Health/Armor/Ammo

[Brian Damage]

He doesn't have it when he steps off the train, it seems.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

I think he has to get it in the game, I doubt he would wear it at the beginning of the game. (a titanium orange blue hazard suit does not go unnoticed and the combine would probably not accept. Also he doesn't have his health/HEV power HUD in the start of the E3 2004 demo.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Can't remember where i read this at....but there was some speculation that the new suit Gordo is wearing, is the new mk-5 and not the old suit he was wearing in BM. cuz i think there was some talk in HL1 about a new suit being worked on.

any one else hear some thing like that??

Yep. The manual for Decay shows that Gina Cross was testing the Mk. 5 HEV in the same month the resonance cascade took place.

I'd bet gordo's suit is a Mk. 5 or a modified Mk. 4.

 

[jonesey2k]

Maybe they painted the suit grey so that Gordon stands out a bit less.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Maybe they painted the suit grey so that Gordon stands out a bit less.

That sentence made me think of family guy where Peter is in vietnam among soldiers and he's wearing a clownsuit and he says; See you're all idiots, they'll be looking for soldiers...

 

[yadalogo]

lol i love peter griffin, I wanna see a little power chord come out of the crotch part of Gordon's HEV suit to plug into a wall socket!

 

[Wiseman]

Well this is what I think, based off of everyone else's theories:


The power cells are most likely used for many things (it wouldn't make sense to so many of them in Black Mesa when you also have HEV charging stations everywhere).
The Combine probably use a combination HEV/PCV suit. Characteristics of the HEV would be for use in adverse environmental conditions, and the PCV is obvious for military use. This would allow for charging stations for Freeman's HEV (see below). HEV technology was obviously state-of-the-art, and thus, expensive, and although this is 10 years later, is probably still expensive (but in the Mk5 or 6 stages by now (probably Mk5, as I doubt scientists would be focussing on making HEVs for too long during the coming badness between HL1 and 2)). So, any HEV/PCV armor would prolly be expensive to mass-produce, so the Combine prolly uses a downgraded version, which would explain their easiness to kill.
Freeman prolly still has an HEV (even if he doesn't at the beginning) and it's prolly still the same Mk4. This can be seen by G-man's allowing him to keep the HEV at the end of HL1. There was no gameplay-based reason for this (the only thing it affected during the endgame sequence was you being able to see your health and armor), so it's probably plot-based.
As for health packs and recharging stations, they probably used the Xenian health pools. We know that Xen had been explored extensively before HL1, so this would explain why these things already existed in Unforeseen Consequences.
One source (I can't find the link) said that the health pools worked by bacteria eating away at damaged tissue and replacing it with new. If this is true, that would pose a problem for the continued use of this technology in HL2, since the same source said that Xen-based organisms couldn't live too long away from their Xen diets (which contained trace amounts of those orangey crystals) and once G-man's employers lost control of Xen they would lose their source of crystals (although we don't know how long it was between losing control of Xen and HL2, so the effects could be reduced if the timeframe was short). This could also be curbed by genetic engineering, artificial selection, or some form of imitation Xen crystals (or Earth grown ones, but I suspect they'd take awhile to form) which would reduce the bacteria's need for the Xen crystals.


I know this is just really repeating what others've said, but it's nice to have one thing with everything organized in it.

 

[chimpmunk]

but iirc gabe newell said parts of xen were brought to earth, so xenians now have a lot of crystals to sustain them, and iirc its waht allows them to teleport too.

 

[Brian Damage]

Well this is what I think, based off of everyone else's theories:


The power cells are most likely used for many things (it wouldn't make sense to so many of them in Black Mesa when you also have HEV charging stations everywhere).
The Combine probably use a combination HEV/PCV suit. Characteristics of the HEV would be for use in adverse environmental conditions, and the PCV is obvious for military use. This would allow for charging stations for Freeman's HEV (see below). HEV technology was obviously state-of-the-art, and thus, expensive, and although this is 10 years later, is probably still expensive (but in the Mk5 or 6 stages by now (probably Mk5, as I doubt scientists would be focussing on making HEVs for too long during the coming badness between HL1 and 2)). So, any HEV/PCV armor would prolly be expensive to mass-produce, so the Combine prolly uses a downgraded version, which would explain their easiness to kill.
Freeman prolly still has an HEV (even if he doesn't at the beginning) and it's prolly still the same Mk4. This can be seen by G-man's allowing him to keep the HEV at the end of HL1. There was no gameplay-based reason for this (the only thing it affected during the endgame sequence was you being able to see your health and armor), so it's probably plot-based.
As for health packs and recharging stations, they probably used the Xenian health pools. We know that Xen had been explored extensively before HL1, so this would explain why these things already existed in Unforeseen Consequences.
One source (I can't find the link) said that the health pools worked by bacteria eating away at damaged tissue and replacing it with new. If this is true, that would pose a problem for the continued use of this technology in HL2, since the same source said that Xen-based organisms couldn't live too long away from their Xen diets (which contained trace amounts of those orangey crystals) and once G-man's employers lost control of Xen they would lose their source of crystals (although we don't know how long it was between losing control of Xen and HL2, so the effects could be reduced if the timeframe was short). This could also be curbed by genetic engineering, artificial selection, or some form of imitation Xen crystals (or Earth grown ones, but I suspect they'd take awhile to form) which would reduce the bacteria's need for the Xen crystals.


I know this is just really repeating what others've said, but it's nice to have one thing with everything organized in it.

The source you quote is mostly interpretation and speculation, IIRC. Also, I'm pretty sure that the new HEV is an upgraded version. It looks quite different to the old one.

 

[Wiseman]

Yeah, I know it's speculation. Just a possible way to allow for those things which wouldn't conflict with the HL2 story (probably, don't actually know the story yet). In all honesty, they prolly won't do what I said, mostly because they said they were gonna try more realistic ways to deliver health and armor this time.

And I haven't played Decay, and don't have the manuals for any of the Half Life games. All I can do is interpret and speculate; to me, the plot of HL1 was complicated and vague enough that I can't even begin to speculate about HL2.
But I can still try...

 

[Brian Damage]

That you can, that you can, I was just pointing out that things like the functionality of the Xenian health pools and the "lack of xenotic minerals" stuff aren't canon...