*really* good posts from someone on steampowered.com

thanks weller, was good and pretty interesting but it twas freaky of how much he has thougth up over a game.

My guess he is anaylizing the game way to much, i doubt VALVe have thought that far into this game, even if VALVe make the 3rd one and reveal the secrets about g-man, they would have probably just have gone there and seen still 1 of the idea's :p. I'd say they are just thinking of the game more as they go along, then they could make alot of games/expansions :).

He most likely is that type of person(dont mean to go stereotypical)that say's "whoa!!!!, there is a rock there!!!. How did that rock get there :O, did it get dropped off by alien race, maybe little smigy ppl came and made that like we built the great piramids!!!! or maybe it was just formed by years apon years of the rain condencing the soil ffs!

anyway good find ^_^



maybe im wrong though, and maybe VALVe are aliens trying to tell us a what they do to us..... :smoking:
 
Stopped reading when he said Gmans eyes change color and are brown on the box.
 
On the poster from the Gold Pack they look like a mix of green and blue.
 
While I admire Soul Harvester's dedication to write three very long posts, this is nothing that has not been discussed before, and at greater length. He's gotten a couple things wrong though. I'm going to go through some of these things piece by piece here (even though it's 6am and I'm on limited time), so bear with me.

I don't need to go over how much I loathe it when people try to justify these "G-Man is Gordon Freeman" or "G-Man is Gordon's father" theories, so I'll skip the parts where Soul Harvester gives reasons as to why they're foolish. He left a couple out, but I noticed he included a "Darth Vader" reference, which is funny, because I said the exact same thing yesterday or the day before.

Soul Harvester is wrong in believing that the G-Man is at the head of Black Mesa, or above Dr. Breen. In fact, the opposite is true. Breen, as the Administrator of the Black Mesa Research Facility, was at the top of the ladder. The G-Man worked as his liaison to the facility, serving in his absence and monitoring the goings-on. He was only one of the administrator's men, however, as evidenced by a comment made by a scientist: "This place is crawling with the administrator's men today." That said, none of them were likely to be higher in position than the G-Man, who as I mentioned just a moment ago was Breen's liaison. The G-Man might have also served in the capacity of Dr. Breen's personal secretary and the head of Black Mesa's human resources department; this is seen from the offer of employment letter to one Dr. Gordon Freeman, sent from BMRF's Office of the Administrator, Civilian Recruitment Division. As Gordon's corporate sponsor is stated as "Unknown," leading us to believe that it was not Dr. Kleiner who sponsored him (it was only on his recommendation that Gordon be hired), we can conclude that his corporate sponsor was the G-Man, and this letter was penned by him. This offers us another clue: the letter is signed, "L.M." We know that those obviously are not Dr. Breen's initials, and if any of you have studied business communications then you are well aware secretaries sign their own initials at the bottom of outgoing letters that they have typed. If this is the G-Man, then his initials are L.M. (Proving in another way that he is not Gordon Freeman.)

The G-Man is not omnipotent because he does not know everything. Case in point, he did not know Gordon Freeman would survive and go on to defeat Nihilanth. While this could be attributed to the "Gordon is unable to be predicted" theory that is currently being discussed in the "Ending Spoilers" thread on this very forum, it is unlikely that the G-Man sees all and knows all. It is safe to say that Eli and Gordon are being used as bargaining chips by Dr. Breen, but I wouldn't call them pawns. Well, perhaps Gordon, but I imagine that the G-Man has no real vested interest in Eli Vance.

About the vortigaunts, they showed signs of sentience and intelligence in the first game. They were already picking up English from their brief time at Black Mesa! I don't know what he's talking about there. I am also not sure how he can say that he sees no evidence that the vortigaunts were controlled by Nihilanth. I suppose the facts that they were called "alien slaves," those bracelets were known as "shock collars," and in HL2 they refer to them as their yokes while calling Nihilanth "the lesser master" does not count as evidence to him. It's common sense...
Coterminous refers to their hive-mindedness. "We remember the cords that the Freeman cut." They are linked together as one. I see absolutely nothing that could tie the G-Man to the vortigaunts, especially not naming him as their "core consciousness." That makes little sense anyway since being hive minded means you're all sharing one mind, and the theory is sort of painting the picture that the G-Man is something akin to a Zerg Overmind. Sidenote: I friggin' hate Starcraft. Yeah, you heard me. :p

Judith Mossman must have heard about Dr. Gordon Freeman during his stay as a visiting fellow at the Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Innsbruck, Austria. he was doing academic research there before seeking a job in the private sector. Judith Mossman likely knows little of the G-Man, if she even knows him at all. I don't see any reason for him to talk to her about Gordon anyway. He is, after all, a man of as few words as possible. Succinct would be a good way of putting it.

