Why Can't You Throw Corpses? (Spoilers)

[KoryME]

I haven't heard any talk about this and was wondering why you can't pick up and throw corpses with the normal gravity gun.

I understand that it would be too powerful if the normal gravity gun could pull living soldiers toward you. And it would obviously be too powerful if the grav. guns blast could kill but I think you should be able to pick up corpses.

Maybe Valve tried and found out that using a corpse as a projectile was an overpowering and abundant weapon and didn't allow it (but isn't a barrel almost as abundant and effective?). Or maybe they didn't want you to be able to do those things so the super gravity gun in the end was more of a fun suprise.

The most obvious reason would be that a soldier weighs too much to pick up. At first I thought this was untrue because you pick up heavier stuff throughout the game. But the more I thought about it the more I realized the biggest thing you picked up was a big, empty, wooden crate. If this is the reason then why did Alyx say they used it for heavy lifting if it can't pick up more than 150-200 lbs?

 

[socK]

The normal one can not pick up organic matter. The reaction in the citidel makes it so it can pretty much indeed, pick up anything.

 

[[Matt]]

Its to do with the fact you cant pick up organic matter... wether or not a person is alive or dead it doesnt change the fact that they are organic...

 

[ray_MAN]

I don't want to spoil it for you but:

Spoiler

Apparently you haven't finished the game.

 

[KoryME]

I've finished the game twice and didn't hear anything about it not being able to pick up organic matter. Please tell me where you heard this!

 

[ray_MAN]

The super gravity gun is capable of lifting anything, even dead(or alive) organic matter. Super gravity gun = the new gun you get at the beginning of Dark Energy.

 

[Chase]

He knows this I think, he's just wondering why the normal gravity gun can't pick up corpses, and where it says it can't handle organic matter.

 

[Merrr]

I don't remember it saying anywhere that it can't handle organic matter but if it did, then it would have been when Alyx explains to you about it. If you want the fun of picking up corpses in the earlier levels then you could just do the cheat that gives you the super gravity gun.

 

[grhmplmtr]

Apparently watermelons aren't organic.

 

[Vinnie_NL]

And wood isn't organic either

 

[Computer5k]

And combine uniforms are organic

 

[Subatomic]

...You can't pick up a headcrab... I'm sure they weigh no more than 50 pounds. They would have to be light to jump so far. So yes, you can't pick up anything organic.

 

[Ch1cKeN]

I don't get it, You can pick up heavy barells and heavy boxes, but you can't pick up the beltstrap of a combine or its head or something. COMON!
that and a headcrab, why cant I pick up a little headcrab, I wonder If i put it in a box and flung it would the headcrab die?

 

[Kaboomenstein]

actually, there is one ant lion that you can pick up WITH the standard gravity gun. I think its a glitch, but when you first see the lions (they attack the guy lying on the ground) and you kill them all, there is one of them that can be picked up with the grav gun. try it

 

[aku ankka]

It´s hard to explain but I see why valve don´t allow moving corpses so easily. It kinda is 'morbid' and it detracks from the game and immersion. I mean who would play around with people you just killed? Maybe this would have got it censored in Germany?

 

[Revenge]

Well perhaps the charge on the normal gravity simply isn't powerful enough to affect a living organism's zero point energy? When you use the super grav gun on a combine soldier, you electrocute him to death in the process. Perhaps the energy field created by the normal grav gun isn't powerful enough to properly disrupt the flow of electricity that normally flows around the human body (which also runs all along the nervous system and sends physical signals such as warmth, pressure, pain, etc). Furniture doesn't project an electrical field like any living or freshly killed life form would (you could easily power a lightbulb or a trainset with the amount of electricity the human body generates). Freshly killed organisms still can have functional nervous systems (chop a chicken's head off, and even though it is dead, it will still run around in circles for an hour before it finally stops moving), so it stands to reason that the normal grav gun still couldn't fiddle with it.

 

[donutty_uk]

That sounds about right, but...

Some of the corpses that litter places like Route Kanal or Ravenholme are months if not years old.

With the normal grav gun you cant rip the combine monitors etc of walls but with the turbogravgun you can. Anyway, it doesn't bother me, but I see the point you are making.

 

[Mr.Wotsit]

I would guess they didn't want you to pick them up because otherwise people would be asking, "So how come I can't pick up Alyx and Eli etc..."

It also makes such a cool impact when you find out that you can do it on the last level. I think it's a brilliant design decision for your first time through but it would be nice to have the option to use it when you play through again.

 

[PvtRyan]

I believe Alyx said it's for handeling hazardous materials, not necessarily heavy.

 

[The Dark Elf]

I haven't heard any talk about this and was wondering why you can't pick up and throw corpses with the normal gravity gun.

I understand that it would be too powerful if the normal gravity gun could pull living soldiers toward you. And it would obviously be too powerful if the grav. guns blast could kill but I think you should be able to pick up corpses.

Maybe Valve tried and found out that using a corpse as a projectile was an overpowering and abundant weapon and didn't allow it (but isn't a barrel almost as abundant and effective?). Or maybe they didn't want you to be able to do those things so the super gravity gun in the end was more of a fun suprise.

