Plot Hole Revelation

[drunkymonkey]

He can't stop time, he merely alters Gordons perception of it.

Well, whatever. He can put people into stasis. Normal people can't. This suggests he is some kind of demi-god. Demi-Gods aren't normally stopped by bullets.

 

[Asknoone]

I don't think it means he's some sort of demi god. Plus, whats to say he isn't alien? Can normal people teleport? Hmm?

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

I still think he's more like a higher dimensional being.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Maybe he carries a lot of pheropods. If humans can make themselves invisible to Antlions and teleport, what's to say Gman can't make himself invisible to lots and lots of aliens? Or people? Because although I don't think he's a demi-god, he's not exactly any old schmo.

 

[Snowden]

Yup, it's all about the G-Man's pheromones..

 

[ríomhaire]

I disagree. I think the G-Man is entirely unkillable by anyone. The man is immortal. Notice now he didn't age, or how he can stop time and how he can teleport places.

Hurray! I get to use this:

 

[Asknoone]

I am amused, Rimfire.

 

[Rizzo]

So your saying he cant turn himself into a tv?

 

[Polaris]

G-man most probably only can manipulate with visual sensation and cutting edge technology....
I can't imagine man with briefcase who can manipulate with time, walking in explosion and drive tram in space...

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

So your saying he cant turn himself into a tv?

He evan gets movie channels.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

he gets TV?! He's my new daddy! (Free Satellite!!) His Breifcase carries an HD Tuner.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

Hurray! I get to use this:

I think the last 1 is an error on valve's part, they dont think youl look behind you. Or perahaps your machines ****ed up

 

[ríomhaire]

I think the last 1 is an error on valve's part, they dont think youl look behind you. Or perahaps your machines ****ed up

Yes because some accedentaly teleported away the top half of the citadel and City 17

 

[Lightice]

Well, we really don't know enough about G-man to make any kind of accurate speculation, but it should be obvious that he isn't a normal human nor a lightweight in any sense. However, he can't be near omnipotent or omniscient, either, since he needs a pawn like Gordon to do the dirty work for him.
I imagine - and note that this is pure speculation, with no claims of factuality - that he is simply a projection of some sort, that can only interact with it's enviroment with a considerable effort - he can appear, talk and observe, but that's about it. The only things we've seen him manipulate in Half-Life saga are electric devices, such as electronic locks or a nuclear bomb. He can put Gordon into stasis, but if he could do that indefinately, he wouldn't need Dr. Freeman to cause chaos for him - he could just yank Combines and their equipment left and right into the stasis and leave them there.

The Episode 1 homepage describes him as a "sinister interdimensional bureaucrat". Whether this is just a red herring or an accurate description of his occupation remains to be seen, though.

 

[99.vikram]

He isn't all powerful because he obviously loses control of you in Ep 1 (official site).

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

It's not like he loses control forever

 

[Sulkdodds]

I, personally, doubt very much that the G-Man is ever there in physical form.

1. Civil Protection are humans, who need to wear gasmasks. WTF DUDE?
2. "You can keep your suit, you earned it," was said in the fianl moments of the last game. Yet in HL2, you start off without it...
3. "You left this at Black Mesa,' said Barney. No, you left it at Xen. I am of course referring to the crowbar.
4. Breen in charge of Earth's surrender? Why would the Combine care about negotiating with humans?
5. It was always thought that the G-Man was the administrator, especially considering he was caught having an argument with a scientist in Black Mesa...

1. The SAS are humans, who need to wear gasmasks. WTF DUDE?
It helps when you want to look menacing/anonymous, be immune to tear gas, be immune to whatever the Combine may or may not be doing to the air and/or be biomodified.
2. True, but then again, you still end up with it in your possession...
3. For all he knows, you did. And/or figure of speech. Okay, hole.
4. Seeing as valve themselves referred to him making a 'Faustian bargain' with the Combine, it's likely they promised him power. He was also loyal to them, but easily manipulated with the carrot of extradimensional sightseeing/securing immortality for the species and the stick of, erm, mass genocide.
5. Well, he's not.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Tell it like it is, spinning Freud man!

 

[Langolier]

There are a few plot holes in the HL universe.

1. Civil Protection are humans, who need to wear gasmasks. WTF DUDE?

As Samon said: they portray menace. Also, it is generally easier to get humans to do horrible things if they can't be identified by those they're persecuting.

4. Breen in charge of Earth's surrender? Why would the Combine care about negotiating with humans?

Not a plot-hole in my opinion. It seems to indicate under-handed dealing. Considering what Decay tells us, I would suspect he was directly responsible for the Cascade. However evidence proving this is nigh... non-existant. Smart bastard that he is. (Dr. Breen)

 

[drunkymonkey]

5. Well, he's not.

So, if he has all these special powers, such as putting people in stasis, why did he spend his time arguing with a scientist?

