the streets! Haven't you ever seen Twelve Monkeys?
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easterlingman
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A couple things I haven't seen mentioned:
In HL2 when Gordon first gets teleported, there is an accident, and Lamarr teleports with Gordon to somewhere (looks like a beach) and jumps out. This immediately made me think of a 'pre history' Earth, and some sort of 'alien visits barren planet and kick starts civilization'. Which would be really funny, if a civilization was started by a headcrab.. but it doesn't make much sense, since Lamarr was de-beaked.
Second, didn't I see Alyx die? Right before Anticitizen One, Alyx climbs on the roof of some building, and a bunch of soldiers rush her and KILL her. Bullets don't knock you out. She was very obviously dead.
How did Alyx come back to life, and how did Lamarr get back in the game?
In HL2 when Gordon first gets teleported, there is an accident, and Lamarr teleports with Gordon to somewhere (looks like a beach) and jumps out. This immediately made me think of a 'pre history' Earth, and some sort of 'alien visits barren planet and kick starts civilization'. Which would be really funny, if a civilization was started by a headcrab.. but it doesn't make much sense, since Lamarr was de-beaked.
Second, didn't I see Alyx die? Right before Anticitizen One, Alyx climbs on the roof of some building, and a bunch of soldiers rush her and KILL her. Bullets don't knock you out. She was very obviously dead.
How did Alyx come back to life, and how did Lamarr get back in the game?
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CyrusIV
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Actually, she didn't die. If you stick around for longer after you hear gunshots, you find out that she rushes back over to the side of the building and yells for you to run. Several moments after that, a combine runs right up next to her and knocks her out.
As for Lamarr, it didn't get back in the game - we put it back into the game, as, after all, who can not love that innocent little headcrab?
As for Lamarr, it didn't get back in the game - we put it back into the game, as, after all, who can not love that innocent little headcrab?
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Tycell
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This is a quote from Breen's script, I told ya HL was all about time travel
"That is afterall our ultimate goal...to move freely through the continium."
Possible or not, its a factor in Half-Life, and after all its a game, they can have whatever they want happen in it.
"That is afterall our ultimate goal...to move freely through the continium."
Possible or not, its a factor in Half-Life, and after all its a game, they can have whatever they want happen in it.
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the_mute
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just my 2 cents..i believe the Gman is human, working for a higher power. he is outside our logical timeline and can therefore move anywhere he wants at any time. How else can you explain him appearing wherever he wants in the game ? he doesnt fly or anything, he'd be seen, he just appears! I also think that hes from the future and he sent gordon to city 17 to change something that would benefit his people in the future, weakening the combine.
I belive this because at the start of the game he says "and all the effort in the world would have gone to waste if.....well lets just say your hour has come again" or something like that, he knows that all the effort from all the resistance wouldnt have stopped breen and the combine, it would take gordon to do it, hes the catalyst...one other thing, the Gman hasnt aged at all either...where has he been?
so to a degree i believe that time travel is a factor in half life, certainly when it comes to the Gman.
Just to say something about xen being future earth, that wouldnt work...if the aliens are mutated humans why would they be trying to kill us off, in affect they wouldnt exist either, therefore creating a paradox
I belive this because at the start of the game he says "and all the effort in the world would have gone to waste if.....well lets just say your hour has come again" or something like that, he knows that all the effort from all the resistance wouldnt have stopped breen and the combine, it would take gordon to do it, hes the catalyst...one other thing, the Gman hasnt aged at all either...where has he been?
so to a degree i believe that time travel is a factor in half life, certainly when it comes to the Gman.
Just to say something about xen being future earth, that wouldnt work...if the aliens are mutated humans why would they be trying to kill us off, in affect they wouldnt exist either, therefore creating a paradox
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Armageddon00
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Forgive me for not finishing the whole thread but
THIS IS SCIFI
That means part science part fiction valve can do watever they want to time!
THIS IS SCIFI
That means part science part fiction valve can do watever they want to time!
