I cant help but notice man's hesitation when he says employers, like he's struggling to find an English equivalent of a much more complex concept. In fact, it seems like most of his lines of dialogue is him struggling to talk in metaphors, because humans would not understand what's really going on.
maybe in 2 and on, but in 1 he just sounds like a deliberately-speaking career bureaucrat politician; the word "employers" is the only time he outright breaks up his sentences.
For me it feels like the way he speaks is because he's not used to speaking by blowing air thru meat-flaps; this is not his usual body, not how he usually communicates, perhaps it's not even the laws of physics he's used to interacting with.
I like how most all the creatures and beings in the "Half-Life" universe, from the tripods to the bullsquids to the Nihilanth, all have three legs - yet a "three" is something we've yet to see in the series.
I always found it interesting that the crystals in the Nihilanth's chamber seem to be of the same substance as the sample that was in the cart at the Cascade.
There's an interesting thing I discovered replaying the beginning of half life recently. At one point, right after entering black mesa, you can find a scientist arguing with the gman behind a glass window. You can't properly make out anything they are saying. However, in the italian version of the game (I was playing that one, I don't know if this happens in any other language as well) that scientist is actually dubbed and you can clearly hear him saying stuff along the lines of: "I already told you I'm not going to allow this equipment to be pushed beyond it's limits" or something like that. I found that exact audio file in the game's folder. It's called "c1a0_sci_mumble". In the folder for the english audio files, it's a mubled, incomprehensible voice, but in the italian version it's a clear speech behind a subdle filter. Idk, just thought I'd share some localization-exclusive lore. PS: the same does not apply to the gman, you can't hear what he's saying in either version.
Yes, the anti matter spectrometer was rated for use at only 70 percent power. The scientists took it up further than that. I believe the trio of scientsist in the room prior to the one with Eli talk about this with you.
@@vipuldass2318 It's more than that. In Episode Two Eli shares some more information - not only spectrometer was pushed to 110% power, but crystal itself was delivered by Gman. According to Eli "when he delivered crystal, I knew that test should be stopped, but didn't stop. Whole world went to hell these days".
In one of the versions of the game, either before or after a certain patch, I recall the G-Man pointing at the window and saying “Freeman” a few times, but I can’t remember anything more specific than that.
Fun fact: when playing custom levels in portal 2, you may hear cave Johnson talking about the universe you are currently in. In one universe Aperture buys out Black Mesa and Cave stops the experiment that causes the resonance cascade.
“Cave Johnson, new CEO and owner of Black Mesa. That’s right, you’ve been bought. First order of business we’re renaming you under the Aperture brand, I’m leaning towards Blaperture Mesa, marketing boys think something else so Blaperture Mesa it is. Next they tell me you people are conducting some anomalous materials research that could result in a resonance cascade, so I’m shutting that down before you idiots end the world. ..A resonance cascade, you’re supposed to be scientists! Use some common sense.”
Fun fact about the combine being planned thing: Mark Laidlaw (lead writer for Half-Life) released two companion writings for Half-Life shortly before release in mid-1998. In the one talking about the Nihilanth, it mentioned a group of super intelligent aliens enslaving other races and exploiting the worlds they control. "Teleportation has been mastered by a chain of superintelligent (compared to us) aliens. Mainly, they use it to exploit and enslave the races they encounter; their exploitation may be open or it may be extremely covert, involving political manipulation of the worlds they control. It all depends on what they want out of the species they intend to dominate. The civilizations which are potentially the most dangerous-and also the most useful-to them are those which have independently arrived at the creation of a teleport technology which could surpass their own…for as in all things, even advanced alien superscience is bound to become obsolete, and the drive for a more powerful technology is unending." So even before Half-Life 1 was released, Marc Laidlaw was thinking about the entity that would become the Combine, even to the point of mentioning that this entity's main interest in Earth was their supperior means of interdimensional teleportation, which is a plot point in retail HL2.
I'm pretty sure they go into detail in HL2 about how The Combine are actually fucking garbage at teleportation at least local teleportation. Eli says something to the effect that The Combine interdimensional travel equates to boring a hole through the barriers between dimensions and stabilizing it.
Yeah when he said in the video that it'd be ridiculous if the combine were planned, I was screaming at the screen "what a dumb fool" as I remembered it was pretty obvious from this.
Game intro: you are a M.I.T. graduated scientist just going to his job very late Game ending: You ended an entire alien race and potentially doomed humanity's hope of freedom
When I first played Half-Life, I thought the Hound Eyes were cute the way they prance around and bark, and I didn't want to kill them until they started attacking and forced me. As it turns out, they were originally intended to be non-hostile, but in early play testing players mowed them down, so the devs decided to make them aggressive. I think that's a shame.