Getting off the track of the G-Man and addressing Soul Harvester's next point about the Combine, wrong about that too, I am afraid. The Combine does not need humans for an army; they have synths. The strongest species taken from other worlds, forced into an evolution of organics and mechanical parts. The Combine citadels can churn out endless numbers of these synths (such as the striders or gunships), so long as they have the materials for making them. That's why the citadel is eating City 17; raw materials. No, the reason humanity was spared was because Dr. Breen cut a deal with them: "Spare our species and in turn I will give you the technology to teleport locally." The combine cannot teleport locally, only from their homeworld and back. Humans, however, have such technology; now you see why Eli Vance is so important a bargaining chip to Dr. Breen. Or rather, I should say Eli's research...Breen feels that Mossman is perfectly capable of carrying out that research and sees no reason to keep Eli alive.

On to the next point: G-Man wasn't running his mouth. We controlled Xen for approximately seven hours before we got our asses handed to us by the combine. I could be off with the times here; we might have held Xen for longer but we surrendered a mere seven hours after the combine invaded earth. I surmise that it wouldn't take more than an hour for the combine to find out Nihilanth was dead, teleport to Xen, be attracted to earth by the portal storms, and start roughing us up. Maybe it's eight hours, then. ;)

Aside from Gordon Freeman, the only other person we know of who may possibly be employed by the G-Man is Colonel Adrian Shephard. I believe that fool's long dead though; died of starvation, crashed into a Xen rock, went out of his mind floating around in that osprey, something like that. Who knows.
But yes, the G-Man does seem to be acting as your agent now. That's a good way to put it. The question of "What does the G-Man get from renting out your services?" is one of those other questions people are discussing right now. I stand by my previous answer that the G-Man is using the money to buy collector's plates. Y'know, the ones with the farm houses and country scenes on them. Maybe some cute kittens...country music greats...tractors and Nascar racers...Elvis (see signature)...

Soul Harvester said:
This suggests further than G-Man didn't know you from a bar of soap at the start of the first Half-Life.
Click to expand...
He knew about you maybe 20 days before that, give or take. Can't be too sure but it was certain that he knew you before your start of tenure on May (March? There's a discrepancy in the dates listed in the OpFor and HL manuals, but the day is the same) 15, because the offer of employment letter was sent on the 5th, and it was to confirm a recent telephone conversation where Gordon had been offered the job. The telephone conversation likely occurred within that week, so about 20 days. Knowing the G-Man, however, he might have had his eye on you before then. There's no evidence to suggest that however.

So anyway, not trying to like, beat down this guy's post or anything, but there were a lot of things that were missing or were incorrect. I always enjoy these discussions about possible theories and recapping the storyline to paint a clearer picture of it. It seems Soul Harvester really enjoys it too, which is great. Always good to have people like that in the community.
 
Darkside55 said:
Getting off the track of the G-Man and addressing Soul Harvester's next point about the Combine, wrong about that too, I am afraid. The Combine does not need humans for an army; they have synths. The strongest species taken from other worlds, forced into an evolution of organics and mechanical parts. The Combine citadels can churn out endless numbers of these synths (such as the striders or gunships), so long as they have the materials for making them. That's why the citadel is eating City 17; raw materials. No, the reason humanity was spared was because Dr. Breen cut a deal with them: "Spare our species and in turn I will give you the technology to teleport locally." The combine cannot teleport locally, only from their homeworld and back. Humans, however, have such technology; now you see why Eli Vance is so important a bargaining chip to Dr. Breen. Or rather, I should say Eli's research...Breen feels that Mossman is perfectly capable of carrying out that research and sees no reason to keep Eli alive.
Click to expand...

I find it doubtful that the Combine have no use for humanity as soldiers. You'll notice that the Combine has no non-humanoid troops anywhere in City 17 (at least, none that we seen in HL2). ALL of the soldiers are human...albeit biomechanically-enhanced humans, but humans nonetheless. They even use human vehicles (as seen in the attack helicopter and tanks/apc's). This only supports my theory that, each time the Combine invades and occupies a world, they use the local resources (ie, technology, inhabitants, etc) to keep that world under their control. The Combine, after all, are alien. Being that they seem to have a thing for invading and occupying other worlds, it would make sense that they would see modification of the indiginous population as easier then adapting their own physiology to the conditions/atmosphere of the conquered world.