The most obvious reason would be that a soldier weighs too much to pick up. At first I thought this was untrue because you pick up heavier stuff throughout the game. But the more I thought about it the more I realized the biggest thing you picked up was a big, empty, wooden crate. If this is the reason then why did Alyx say they used it for heavy lifting if it can't pick up more than 150-200 lbs?

People have given you game reasons, I think the there's a technical reason to it though, if they allowed it in the earlier maps, they'd have to let you pick up everything or it wouldn't seem right. And there's probably a reason they couldn't, maybe you can't pick up bodies that are set to fade out after a while to keep framerates up, so you'd be left with being able to pick up some but not all, or all and framerates might drop.

Or something like that.

 

[moonkids]

Yeah, I think it's a gameplay/technical decision, not a "realism" one, which is all for the good. And like someone else said, it makes the super grav gun that much cooler by comparison.

 

[Solver]

Yeah the gameplay reasons all the way, and they are great. I was never bothered by it because I took it that the gravity gun can't lift organic matter. So I was very surprised when I got the super gun at the end. It would have been great otherwise, too, but this way the effect is even greater - you see that the gravgun got the ability to pick organic matter up as well as got more power - you can take those damn dark energy balls too.

 

[donutty_uk]

It would be too easy anyhow if you have a grav gun capable of lifting 'humans' from the start. Also, are headcrabs the only thing you can 'zap' with the grav gun? (ie fire as opposed to pick-up). It cant be that powerful either I guess because it take about 3 zaps to kill a headcrab.

 

[HEaP]

At first I was kind of pissed off from the fact of not being able to pick up dead bodies and throw them at the enemy when you first get the gravity gun.
I thing valve dose not allow you pick up the dead bodies with the first gravity gun is so that the player knows they cant pick people up with the gravity so when you lose all your weapons and just left with the supper gravity gun, and you still know you cant pick up the enemy and you see loads of combines rushing you. You then start to panic, you cant find nothing to pickup and throw at the combine, you panic, you still know you cant pick up the enemy and throw them, you panic some more while the combine get closer, you figure out that maybe you cant pick the enemy up with the gravity gun, your sure of that, maybe I can use it to grab a gun from out of their hands, sounds an ok idea, you press the button thinking your gonna grab a gun and start shooting and then WAM you picked a combine up with the gravity gun! I picked one? Up? What? You cant do that? You….. OMFG you can pick the combine up with the gravity gun! And OMFG how cool is this! You can pick up the combine and throw them at each other!!!! You can not believe how happy I was when I was when I inexpertly picked my first combine and threw him fifty miles an hour at his mates, I couldn’t stop laughing, it was like seeing barney for the first time at the train station again!

So really they do this to surprise you, the player and make the game even more memorable!

 

[MiccyNarc]

I should have been able to pick up anything I want, really. Heck, you can shoot the headcrabs and antlions with the primary fire. That makes 0 sense.
And the Combine uniforms, are as someone earlier put it, must be organic.
Because you certainly can't rip their helmet off..

 

[HEaP]

if you could pick up bodies, how unique would the last level of been? and if you played the last level, how easy would the whole game be! if the whole game had the super gravity gun? you got to have played the last level to understand! the whole game would of been pointless, 0 fun! in the long run anyway, in the begining lost of fun, soon would get boring!

 

[we11er]

Please, it's too difficult to allow you to rip off a combine's clothes - and who the f**ck would want to do that anyway? It would detract from the gameplay as well.

If you allow the player to do too much, you drastically alter the overall gameplay, and as we all know - it's the gameplay that makes a game.

 

[Rocketman9mm]

Is there any cheat code or anything to get the super gravity gun? I can only get the regular one via codes.

 

[xinc]

It may not be worth reviving a 3-day old thread for, but it might be useful to note that the in-game limitations of the gravity gun (organic materials, etc) and the technical ones are entirely separate. From what I've read in the SDK documentation, the real issue is filters that dictate the interaction between properties of the gun and those of the object being manipulated.

In basic terms, the (normal, gold) gun can only manipulate objects that have a particular property set which allows it. NPC's and the like simply have that property set to 0/off/no/verboten, and that property stays with the NPC after death (being that alive-ness is probably just another binary property).

I've read that killing the soldiers in 'Dark Energy' with a conventional weapon (gotten through cheats) still results in them alka-seltzering away. My guess is that the soldiers in that level have a different set of properties which allow them to be manipulated by the uber-gravity gun, and also dictate that they and their weapons disolve upon death.

This is why you don't let programmers play video games... = p

 

[Ennui]

Is there any cheat code or anything to get the super gravity gun? I can only get the regular one via codes.

no, you have to go to that level, get it, then cheat to another level.

 

[ranmafan]

I've read that killing the soldiers in 'Dark Energy' with a conventional weapon (gotten through cheats) still results in them alka-seltzering away. My guess is that the soldiers in that level have a different set of properties which allow them to be manipulated by the uber-gravity gun, and also dictate that they and their weapons disolve upon death.

It's true. I was playing around with the massive chasms in the Citadel by spawning all manner of monsters to kill. No matter what kills the Combine troops (zombies, antlions, antlion guards, etc.), their weapons simply dissolve. I haven't tried civilians yet though.

By the way, you can't grab antlion guards with the gravity gun, but blasting an electrified combine at the guard causes it to disappear. :E