And also, 99, perhaps mind control is very, very hard. Plus, by the trailer, you can hear him say 'We'll see about that,' which suggests he is near to Gordon at that point.

 

[Sulkdodds]

So, if he has all these special powers, such as putting people in stasis, why did he spend his time arguing with a scientist?

Nobody knows. But it's pretty much impossible to answer this without knowing what, who, where, why he is and exactly how far his 'powers' extend. Does he perhaps have power only over those who 'agree' to work with him? Would teleporting that scientist away have achieved anything? Did Valve even have any idea what he was trying to do at the beginning of HL1? Did they originally plan to have him arranging the accident as a 'test' for Gordon or as a galacto-political excuse to take over Xen? Did they then change this later to Breen arranging the accident? Was the G-Man helping Breen then and later turned against him/the Combine? We don't know anything, so we can't really say things like 'oh, he has awesome power so why didn't he...'

We don't know.

 

[drunkymonkey]

Nobody knows. But it's pretty much impossible to answer this without knowing what, who, where, why he is and exactly how far his 'powers' extend. Does he perhaps have power only over those who 'agree' to work with him? Would teleporting that scientist away have achieved anything? Did Valve even have any idea what he was trying to do at the beginning of HL1? Did they originally plan to have him arranging the accident as a 'test' for Gordon or as a galacto-political excuse to take over Xen? Did they then change this later to Breen arranging the accident? Was the G-Man helping Breen then and later turned against him/the Combine? We don't know anything, so we can't really say things like 'oh, he has awesome power so why didn't he...'

We don't know.

Well, Valve have actually said that a lot of the storyline in Half Life 1 was not as thought out as in Half Life 2, so the storyline developed in technical terms. If you look at it this way, in essence, Valve didn't know who the G-Man was in Half Life 1. They do seem to know who he is in Half Life 2, and that is why they were more comfortable with his dialogue.
There are actually speech files from that room where G-Man is talking about how 'he' (presumably Freeman) is vital to the experiment, or something. I can't exactly remember when or where I read it.

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

Are you talking about the muffled conversation from before the Resonance Cascade?

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Are you talking about the muffled conversation from before the Resonance Cascade?

yeah that whole thing again ... cant believe you guys actually managed to figure out what they were saying

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

The "My employers don't agree" is pretty obvious. Can't tell what the other ones are saying, though.

 

[Cole]

4. Breen in charge of Earth's surrender? Why would the Combine care about negotiating with humans?

Combine do care about negotiating with humans.
It's right in the story people!
Combine cannot teleport on a local scale, only on a massive scale. They can teleport to a planet but then they can't teleport around the planet.

Early technology of this picks up right away, you know when they Teleport Alyx and then you but everything goes wrong cuz of lamarr? That was the first local teleportation of a human.

It's why Mossman was spying on you, and then she leaked it to the combine, who eventually made there own which you use and then the slow teleport hits.

We basically proved that we are a usefull species.

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

Alright, I listened to the sound files again. Here is what I have:

gman_mumble1- Can't understand this one at all.

gman_mumble2- Sounds like "Mum mum mum mum"

gman_mumble3- "I want to give you an offer..."

gman_mumble4- "If I had wondered why I'd chosen him I wouldn't.."

gman_mumble5- "My employers don't agree."

gman_mumble6- "Your a scientist, and a fraud. Back off."

If you want to listen yourself, download GCFScape and extract the files from valve/sound/gman

 

[ríomhaire]

I was thinking about those speech files yesterday. Maybe the conversation went something like this:
"I will not let the system commence"
"It is perfectly safe"
"My employers don't agree"
"And either way, Dr. Freeman is far too inexperienced"
"If I had wondered why I'd chosen him I wouldn't..."
"Listen to me, I'M the scientist"
"You're a scientist, AND A FRAUD! BACK OFF!"

 

[Glenn the Great]

There are a few plot holes in the HL universe.

3. "You left this at Black Mesa,' said Barney. No, you left it at Xen. I am of course referring to the crowbar.

You did leave the crowbar at Black Mesa.... your first one, that is. In the chapter "Apprehension", you got ambushed by soldiers in that room, and you lost all of your weapons. Your crowbar was probably laying on the floor in that room, and Barney probably went in there looking for you and picked it up. The crowbar you left at Xen was the one you found after escaping the trash compactor.

 

[NJspeed]

How are you guys going to say there are "no plot holes" ??

Are you guys serious??

If you just played HL1 and then jumped straight into HL2, you'd have no clue what the plot is, period.

How did Gordon get here? What happened after Black Mesa? Where did the Combine come from?

The only way people even make sense of this convoluted plot is through reading stuff like "Raising the Bar" and visiting sites like this.