Aside from Gordon Freeman, the only other person we know of who may possibly be employed by the G-Man is Colonel Adrian Shephard. I believe that fool's long dead though; died of starvation, crashed into a Xen rock, went out of his mind floating around in that osprey, something like that.
Click to expand...

I'm sure Adrian Shephard appreciates the promotion...from corporal to colonel in six years is quite a jump. All kidding aside, I doubt that Adrian is dead. I'm quite confident that we will see him again. He was quite an adaptable sort, after all.
 
I honestly think that valve have always been making up the half life story on the fly....

ie...

after hl1 they didnt know what hl2 was going to be about, sure gordon would return and so would the gman but the combine? the xen portals expanding etc... city 17...

NONE of this was hinted at during hl1, op4, or blueshift at all.

actualy when you look at it, Hl1 deliberately made out that black mesa and that whole problem was fixed, Nuke anybody? the complete u turn between hl1 and hl2 is similar to the infamous Dallass dream state..... "well we couldnt think of anything so bits of the last series where pointless".

something else... In op4 you stop the nuke, later you see the Gman reset the nuke and boom.....

why is it that for somebody who is apparently trying to start a war between the combine and earth (to somehow gain from hiring you out) that the Gman tries to stop the whole process with the nuke?

why is it that if he can stop time, teleport people, dissarm them and a whole load of other crap he cant just you know... stab breen in the face before the Black mesa incedent.... or when he tries to get away in hl2 and you
have to kill him at the end

that indicates that whilst in Hl the Gman is God for all intensive purposes (bullet proof, all poweful) he cant actualy do much in Hl2.

all in all my point is that theres nothing in HL1 that points to the events that happened in Hl2. (combine, time stopping, breen, city 17 etc...)

the whole gman thing seems to me to be like Q from startreck, hes all powerful you cant kill him etc... etc... but he picks random people who intrigue him to toy with...

Q has picard riker... the voyager crew etc..
Gman has you.

there are rules, ei. Q got made human for being a bitch. one of his pals in voyager got made human and locked in a commet for ever, then when he got freed he commited suicide with Q's assistance...

*dougy's theory hes just thought up.... and is typing in 3rd person to look cool, yip hes failing at the cool part*

The Gman is training somebody to become powerful enough to kill him.... hes immortal, hes spent millenia alone... he makes wars for amusement (explains Hl1/2 why he teases you all the time) so hes seeing if you are good enough to rival him.

listening to his big speech at the end makes this likely to me...
 
Well of course not, they obviously didn't have a lot of stuff figured out when they released HL1. They weren't expecting a sequal, or at least they were just trying to get HL1 our the door.

They now have Marc Laidlaw as a full time writer though, so the story in the expansions/HL3 should be pretty awsome.
 
why is it that if he can stop time, teleport people, dissarm them and a whole load of other crap he cant just you know... stab breen in the face before the Black mesa incedent.... or when he tries to get away in hl2 and you
Click to expand...
What Soul Harvester says could be correct, maybe that when the G-Man "hired" Gordon after HL1, he got something in return,from his "employers". Maybe he aquried a new technology, the ability to stop time. Tho the 1 question that makes me ponder is, why would he need it?
 
Just because you write a lot, it doesn't mean you aren't still talking crap.

G Man is representing someone.

Valve are making the story up as they go along.

Some people are just complete idiots.
 
It has been repeatedly stated by Gabe himself that the only official storyline before HL2 was HL1, and that the expansions are not considered "official" additions to the story, why the hell does Adrian Shepard or the nuking in op4 keep cropping up? Adrian Shepard never existed and we never actually saw the nuke explode in the official storyline. Notice how we visit Black Mesa in HL2? Notice the distinct lack of gigantic crater or radiation fallout? The closest we get is toxic sludge which already existed in large quantities all over Black Mesa before the nuke supposedly went off.

Now if you want to know why Mossman knows all about Freeman, then all you have to bloody well do is go to Black Mesa in HL2, and after Mossman leaves you and Eli to catch up, follow her into the office. She'll tell you to go out and talk to Eli, and when you get to him, Eli will tell you that Mossman applied for the job that you got in Black Mesa. The only reason she didn't get hired was because you were more experienced in the field. This is why Alyx mentions that she is always talking about how Mossman keeps saying how it should have been her in the test chamber that day.

The reason the Vortiguants all know about you is because they are coterminus. They're not merely psychic, they don't just communicate telepathically, they all share a common consciousness. Talking to one vort is much the same as talking to any other vort, and killing one vort is much like killing any other vort. Every vort you talk to in HL2 will have vivid memories of you running at them and gunning them down. Every vort will remember your face because for so many vorts you were the last thing they saw before they died, and so when the Vorts see you, they can't help but be both cold to you for how much you hurt every single vort that survived, and yet happy that you eventually freed them. How would you feel if you were chained to a wall by your feet, and your rescuer amputated your entire leg in order to set you free? Sure you'd be happy you were free, but losing a leg is still losing a leg, and you'd always be bitter about it, and you'd believe that there would have been another way to free you without having taken your leg.