In my opinion, the houndeyes are still non-hostile. I think there sonic booms are actually there uncontrollable happiness to see a human, and they don’t mean to hurt Gordon.
one of my favorite things in any game that does it is baddies fighting baddies. If a group of raiders run into a pack of wolves, i expect the raiders and the wolves to fight. Not for them to join forces against me. Something about enemies of my enemies being enemies adds a sense of realism and satisfaction that I can not under-emphasize.
it makes you feel part of the world, like there are other conflicts besides "player vs. every NPC." if EVERYTHING in the world prioritizes you as their number one target it makes you feel too singled out and it's immersion-breaking.
This happens in Halo at multiple points, with the Covenant fighting the Flood and you caught in the crossfire. It does feel so realistic and expands the scope of a game to me.
Quake even had a bit of this in game, with some speed runners taking advantage of it. And I agree, it makes it more authentic feeling and it's a fun mechanic to play with. For Half Life, I just really enjoyed witnessing the battles and sneaking around watching them for as long as I could. Which is one thing I enjoyed a lot about Sven Coop, and eventually console commands in Half Life 2, creating big battles between forces. Hell, it even stems back to using gun buddies in Battle Tanx 64, or the labtop gun sentry mode in Perfect Dark. But Half Life felt so organic and like shit was really out of humanity's control
My favorite take on G-man is the meta narrative one : his "employers" are valve devs, his job is to set in-game events into motion so that the game can happen, and when it ends, he puts the playable character into stasis for the eventual next game.
That makes a lot of sense, but it certainly takes the realism out of the games, but to be fair the G-Man sections are pretty surreal and dream-like anyways
bruh imagine what a tax report looks like to a dude who's like some interdimensional shapeshifting alien. Like, list all your property in all timelines. Literal hell
to address the "leaps in logic" to the beginning, in the recent 25th anniversary documentary laidlaw even said that part of the joy of writing half life 1 is the whole "there's something bigger than you going on here" that makes the story not only easier to write but also more fun for both him and the player, so that is definitely the intention of half life
Wasn't HL1 just the latest remake of Doom and Quake with finally some story and a serious-looking science research complex, rather than merely shoot-at-everything disaster arena? I loved the exploring and seeing all the high-tech infrastructure, and all the gullible mad-scientists who seemed how unaware that they were being exploited by corrupt government and power-mad military, and that it was inevitable that some big disaster must soon occur.
@@yosefmacgruber1920 you should watch the documentary he mentioned. Yep, they licensed the Quake engine, but not only did they highly modify it, but they also designed the game so the player would never be out of the in-game experience. That's why you could always move in HL's cutscenes, everywhere you looked something was happening, even if it was just a printer infinitely putting out paper. Even if you left the PC you would see Gordon playing with his weapon or the crowbar or whatever, It sounds simple today, but nobody had ever seen stuff like that at this point. And I am not citing anybody, I was there at release and we couldnt believe it.
@@Jaaayzen I was referring more to the HL story-line, and not so much what engine that it runs on. On my PS2, I think HL was my first major game after ICO, and so it was kind of amusing, that HL didn't lead you by the arm, or force you to watch what was happening. It make my ICO seem like a little kiddie game in comparison. I realize that there are invisible "trip wires" that trigger an action sequence, hence the many "amazing coincidences" that things happen just in time corresponding to your arrival. I do not recall any printer continuously spitting out paper? I think it may have been PS2 _Ape Escape,_ if you let the game idle, the game would detect that, and your character would get bored and pull out a boombox. It seems hilarious, but Gordon Freeman must be carrying around 300 pounds of weapons and ammo, without even a backpack. And he never gets tired nor has to take a restroom break. In the video game _Animal Crossing New Horizons_ my character has 40 pocket slots. Must be nice in some ways, to be a video game character. And in most video games, surviving a fall or jump of some 20 or 30 feet, is no big deal. How do I get such a power-up in real life?
There's a part in the lambda complex just before teleporting to xen where a scientist outright says that the portals are being held open by the Nihilanth at that point.
@@kayzeaza dude what. thats entirely different. like were talking about a single action from one individual that just fucked shit up for everyone domino effect-wise and youre talking about many actions done by many cogs in the machine. completely different topic, man
I always assumed the scars on the Nihilanth were more of an autopsy/vivisection scar left when they stuffed it full of machinery. The classic Y shape of it and all. If it was just to craft on the arm, you'd expect the stitching to be around the arm, rather than just the bottom portion of it and then going down the torso. I also assumed the cuffs on him was to signify it, despite being the "mastermind," was also a slave. Like how Breen was in 2. It had will and mind, like the Vortigaunts, so needed shackles to enslave it. The Grunts (and likely the Controllers) didn't need them because, like the combine troopers in 2, they were bred to be subservient.
