Tackling Lombardi's Revelation

[Glenn the Great]

There is a lot of debate over the following quote by Doug Lombardi:

"We had a glimpse of the larger threat when we were working on Half-Life 1. In other words we knew that once you cleared out the Nihilanth, you were going to discover something worse beyond it. We knew that some immense threat had chased the Nihilanth and its creatures out of their own world and into Xen, from which location they were all to glad to seize the opportunity to continue on to Earth with suppression through the citadels. But the exact nature of the threat was left to be solved in Half-Life 2."

A lot of you seem to think that Xen is a safe-haven for the Nihilanth and Vortigaunts, and that the Vorts were not controlled by the Combine, all based on this quote. I believe that the quote has been misinterpreted, and I am going to show how.

Most people assume that the "larger threat" is referring to the Combine. It might seem like the Vortigaunts were slaves of the Combine, that they escaped to Xen, and that the invasion of Earth by Xen was a panic attack caused by human meddling in their world. I don't believe this is so.

Read this sentence:

"We knew that some immense threat had chased the Nihilanth and its creatures out of their own world and into Xen, from which location they were all to glad to seize the opportunity to continue on to Earth with suppression through the citadels."

Read it carefully. The Nihilanth and its creatures go to Xen.... from which location (still talking about Xen), they seize the opportunity to come to earth... with suppression from the Citadels.

What we see here is that Nihilanth and the Vortigaunts ARE THE COMBINE. They are the Combine since they are technically part of it, being slaves to them. They are no longer part of the Combine once the Nihilanth is destroyed, essentially freeing them.

The Combine are the "refugees" escaping from a much larger threat. I believe that this larger threat is who the G-Man works for. It is the extra party that will be introduced in the coming episodes.

 

[DeusExMachina]

Interesting theory. I don't think many others here will approve of it though...

 

[Asknoone]

Ok, so I didn't read it all, I'm tired, have work in the morning and going to bed soon so I'm not going to write a great deal saying why I completely disagree however...

I honestly, and I mean honestly, doubt the Combine are the refugees escaping the larger threat. As said in RTB "The Combine are the games evil empire." They've dominated countless worlds in an effort to force their technology onto other living organisms and adapt them and assimilate them in their own ranks.

The Combine are not refugees, they are an inter-stellar empire.

Also...The Combine chased the Xen creatures into Xen, and then from Xen moved through into Earth via the dimensional rift which made them become aware of it's existence.

 

[Glenn the Great]

The Combine is indeed an evil empire, and they are certainly massive, spanning many universes. I believe there is another great empire, which may be just as evil, and there is friction between these empires. There is a great war, and we only know the Combine half of it. A new faction will be revealed. We know that. I believe it is another giant empire, who is beginning to get the upper hand on the Combine, and Gordon is an agent of the Combine's downfall, just as the G-Man wants you to be.

First the GMan had you defeat the Vortigaunts. Now he's having you defeat Breen and his mechanized humans. GMan has sent you up against the same enemy both times, for the sake of his own empire, which is yet to be revealed.

 

[Darkside55]

This is one of the problems with information from developers, sometimes it's written in such a way as to cause confusion. What we have here is a failure to communicate.

You're connecting two thoughts into one, Glenn. Doug was saying that the Xenians were chased off their world by some unseen threat (thought 1), who were more than happy to attack Earth with their citadels (thought 2). Doug just put those thoughts together in the same sentence without clarification that they were different. What he MEANS is this:

"An unseen threat chased Nihilanth to Xen, [a threat which] was more than happy to attack Earth with their citadels."

The omission of a few words is what's causing the trouble. The Combine were never on Xen, and Nihilanth and the gang fled from the COMBINE. While I will say that your theory of the G-man's employers being the real masters has fan-merit, and would certainly be an interesting and unexpected twist to the story, I cannot see it happening. It's all confusion over something that should've been clear, but thanks to the wording it isn't.

 

[Asknoone]

I don't Gman has his own empire. He's merely using Gordon as mercenary, and he's the contractor.
Besides, he didn't set you against the Vortigaunts - it was Nihalinth. I mean, did he really subtely lead you to Nihalinth? No, I don't think so. That was Gordons own doing with aid from the Black Mesa team. It merely caught his attention. Though obviously Gman had other intentions and goals within Black Mesa.