As for making it up as they go along, just use your brains people. They rewrote the HL2 storyline remember? Obviously they didn't dust off a story Laidlaw wrote a decade ago and used it for the sequel. However this highly obvious point doesn't preclude the equally obvious point that Laidlaw is quite capable of imagining up a theme and then writing stories about it. I do it all the time, to a much lesser extent. I create a virtual world in my mind, and then think up stories and situations I can extract from this virtual world. Laidlaw could have quite effortlessly have dreamt up a world where some alien race was going around enslaving other alien races, and that humans were next in line. It's likely these races didn't have any names or defining visual characteristics, and that a lot of filler came long after he put pen to paper, but the basis underlying theory of it all, that the combine enslaved Xen and used local resources to create armies and then applied the exact same formula to earth was most likely there all along. Gman and Gordon and everybody else probably showed up MUCH later and nothing more than story telling tools. Tools to tell the story of what's going on in this virtual universe inside Laidlaw's head.
 
err, you don't go to Black Mesa in HL2. They just named their new labs that.

Black Mesa East, i.e. the new 'Black Mesa' in the east, in europe?
 
Hrmm I suppose that could be right... Would fit in with all the other cryptic naming schemes such as City 17 apparently being a city that formed 17km away from the nearest major population center as opposed to actually being the 17th city constructed by the combine.
 
Revenge said:
Hrmm I suppose that could be right... Would fit in with all the other cryptic naming schemes such as City 17 apparently being a city that formed 17km away from the nearest major population center as opposed to actually being the 17th city constructed by the combine.
Click to expand...

Hahaha. You "suppose" that could be right?

Trust me, "Black Mesa East" is what they call their new labs, it's not Black Mesa.
 
Revenge, wow... Very well said.

It's nice to see people taking a realistic view to the story bearing in mind that Valve didn't write HL1 with a sequel in mind. Just good stuff
 
Revenge said:
Hrmm I suppose that could be right... Would fit in with all the other cryptic naming schemes such as City 17 apparently being a city that formed 17km away from the nearest major population center as opposed to actually being the 17th city constructed by the combine.
Click to expand...

Whether the Combine have been terraforming so hard that a facility in New Mexico looks similiar to Eastern Europe after a few years is debatable, but your other two points are good.
 
Wow

all the people who said there is no HL2 storyline simply haven't explored enough or listened closely enough to everything that happens in the game.
 
It was certainly an interesting read.

G-man: I do beleive valve changed their view of who he is since the HL1 days, because the story had been rewritten. Therefore this character might have lost some consistency between the original and the sequel.

Certainly lots of interesting theories. I do not beleive he was working under Breen though, it seems too low for him.

Revenge said:
It has been repeatedly stated by Gabe himself that the only official storyline before HL2 was HL1, and that the expansions are not considered "official" additions to the story, why the hell does Adrian Shepard or the nuking in op4 keep cropping up? Adrian Shepard never existed and we never actually saw the nuke explode in the official storyline. Notice how we visit Black Mesa in HL2? Notice the distinct lack of gigantic crater or radiation fallout? The closest we get is toxic sludge which already existed in large quantities all over Black Mesa before the nuke supposedly went off.
Click to expand...

Barney certainly exists even though he was in an expansion. We never visit Black Mesa, it was in a desert in the United States. City 17 is in Europe. Black Mesa East that we visit is named that way in honor of the original Black Mesa facility.
 
Sparta said:
Wow

all the people who said there is no HL2 storyline simply haven't explored enough or listened closely enough to everything that happens in the game.
Click to expand...

Totaly agree. I dont get people who say: "Half-Life 2 has no story whatsoever dude, they explain nothing"

It has a great story. Just because it is not handed on a silver plate.....
 
Bing_Oh said:
I find it doubtful that the Combine have no use for humanity as soldiers. You'll notice that the Combine has no non-humanoid troops anywhere in City 17 (at least, none that we seen in HL2). ALL of the soldiers are human...albeit biomechanically-enhanced humans, but humans nonetheless. They even use human vehicles (as seen in the attack helicopter and tanks/apc's).
Click to expand...

