Look At All Those Explosive Barrels! (A theory)

LandStander

LandStander

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Anyone who has played Half-Life 2 will immediately notice the barrels marked "explosive" littered all over in convenient locations throughout the game. How could we make sense of this?
Well the combine have seized the earth and are mining it for it's precious resources. Among these resources is very likely oil, coal, etc. Humanity is no longer harvesting these materials yet there are a number of things such as electricity, heat sources and the like that are required for people to live in the controlled cities. So how does the combine solve this? A cheap but highly volatile chemical, fuel (whatever) that is very adaptive in powering primitive machinery but useful in little else. Unfortunately the Combine in their infinite wisdom forgot to set up a DPW. So, where do they store this unstable substance? Everywhere and anywhere. Accidents probably result in high numbers of death annually but it is unlikely that the combine care much.
 
concerned021.jpg


concerned022.jpg


That's why.
 
Marc Laidlaw said:
We always joked that players would cut us some slack if right towards the end of the game we took them past the Combine's exploding barrel factory. Maybe the soldiers coming out of the factory with their own personalized signed barrel, and a note saying "Never stray more than 10 meters from your assigned barrel."
Click to expand...

5chars
 
heh - explosive barrels are a great staple of FPSs.
 
Yeah concerned is pretty damn hilarious, but does what I wrote make sense to you guys?
 
I prefer to think as Concerned as the ultimate authority for all these niggling tid-bits. I wish Christopher would do one for EpOne and EpTwo, and maybe Portal... :/
 
DON'T MIND THIS POST: OFFTOPIC, SORRY. :D


But.. (Concerned spoiler)
Frohman died -: (
. Although it could have another dumbass character in EP1, EP2... Besides, who the hell wants to be in the Citadel? Except Combine. EP2 would have another train crash with a dumbass and so it goes on... And the theory.. Seems logical. No, seriously, I wanted to post about Concerned. I'm so offtopic.
 
There's always a way around it; it didn't neccessarily have to involve Frohman, or an equivilent idiot character.
 
Does it matter if he did? Still funny

And there were billions of explosive barrels in HL1 as well, before the combine were there.
 
LandStander said:
Anyone who has played Half-Life 2 will immediately notice the barrels marked "explosive" littered all over in convenient locations throughout the game. How could we make sense of this?
Well the combine have seized the earth and are mining it for it's precious resources. Among these resources is very likely oil, coal, etc. Humanity is no longer harvesting these materials yet there are a number of things such as electricity, heat sources and the like that are required for people to live in the controlled cities. So how does the combine solve this? A cheap but highly volatile chemical, fuel (whatever) that is very adaptive in powering primitive machinery but useful in little else. Unfortunately the Combine in their infinite wisdom forgot to set up a DPW. So, where do they store this unstable substance? Everywhere and anywhere. Accidents probably result in high numbers of death annually but it is unlikely that the combine care much.
Click to expand...

One thing that bothers me is how rusty these barrels look. If they are really manufactured, or even packaged by the combine, I suspect they'll use their fancy blue alloy.

Therefore I think they're what they're -- half-spent fuel barrels (which explodes best with the fuel/air mixture). Why are they all over the place? Maybe the combine rationed them to citizens, but they keep "misplacing" them due to lack of safety training/accidents/dying etc.
 
There doesn't have to be a reason behind everything, things can just be there for no reason.
 
Well sometimes absurd elements of a game can take a player out of the immersion. Besides it's fun to speculate.
 
The reason there are so many explosive barrels is because Valve put them there for players that like watching explosions.

End of story.
 
It's because what kind of game has guns but doesn't have explosive barrels?

Wait, RE4 I think.

Lol, the explosive barrels weren't explosive.
 
But remember, the vast majority of explosive barrels we encounter are in places where citizens wouldn't normally be.
 
Because the combine don't like blowing up citizens?
 
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