Gordon is thrust into a cosmic war by a teleportation experiment gone badly wrong.

A war between the renegades of Xen and the Combine itself.

 

[Glenn the Great]

I mean, did he really subtely lead you to Nihalinth? No, I don't think so.

How can you say that he didn't lead you to Nihilanth, when he congratulates you for your destruction of it? The death of the Nihilanth was the goal. It's how you proved your worth. I think that the GMan set up the resonance cascade disaster. What was he doing in Black Mesa in the first place then? He was up to something, and it had to do with the scientists and their research. He wanted Gordon to get to Xen so he could take down Nihilanth.

 

[Asknoone]

The victory is short-lived, however. Gordon's heroics catch the attention of a sinister interdimensional bureaucrat. The G-Man, as he's come to be called, seals Gordon in stasis far from Earth, thought, and time itself.

And I quote from the Episode 1 site.
Somehow, I don't think leading Gordon to it was his overall goal - however, he's obviously pleased about it. You liberated the Vorts who quite clearly have come under his sway.

 

[Darkside55]

Gordon destroying the Nihilanth was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. The G-man had his hands in many cookie jars, but Gordon's was not one of them. The G-man had HECU, the black ops, and who knows what else backing him up...but Gordon Freeman, the man who actually got the job done, was completely out of left field.

Any time you see the G-man, he's merely heading where HE needs to go. There's nothing suggesting that he's leading you along for the purpose of conquering Xen. If the G-man takes a role in anyone's fate, it was Adrian Shephard's, constantly barring his path or opening new ways for him. The G-man had an armored regiment on Xen by the time Gordon destroyed Nihilanth...he obviously was not expecting you. But when you came out alive from the Nihilanth's chamber, he obviously recognized something special about you.

 

[ríomhaire]

My theory in a nutshell:
The Combine chased the Controllers and their slaves, Nihily and the Vorts to Xen.
Nihilanth controlled the Vorts, regulated the portals on Xen and bloked the Combine from getting through.
The g-man wanted to protect his and his employers' instrests, ie Earth.
Earth meddled in Xen, pissing off everyone their.
The Controllers ammased an army.
The g-man saw an opertunity, the Resonance Cascade was set up by him as a pre-emtive assault to confuse the Controllers so his employers' forces could move in and sieze Xen.
Gordon f*cked everything up by stopping the RC with the satilite launch.
The g-man manipulated Gordon to Xen where he could take out Nihilanth, plunging the Controllers into even more chaos than the RC did. Portal storms are back and worse, the Vorts are free and portals are now uncontrolled.
The g-man's employers' forces move in and take Xen, for the time being.
With Nihilanth dead the Combine are now free to move in and take Xen at last.
They see the Portal Storms, track their source to Earth and invade there too.
Earth is still important to the g-man for whatever reason. He uses the resistance and Gordon to overthrow the Combine control on City 17.
Everything goes to shit and suddenly the Vorts or perhaps an entirly new power who wishes for Gordon's safty/services rip Gordon from the g-man's control.
From there, we'll see.

 

[Asknoone]

The G-man had an armored regiment on Xen by the time Gordon destroyed Nihilanth.

No, I don't think that was his doing. First off, I firmly believe the military never made it to Xen. Also, that was a nice collection of planes, tanks, soldiers and god knows what else stored in one place. A little cramped? Yap. And the floor was sandy...that's not Xenish. I'd say that was merely a crossover from Earth.

I also believe he's not got a single jot of interest in Earth.

 

[Glenn the Great]

I believe that Doug didn't make a mistake when he told us that. My position takes his literal word, and your position assumes he messed up.

 

[ríomhaire]

"some immense threat had chased the Nihilanth and its creatures out of their own world and into Xen, from which location they were all to glad to seize the opportunity to continue on to Earth with suppression through the citadels"
If you take him word for word he's saying that the Nihilanth and creatures were glad to seize the opportunity to continue on to Earth with suppression through the citadels

 

[Glenn the Great]

Yes, since I believe that at that time Vortigaunts were under Combine control, Nihilanth and friends were just as much the Combine as the Human Overwatch troops are the Combine. Doug is referring to the collective Combine which Nihilanth and the Vorts were part of as slaves.

