This is what it is.
Well tbh while this is still not a plot development I'd like, it still would maked much more sense than eating brains to get info. The advisors have a demonstrable telekenetic ability, which could maybe be extrapolated to mean that they also are telepathic to some degree.
Because the idea of having your memories sucked out of the back of your brain by a penis-like appendage is stupid.
I don't know why everyone is treating this as fact when the only evidence for it is 'I bet they ripped off Starship Troopers'. Could just be that Advisors feed on brains...?
I actually got the impression that the Advisor just snapped the guy with telekinesis, because he was pissed off or whatever.
Please drop the notion that Half Life 2 is Starship Troopers: The Game. You might even end up enjoying it more. Laidlaw puts enough homework into the science so that it at least doesn't sound completely stupid, eg. with the tunneling entanglement and Calabi-Yau references when describing the teleportation mechanics in HL2.
What foreshadowing?
But eating brain != eating knowledge, except among primitive idiots and people who put bones through their noses.
'Advisor': definition, 'Brain eating knowledge-sucker', I'll have to remember that.
Well how about, you know, having some actual evidence that that is what they are doing? A single line from an NPC? The advisors acting on the knowledge they've supposedly gained? Anything at all?
See above - it could be clearer by way of being, well, suggested at all. I remember people like you claiming that it was blatantly obvious that the Combine were on Xen
It is lame.
I'll accept it when there's more evidence for it than a bunch of excitable B-movie fans shouting 'Why do u doubt it? HE ATE DER GUYZ' BRAIN!'
This I do find worrying, but like you say, Prima does not write the story.
My opinion is that Half-Life have never been extremely realistic, they never wanted it to be that, but a lot of the science of the Half-Life universe makes sense and is belivable. That sucking a brain out or eating it gives you its knowledge do not make sense in anyway I see it and its also a cliché, and Valve always try to stay away from that.
And...
It helps if you quote people who actually agree with you...
Well I guess since it's not realistic, why don't we just say that it all works by magic?
Some posters here are moderately well-versed in physics and were pleased by the relevance of those references in HL2. Others such of myself felt compelled to look up the theories afterwards and were impressed with the scientific grounding that Laidlaw tried to give the teleportation physics used in the game. Calabi-Yau manifolds are models used used to help understand the multiple dimensions hinted at by superstring theory. Quantum tunneling and quantum entanglement are real life subatomic phenomenons where particles can be seen to pass through obstacles (tunneling) or affect the behaviour of other particles at a distance (entanglement). This is a layman's butchered summary, but even in that you can see that HL2's teleportation idea hints at quantum manipulation being used as a means to pass between dimensions. Michael Crichton, in a lengthy foreword to Timeline, used the same ideas to contextualise his ideas about time travel. It makes a vague kind of sense, even if it might not be applicable in real world, contemporary physics.
Uh, interrogation...? I've seen this thread of dialogue in more stories than I've cared to count, and not one of them were hinting at brain sucking.
What are these actual biological studies? Why are they not mentioned or referenced in the game in order to give the Advisor's ability context? Is there a hint as to why it works on humans as their brains are being liquefied, where it would previously only work on (I'm guessing) very simple forms of life with simple and small brains? Where is the hint that this is what the Advisors are doing at all, aside from the idea that eating brains=eating knowledge in the symbology of some hackneyed, shamelessly unscientific narratives (see Starship Troopers)?
They weren't very good at writing sci fi, to my knowledge. And not everything they did had a function and worked - that is BS. Unless you believe human sacrifice for the sake of a good harvest, or whatever, was functional? Incidentally, that's another plot mechanism I hope never surfaces in HL.
The name Advisor contains no information-vampire connotations whatsoever. I don't know why you'd even bother continuing to argue this particular point. They aren't simply assassins, since they advised Breen and use their knowledge to direct their troops, so you needn't look any further for the justification for their name. They're not named 'assassins' for the same reason that barnacles, headcrabs and striders aren't called 'assassins'.
It isn't Valve style evidence, or even evidence at all. Valve style evidence is, eg. the noticeboards in Kliener's and Eli's lab and speeches from NPC's. Like I said - a single line of explanation, or even changed word, would be enough to lay all argument from me to rest. On the other hand, how are Valve supposed to demonstrate that the Advisors aren't knowledge-sucking, if that's what everyone is so quick to assume? That is much harder.
People who think they are arguing based on a wealth of evidence when they in fact possess none at all.
We have no idea how the host body idea would have worked. It could have involved a large part of Breen's physical body intact within a larger one, just his brain, or none of those.
Because the tentacle is too narrow for that, and the process too brutal. Had they cut off his head and taken it, it would not only be a clearer signal of their intent to profit off his knowledge but I would also have slightly less of a problem with the concept (though as a plot device I would still consider it lame). Sucking his brains like a milkshake, as it appeared, should leave his brains in no state to extract info from, even if we were to accept the farfetched science of steal brain = steal info.
As stated somewhere else, I have less of a problem with the idea of them obtaining knowledge from a brain through other means than sucking it out in a schlock horror manner. This idea would beg the other question of why, if they can do this, do they ever torture/interrogate people by conventional means at all, plus all the abovementioned plot problems it chucks up...
It's cool *tongue-kiss*QuantumFireball said:Sorry, skimmed over it and read it wrong. I hope you will forgive me