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tranes
Guest
In responce to the_mute, the combine were'nt trying to kill the humans, just turn them into combine, thus speeding up the evolution of the human race (becuase the evolved humans become so because of over reliance on technology). Once the majority of Early Pre-Xen humans are combine, then the bans of reproduction will be lifted and then these new humans will produce humans who are naturally more like combine, and then these humans will be outfitted with the combine tech, then they'll produce more combine and so on and so forth. This will decrease the amount of time needed for the evolution exponentionly, turning the Middle Pre-Xen into somthing more similar to the Late Pre-Xen, cutting out the time of G-Man.
But hey, all this theorizing is just in responce to Valve kinda screwing us with another cliffhanger ending. Hey, the game kicked ass, but that was kinda gay.
But hey, all this theorizing is just in responce to Valve kinda screwing us with another cliffhanger ending. Hey, the game kicked ass, but that was kinda gay.
Speedkills
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Armageddon00 said:
Did you actually read Is This Tea's post? Most science fiction writers take actual science very seriously, and develop their fiction around plausable situations that could arise as a consequence of current scientific thinking. For example Kim Stanley Robinson, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke....and so on.
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Thruster1
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TriggerHappy said:
yeah that thing about membranes - I think that's got something to do with super-string theory - which predicts that other dimensions in reality do exist (think there's about 11 or so they've counted so far). I think some string theorists also believe the 'big-bang' may have been caused by 2 membranes intersecting. Posted about this before somewhere on here about what Breen was saying but didn't have the actual quote. Cheers.
Listen to what the Vortigons say, they explain how it all works. The Gman comes from a place where all points in time exist at once, all you need do is look in the right direction. Of course, those naughty chaps do not make it sound so easy. And then there are the serious flaws to this working, buy hey, it is just a game
Cole
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HL2 is not about time travel. The G-Man may be able to minipulate some aspects of time but the game itself is not about time travel.
It's about teleportation. If you teleport slow, that is not time travel. If it was could I teleport slowly into the past? No. It is simply a teleportation in which something went wrong, nothing more.
The Gman is a pimp! Why cant you see that! He just is trying to get Gordon to get Alyx to him so well.... Im not really at liberty to say.
It's about teleportation. If you teleport slow, that is not time travel. If it was could I teleport slowly into the past? No. It is simply a teleportation in which something went wrong, nothing more.
The Gman is a pimp! Why cant you see that! He just is trying to get Gordon to get Alyx to him so well.... Im not really at liberty to say.
Da Funkey Gibbon
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I have been playing opposing force and I found something that may add weight to this theory, when you (as Sheperd) follow Freeman into the teleport, you fall to your doom and the death screen says:
"Subject attemted to create time paradox" or somthing like that.
What do you guys think?
"Subject attemted to create time paradox" or somthing like that.
What do you guys think?
Narcolepsy
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I think Gearbox was trying to be all sci-fi-y, personally. Not everything they say has deep meaning.Da Funkey Gibbon said:
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tranes
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Maybe a later civilization found a way to turn that anomoly into a real time travel device. What is, after all, time travel if not a form of teleportation.
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pickers
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Like i've said in other forums - Gabe is making a game based loosely on the ideas set in the TV show quantum leap!
it all makes sense!
it all makes sense!
rd_syringe
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Tycell said:
Is this true? I never found that all the myriad times I played the game in the past five years.
rd_syringe
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Speedkills said:
Unless you simply spawn a different timeline that runs concurrently to the previous. Remember the infinite universes theory. In that mindset, all possibilities are happening at all times, and you just followed a different one.
rd_syringe
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Tycell said:
Look, "time critical sequence" means it was a time-based scenario. You failed to stop Breen in time. You're reading way too much into it.
What does that mean, it's not "Valve's style?" Get real.
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Spartan
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Tycell said:The teleporter in HL1 that took you back to the beggining of the resonance caskade is in the top tier of the large Teleporter tower/reactor. The place you are just before you meet with barney and a scientist and have to defend the large portal while it opens up to xen. Look for the "Port" with the portal with red electicric arks flying out of it
I'd like to see some screenshots to prove this.
rd_syringe said:
I've always hated that theory. If everything keeps splintering into different universes, you can't change anything in yours.
rd_syringe
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indy said:
It's just for fun; relax.