In Nova Prospekt Breen tells the trans-human arm of the Combine forces that he has assured the Combine that these humans are the best of the species, and if they don't catch Gordon Freeman then the alternative--if you can hardly call it that--is complete extinction, along with the rest of the species. Once again, this is Breen cutting deals to save the human race. The Combine has no use for them, trust me. Use for their technology, use for Earth's resources, but no use for them as even a slave species.

And to everyone who's saying "Valve hadn't written HL1 with HL2/HL3 in mind," well big friggin' deal guys? So you figured that out yourselves; you want a prize or something? I don't even know where half of you are going with this; I don't know if you're trying to give your own theories credibility or just trying to break down other peoples', but the bottom line is this:

There are hard facts in the series that have been proven, regardless of when the story for either game was written. Valve left HL1 completely open-ended; thus if they wanted to go back and create more of a story for it they could. That's why the G-Man was mysterious, that's why you weren't told what your job would be, etc. It was very simple for them to come in at a later time and say, "Ok. So now what?"

Does this make it any less of a story? No it does not. Need I remind you all that George Lucas didn't have the whole story of Star Wars written when he made the first movie. He made that shit up as he went along, and he did it in the exact same way. Episode IV: Luke is becoming a Jedi, defeats the evil empire's super weapon, Luke is a hero but still not a Jedi, Vader escapes. Very open ended, you see. There's room for expansion here. You could tell that even by the time he did the second movie he wasn't really thinking of the third, or at least he was only thinking of it as an outline. Otherwise, c'mon...Luke kissing his sister? Not likely if Lucas knew ahead of time that he'd write them as twins, and that somehow she'd "always known" he was her brother.

So what're you guys getting out of saying "ZOMG TEH HALF-LIFE 2 HAS NO STORY!1!!11@!eleven," or saying that it wasn't thought up beforehand?

Also, Revenge, I do believe that Valve authorized the story Gearbox made for OpFor, and therefore it must be considered canon, just as Blue Shift is. Barney escaped with some scientists, Shephard existed, and Black Mesa was nuked. None of these things are even that important to the continuity of the story anyway (aside from Barney living and escaping BMRF), so it isn't a big deal one way or another. It's part of HL's expanded universe and has no bearing on the main story, aside from Barney's afforementioned escape.
 
Barney existed before Blue Shift was created, he existed in HL1 and thus exists in HL2.

Apparently Gearbox went a bit too far off the beaten track with op4, and it doesn't fit in too good with the rest of the HL story. The biggest things that come to mind are the creation of race-X and also the fact that the gman actively interferes with the events in op4 (saving you from the rising lava by unlocking one of the doors, resetting the nuke, etc) which he never did in HL1 or HL2. Also there is Adrian Shepard being put into statis like Gordon, which I don't really know what Valve would do with it either way.

It's also important to note that since gearbox created the character of Adrian Shepard, as opposed to Blue Shift where they used an already existing character, they own the rights to him, and the Valve team will not legally be able to use Adrian Shepard in any stories unless they pay royalties to Gearbox or Gearbox writes it themselves, which wont be happening because Mark Laidlaw has been taken on as a full time writer and so it stands to reason that he'll be writing all future expansions and continuations from now on. Same applies to all minor characters created in either of the 2 expansions, and to any characters created in the PS2 game Half-Life: Decay if it wasn't done by Valve.
 
Well, I agree with you about Race-X (see sig; speculating about them annoys the hell out of me), but aside from that, I don't know. Maybe the G-Man did interfere too much, but the end certainly fit his personality. In any case, like I said, it doesn't matter too much in the larger scheme of things. I'm glad Valve can't make expansions out of Adrian anyway; he just wasn't interesting. At all. I don't know what everyone's fascination with him is. Also, he wasn't put into stasis anyway, so he probably died on that osprey, or is living off of headcrab meat in Xen somewhere.
 
Yeah yeah whitie, I've had that particular point drilled into me about 5 times now... I made a bloody mistake, and people are still giving me crap about 3 days later.... MOVE ON PEOPLE, IT'S NOT A BIG ISSUE....
 
One thing i don't agree with is the change of hair colour and eye colour. this honestly must be due to different conceptial artists. you can't say that gordon's hair is ginger by looking at the photo because for some stupid reason the photo has a sepia tone on it (orange-brown colour overlay). this sepia tone is usually due to black and white photos being exposed to sunlight and thus the photo turns orange-brown. as for the eyes, that is just a mistake on continuity. the eyes are allways the same colour in the game (that is they don't change while playing-the models in the game are all the same the whole way through), however when looking at artist renders and the such the colour of the eyes differs. this is because of different artists. for jimmy's sake! the glasses on gordon even change shape and size throughout the different concepts and renders!
 
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