Remember that the Nihilanth told you that they were slaves at the time of the fight. If a slave gets free from his master, he isn't a slave anymore.

We know that Episode 1 will introduce another party. They aren't talking about the Vortigaunts, since they are pretty well known already.

 

[Darkside55]

I believe that Doug didn't make a mistake when he told us that. My position takes his literal word, and your position assumes he messed up.

It is in my experience that people do not always mean exactly what they say. The meaning is more important than how it is said; not everyone speaks in well-defined, clear-cut sentences. I understand what he MEANS, even though what he SAYS is tripping over himself.

No, I don't think that was his doing. First off, I firmly believe the military never made it to Xen. Also, that was a nice collection of planes, tanks, soldiers and god knows what else stored in one place. A little cramped? Yap. And the floor was sandy...that's not Xenish. I'd say that was merely a crossover from Earth.

I also believe he's not got a single jot of interest in Earth.

This is going to be a hard one to prove either way. The fact is that yes, the ground was most certainly the New Mexican desert. The sky, however, was Xenian. Since you were teleporting across Xen, it makes sense that it was on Xen (there is nothing to suggest that SAND does not occur on Xen); however, it could also have been one of the G-man's hallucinatory tricks.

But regardless of where that place was, the scenario has meaning to it. Much like the debate we're having about what Lombardi said over what he meant, this is a case of what was implied more than what actually happened, or where it happened. The tanks, the military, and the planes were an invasion force. This was no longer a cleanup crew. Showing HECU destroyed against the background of Xen (and perhaps the New Mexican floor) has metaphorical meaning. There was an invasion going on, from both sides. The Xenians came through, and in that, our military pushed through. I believe that was the G-man's doing. It's such a wonderful setup, if you think about it:

The G-man is employed at Black Mesa as a liason to the teleport experiment facilities.

When the time is right and they have a pure sample, a week before the experiment happens he gets the marines trained for close-quarters combat. He also employs the black ops.

When the experiment goes awry, as he knew it would, he sends in the military as "cleanup," eliminating any trace of people who knew about the teleportation experiments and the alien world. He directs the military into Xen. One man in particular he moves through the facility, cleaning up more aliens (Shephard).

The military breaks itself against the Xenian forces. Gordon Freeman unexpectedly destroys the Nihilanth, throwing said forces into disarray and allowing the military--and thus the G-man--to take control of the borderworld.

With that complete, he returns to Black Mesa to make sure that no word of this gets out, arms a nuke, and destroys the evidence.

 

[ríomhaire]

When the time is right and they have a pure sample, a week before the experiment happens he gets the marines trained for close-quarters combat. He also employs the black ops.

Actualy, it was 2 months, Shephards mission is confirmed in March, the RC happens in May.

 

[Glenn the Great]

Would you like to tell me why there is a Vortigaunt slaving around with a broom in the train station? He's wearing slave collars, and the Combine is his master.

 

[ríomhaire]

Would you like to tell me why there is a Vortigaunt slaving around with a broom in the train station? He's wearing slave collars, and the Combine is his master.

Because the Vortigaunts are the perfect thing to use for visible labour. Having humans do it will depress and discust citizens even more. Stalkers would be even worse. No self-respecting metro-cop would do it. Vortigaunts are the perfect thing for visible work. Plus the Combine and Xen slave collars are clearly quite different.

 

[Darkside55]

Actualy, it was 2 months, Shephards mission is confirmed in March, the RC happens in May.

Ah, you're right. G-man showed up around March 3rd, and the incident was on May 15th. I'm not sure why I thought it was a week...=/ This only lends credence to the theory that this was all the G-man's plan, however.

On the vortigaunts, I could not have said it any better than riomhaire. In fact, I never even considered the "visible labor" aspect of it; very nice.

 

[Glenn the Great]

Plus the Combine and Xen slave collars are clearly quite different.

It's the same collar. It's green and metallic. It looks different because HL2's artwork is much more detailed. The whole Vortigaunt model underwent a big makeover. Same goes for the collar.

 

[Darkside55]

Collar was gray and dull, I believe, not green and metallic. Potato, potatoe, though, right? It's most definately a different collar. How hard would it be for the Combine to engineer, or reverse-engineer a collar for the vortigaunts? Remember that most--if not ALL--the vortigaunts who came through the portals were collared.