Besides, the story for Half-Life 1 and 2 was authored by a real sci-fiction writer, Marc Laidlaw, and I guarantee he looked into this stuff.
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Goddess
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Tycell said:
time critical sequence meaning that you only have so much time to prevent Breen from getting away.
Yes the people that wrote that text knew the ending of the game since they made it...
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Spartan
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rd_syringe said:
It's true. Most of Half-Life's science is based on something, eve if loosely.
First off; Opposing Force did have the line 'Subject attmepted to create temporal paradox' when you tried to run into the teleporter behind Gordon. I think the games do include time as a key theme, although not the only one.
Also, about the time travel of the G-man, i.e. he's from the future and he comes back, gets Gordon and then uses him to do his bidding to 'change' the timeline, many of you said it was impossible to do this because if he changed the past, he would never need to go back and change it etc. etc. (is that a paradox?). Well heres my explanation for it;
Letters represent time frames;
A=normal 21st century (Half Life 1 was 21st century too, letters in the manual say 200-)
B=G-Man's time frame, whenever that may be in the future
C=21st century with G-man's intervention
D=G-man's time frame after intervention in 21st century
Ok, so, we're sticking with the point that all time has a set path, it has to go in a certian order.
So we start with A, then go onto B, then we go to C, not necessarily 'back' to it, the timeline at this paticular point may not go in the exact same direction as it has before, but it will still flow one-way. C will be the same as A, but nothing like A, it will only come after B (and so after A) and will not change anything in A or B, only D, A and B are before it in the timeline and wil not be changed. And we then go onto D, which will be like B, but again, nothing like it. And so we have travelled 'backwards' in time, but haven't actually gone to anywhere we have been before, A and C are different places entirely, B and D are different places as well. It's like going along a Motorway (Highway) and travelling along one lane and then having to detour back into a different lane, further back down the road than you were. Timeline 1 stops, and Timeline 2 starts slightly behind were Timeline 1 stopped, I could probably draw a diagram but, if it's needed, I'll do it tomorrow.
I know this is hard to understand, but I find it hard to explain alot of these things, that and I was up late last night and so there could be huge holes/mistakes in what I've written.
Anyways, I just needed to stick that in after I read all the talk about the G-man time travelling etc.
Also, about the time travel of the G-man, i.e. he's from the future and he comes back, gets Gordon and then uses him to do his bidding to 'change' the timeline, many of you said it was impossible to do this because if he changed the past, he would never need to go back and change it etc. etc. (is that a paradox?). Well heres my explanation for it;
Letters represent time frames;
A=normal 21st century (Half Life 1 was 21st century too, letters in the manual say 200-)
B=G-Man's time frame, whenever that may be in the future
C=21st century with G-man's intervention
D=G-man's time frame after intervention in 21st century
Ok, so, we're sticking with the point that all time has a set path, it has to go in a certian order.
So we start with A, then go onto B, then we go to C, not necessarily 'back' to it, the timeline at this paticular point may not go in the exact same direction as it has before, but it will still flow one-way. C will be the same as A, but nothing like A, it will only come after B (and so after A) and will not change anything in A or B, only D, A and B are before it in the timeline and wil not be changed. And we then go onto D, which will be like B, but again, nothing like it. And so we have travelled 'backwards' in time, but haven't actually gone to anywhere we have been before, A and C are different places entirely, B and D are different places as well. It's like going along a Motorway (Highway) and travelling along one lane and then having to detour back into a different lane, further back down the road than you were. Timeline 1 stops, and Timeline 2 starts slightly behind were Timeline 1 stopped, I could probably draw a diagram but, if it's needed, I'll do it tomorrow.
I know this is hard to understand, but I find it hard to explain alot of these things, that and I was up late last night and so there could be huge holes/mistakes in what I've written.
Anyways, I just needed to stick that in after I read all the talk about the G-man time travelling etc.