For example, "Where do the Combine come from" was never actually answered in the game. The word "Xen" is NEVER said in HL2.

Without doing extra homework, no regular player would be able to say stuff like "Oh well after you defeated the Nihilanth, the Combine now had an open portal to earth, blah blah blah".

NONE of that was ever explained IN the actual games.

 

[Sulkdodds]

I don't think that there are no plot holes, but none of that stuff you said constitutes a 'plot hole'. We must assume the player has first gone through HL1. Otherwise, of course you're not going to know what's going on.

How did Gordon get here? What happened after Black Mesa? Where did the Combine come from?

I. Duh. The G-man?
II. It's on a wall, and Eli tells you about it. The world erupted in portal storms which spat aliens into our reality; the remainder of humanity retreated to fortified cities. Whether they were spontaneous or some preliminary attack by the Combine, we don't know; what we do know is that they attacked and took over Earth in 7 hours, Breen becoming the supreme administrator through his faustian bargain with them.
III. Nobody knows. This is called a 'mystery' or an 'unanswered question' - not a plot hole.

I believe the word Xen is said in HL2, several times.
If you play the games carefully, look at the evidence and actually think, you work out the general idea of things. It's still ambiguous; that's the whole point of the plot.

Plot holes are contradictions or things that don't make sense - not mysteries left unsolved.

 

[Glenn the Great]

What makes Half-Life so great is it's method of storytelling where the facts are never laid right out in the open for you, but the game gives enough clues for you to piece together the facts through exploration, attention to detail, and mental pondering and sharing ideas with others.

Think about it, if everything were told to you straight up, Half-Life would be just like any other game; not anything you could endlessly talk about like we do here on message boards. You'd play the game, you'd know everything, and then you'd just sort of forget about it.

At first, we don't know a whole lot about what happened between HL1 and HL2, and no one in HL2 really tells you either. What you need to do is look to detail. Check out the news clippings in Kleiner and Vance's labs. Lot of information to be found there.

The people at Valve are geniuses for deciding to present the story like this, and that is probably the biggest factor in what makes the game successful. There are no "plot holes." You are just encouraged to think a little bit more.

 

[M_Gargantua]

And everyone in the game assumes you've been through everything that happened because they don't know you were in stasis. realisticly eli should'nt even have explained the news clippings to you because as far as he knew you were along side the rest of the huddled, cowering masses when it happened.

So that was a little grace from valve to allow the human player to have a clue whats going on.

Valve was smart in doing this. rather then baby feed the player the story they kept the action-puzzle hybrid feel to the game by making the story a puzzle in itself.

G-man is a rather large piece of the puzzle, likely one that will come together from many smaller tidbits of info.

 

[drunkymonkey]

You did leave the crowbar at Black Mesa.... your first one, that is. In the chapter "Apprehension", you got ambushed by soldiers in that room, and you lost all of your weapons. Your crowbar was probably laying on the floor in that room, and Barney probably went in there looking for you and picked it up. The crowbar you left at Xen was the one you found after escaping the trash compactor.

Well spotted. Me=fail.

 

[Asknoone]

You did leave the crowbar at Black Mesa.... your first one, that is. In the chapter "Apprehension", you got ambushed by soldiers in that room, and you lost all of your weapons. Your crowbar was probably laying on the floor in that room, and Barney probably went in there looking for you and picked it up. The crowbar you left at Xen was the one you found after escaping the trash compactor.

Naw. Barney Calhoun - Blue Shift, then HL2, never went near that room. It was merely a reference, a slight joke, not a literal thing.

 

[ríomhaire]

Yeah, Gordon's crowbar is famous. Even Overwatch troops have heard of it
"It's Doctor Freeman, watch out for his crowbar!"

 

[Glenn the Great]

Naw. Barney Calhoun - Blue Shift, then HL2, never went near that room. It was merely a reference, a slight joke, not a literal thing.

Well, if you remember, a security guard was talking to you in the room outside the room you were ambushed in. He got shot in the back by an assassin while he was giving you a warning. Of course we know that Barney was a throwaway character, and I don't want to argue about whether that is always Barney showing up, or if it was a bunch of different security guards. This is a pretty dumb thing to be arguing over.

 

[UltimaApocalypse]

They are all different ones.

 

[ríomhaire]

Well, if you remember, a security guard was talking to you in the room outside the room you were ambushed in. He got shot in the back by an assassin while he was giving you a warning. Of course we know that Barney was a throwaway character, and I don't want to argue about whether that is always Barney showing up, or if it was a bunch of different security guards. This is a pretty dumb thing to be arguing over.

The 'real' Barney never interacts with Gordon in HL1.

 

[Jintor]

Well, during the events of Half-Life1. I assume they at least talked beforehand, because Barney very definantly owes Gordon a beer.

On a side note, what if they simply cloned Barney? This is Black Mesa... you never know...