 

[ríomhaire]

The HL2 is grey and dull. It also looks alot less smooth than the HL1 varient. It also has wires (IIRC) and a crotch thingy.

 

[Glenn the Great]

I just looked at it. It is pale green on my monitor. I stand by the idea that it is a updated version of the same collar.

The idea that the Combine enslaved Xen, Gordon freed them, and now the Combine is replacing them with humans while the vortigaunts rally with them against the Combine to keep them from the slavery that the Vortigaunts just escaped makes for a much better story in my opinion. It allows for parallels between the Vortigaunts and Humans that aren't there if you twist Doug Lombardi's words to paint a picture of an accidental battle between Humans and Vortigaunts, and then some brand new people (Combine) come on the scene and now the Vortigaunts are all buddy buddy with you somehow... it's lame and dubious.

Using your logic, the Vortigaunts we fought in HL1 were a totally different species than the ones in HL2 because they have a different number of eyes.

 

[ríomhaire]

That's not what it paints at all. The Combine aren't brand new because they were fighting the Xenians, please try to pay attention.

 

[Darkside55]

Let me break the whole thing down. It will be easier to see how the stories relate to each other.

1. The Combine, a power-hungry universal union, assaults, or is ABOUT to assault, the original Xenian homeworld.

2. Nihilanth flees with other Xenian races to Xen. The Combine cannot follow.

3. Black Mesa's experimentation leads to the discovery of Xen. They begin to collect alien species by force, and the Xenians retaliate into full-on war mode.

4. Gordon kills Nihilanth before the invasion gets any further than Black Mesa; however, the release of the teleport energies creates portal storms and randomly banishes Xenian fauna to Earth. Among those are some of the vortigaunts.

5. The Combine detect said portal storms, and move in to attack Earth.

That is how it happened. Really, you can't play "fill in the blanks with the Combine" to make the argument work. A collar doesn't suddenly mean the Combine occupation of Xen. If you are a universe-spanning force hellbent on conquering, and you cannot build a suppression collar within a month or less, I pity you. Even if you had no collars to reverse engineer (which I'm sure they had PLENTY), you should still be able to come up with something.

The Nihilanth's words don't necessarily mean that they are currently slaves to the Combine. Remember that those lines were thought of before HL2, before they even thought of the Combine. The story has since undergone changes. In whatever case, the Combine had NO control over the Nihilanth. He FLED.

The Combine have not set foot on Xen. They do not control anyone or anything on Xen. They might NEVER get to Xen.

 

[Glenn the Great]

Alright, here is my version of the story, which I feel is much better.

-The Combine conquered the Vortigaunt race and thousands of other races all across the multiverse.
-Xen is one of many Combine outposts on the interdimensional fabric.
-Humans stumble upon Xen some time before the resonance cascade, and set up a relay for use in teleportation experiements.
-Human presence on Xen attracts the GMan and/or his employers' attention.
-The Combine also become wise that another intelligent species exists, and we become a target for assimilation.
-Whether orchestrated or perhaps just by accident, a resonance cascade makes a massive split in the dimensional fabric.
-The Combine begin to attack Earth by first sending in waves of Vortigaunt slaves.
-Gordon defeats the Nihilanth, a creature serving as a control hub for the Vortigaunts. Vortigaunts retain their sanity and free will, and begin to revere Gordon as a messiah.
-The angry Combine flood Earth with their other slave warriors in retaliation for the loss of the Vortigaunts, with hopes of assimilating the land, resources, and most importantly, technology, of the human race.
-Dr. Breen, who has perhaps made contact with the Combine some time before the resonance cascade (and he may have even been the one to set up the resonance cascade. Also note that the scientists tell you that the Administrator wants you to go ahead with the experiment), negotiates a settlement with the Combine.
-Events of Half-Life 2

 

[ríomhaire]

I feel that your theory is incomplete. The RC wasn't an accident for 2 reasons:
1: Dr. Rosenburg said so
2: That's just horrible storytelling

Until you come up with who done it I feel your theory is incomplete. The two main suspects are Breen (rather scetchy IMO) and the g-man.

 

[Glenn the Great]

Look at my next to last note. I think Breen was responsible.

 

[WingsofJecka]

I dont like to post much, but nobody mentioned this one thing yet so ill give it a shot.

Up till now I have always aussumed that the Comnine forced the Xenians to flee to Xen from their homeland. But based on recent news about epsiode one, specfically concerning a new third party, I began to think that maybe this new third party is what caused the Xenians to flee. Doug's "greater threat" could be the third party instead of the Combine.

I could be wrong, but i dont think doug spefically mentioned the Combine as the "greater threat."

Its not perfect for sure, but nothing is perfect here anyway.

 

[Glenn the Great]

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to argue here. The Combine isn't the only big player in the multiverse. There is always a bigger fish, and this third party probably battles with the Combine every day, and the Vortigaunt arm of the Combine's empire may have been forced to retreat to Xen.

 

[WingsofJecka]

But i dont think the vorts are part of the combine though. Infact in my little theory they might never have been contact between the combine and the vorts/nihlanth.

in other words the Xenians were just an independent race, like earth.

 

[ríomhaire]

I really doubt Breen organised it. I most certainly don't think that the RC was a Xenian attack. The actual soldiers don't show up until you stop the RC. Though it might have been a Combine plot against both Human and Xen though I doubt that to extreme levels. I'm all but certain it was...the g-man!

 

[Asknoone]

I dont like to post much, but nobody mentioned this one thing yet so ill give it a shot.

Up till now I have always aussumed that the Comnine forced the Xenians to flee to Xen from their homeland. But based on recent news about epsiode one, specfically concerning a new third party, I began to think that maybe this new third party is what caused the Xenians to flee. Doug's "greater threat" could be the third party instead of the Combine.

I could be wrong, but i dont think doug spefically mentioned the Combine as the "greater threat."

Its not perfect for sure, but nothing is perfect here anyway.

I honestly doubt this...HL2 was the rise of the greater threat. The whole idea behind Lombardi saying that was too emphasize the Combines role in HL2.

 

[Eejit]

Glenn if the Vortigaunts and Nihilanth were controlled by the Combine (or part of it) then why don't the Combine have local teleports?

By the same argument the Combine can't have made it to Xen yet. Not only are there Xenian teleports around for them to reverse engineer, but BM teleport equipment too.

 

[Glenn the Great]

I'm really starting to think that a lot of this argument is really hard to solve because Valve is making up the story as they go. When HL1 was created, I don't think that Valve had thought up the Combine just yet. I think that synths were in large a new idea come up with during the development of HL2, and the only signifigance Xen's local teleports had at the time, was simply to be a way to link the scenes together. I don't think that at the time, Valve had thought about the Combine's teleporting problem. It wasn't until a few years later when it came time to create Blue Shift that Valve really started thinking about teleportation issues.

A lot of this problem has to do with difficulty retrofitting the story of HL2 and all of its new ideas to a game that was made 6 years earlier when the story had not developed so far.

 

[ríomhaire]

No shit.

 

[Eejit]

A lot of this problem has to do with difficulty retrofitting the story of HL2 and all of its new ideas to a game that was made 6 years earlier when the story had not developed so far.

Why would that be a difficulty? They simply make the HL2 story fit with what they already made...

 

[Asknoone]

I'm really starting to think that a lot of this argument is really hard to solve because Valve is making up the story as they go. When HL1 was created, I don't think that Valve had thought up the Combine just yet. I think that synths were in large a new idea come up with during the development of HL2, and the only signifigance Xen's local teleports had at the time, was simply to be a way to link the scenes together. I don't think that at the time, Valve had thought about the Combine's teleporting problem. It wasn't until a few years later when it came time to create Blue Shift that Valve really started thinking about teleportation issues.

A lot of this problem has to do with difficulty retrofitting the story of HL2 and all of its new ideas to a game that was made 6 years earlier when the story had not developed so far.

But Gearbox did Blue Shift. Not Valve.

Valve had a vague idea in HL1, but nothing concrete. As time developed, the plot developed - it became something greater than imagined in HL2. At this stage however they aren't making it up as they go.

 

[Glenn the Great]

I read somewhere that although GearBox created Blue Shift, Laidlaw wrote the story for it.

 

[Asknoone]

I'm not sure, really.