The way you depict the scale of the enemies makes it truly horrifying. It reminds me of how in the leaked half life 3 plot there's that similar concept of futility where all of humanity's efforts were meaningless because the Combine had a Dyson sphere. Anyways, great analysis Leadhead
Legit, thinking about the sheer SCALE of the forces at work in the Half-Life series made me realize that the Half-Life game is secretly a Lovecraftian horror story disguised as a first-person shooter.
That's such lazy cosmic horror. We can't understand it because no one's explained it. It's like saying algebra is beyond human compression after skipping too many classes. Just a c*ck tease of a plot.
I think the G-Man deserves a much closer look, especially from a perspective that's entirely focused on the first game. We see him when Gordon first arrives at Black Mesa and he's conversing and shaking hands with various scientists at the facility. They know him. They're friendly with him. And, considering his main power seems to be teleportation (quite evident at the end of the game), it's very likely he offered the basics of teleportation tech to the scientists at Black Mesa. He may be a "seeder", teleporting to various inhabited worlds, offering teleportation tech, then forcing an invasion. I don't know who he works for but it doesn't seem to be the Combine. Nor do I think he has any permanent allegiances and, in fact, I suspect his "employers" quite often end up his victims.
There’s a script by laidlaw (the hl writer) dictating that the crystal was brought to black mesa by super intelligent beings other than humans. That would obviously be the g-man
@@Plamler yeah I can’t remember if it’s a specific piece of dialogue or if I simply implied this in my head in my first play throughs of hl1 but I swear they mention him or some random person/being bringing the crystal for the test that day.
@@sneezewax3567 I just never really thought about it that way. I thought of it being more like Halo, where it's just aliens invading and you need to fight them. Didn't necessarily think of it being akin to Lovecraftian horror.
@@gamingandotherstuffchannel ??? dude it's the same game, the broken part is the source engine implementation when everyone was expecting a remake, even when people hated it, i had fun with the ragdoll scientists.
hl:s is broken lol. it used to get patches but when the steampipe update happened valve just kinda stopped updating hl:s, and since the source engine keeps getting updates it caused a buggy mess
HL1s story may not have many characters, as the only notable ones are the Gman and Nihilanth, but it tells a story through subtle worldbuilding through gameplay. Most games that have vague stories use mountains of reading documents and voice recordings to convey much of their stories. But Half Life lays it out entirely organically. It’s why it’s vague story is so remembered, and other like Outlasts aren’t.
@@hershloodu8925 I've always loved the theory that G-man stutters and talks the way he does because he's a being that isn't used to talking with humanoid vocal chords. It would be like if we humans attempted to speak to fish.
g-man was one of combines man from the future and he was sent to talk to Gordon after Gordon defeated the big monster plotting against the combine thus gman got to Gordon and thanked him, but he couldn't say stuff from the future to not disrupt the timeline and not alerting Gordon so he could not be ready for the combine, so he spoke vaguely leaving gordon confused
I feel like the larger story is happening around Gordon and as one man, he is only peripherally aware of it. You are just trying to survive, you don't get all the answers. It's unsatisfying but it's realistic.
Marc Laidlaw had fully thought out the entire Half-Life plot in every detail, but then he went into the toolshed. A crowbar dropped on his head. After he woke up, all he could remember is that there was a big research complex, a creepy man in a blue suit and a crowbar.
I just want to mention that in the Nihilanth's chamber, the 3 crystals are evenly placed around him like a ring, except if one was missing. Like there was supposed to be 4. The crystals in the chamber look exactly like the one in the test chamber in the beginning. Yes there are many other yellow crystals in Zen, but they're all of different sizes and shapes, except for in this chamber.
As it was said, it is established that G-Man gave the crystal that caused Resonance Cascade. G-Man's "employers" (upper comment makes a remarkable suggest that humans wouldn't understand the scale of things, so employers it is) clearly made a power play, and caused the Resonance Cascade. We also know that G-Man's employers aren't Combine. Combine is a race who responded the distruption to invade Xen, and use it's inhabitants to their benefit. Similar to what they've done to Earth. There's some Frank Herbert shit going on.
Good catch, I remember thinking about “there should be 4th one, these aren’t evenly placed” in my first playthrough. 20 years later when I’m playing it again “wait, wasn’t there a 4th one. it seems off this way”.
@@LimeDida My take: The experiment didn't fail. It was a complete success. G Man is a manifestation of the Combine ALREADY insinuated into the government to manipulate mankind into opening the portal. The rocket was ready in order to stabilize the connection and the HEV suit was intended for Gordon, who was a patsy sent by the Combine to destroy the Nihilanth resistance.
I think it's interesting how G-man is portrayed or portrayed himself in Half-Life 1 like he was a government agent, saying things like he is taking away Gordon's weapons because they are "Government Property". We saw some more insight into this with a cancelled expansion, which had something to do with a junior G-man working at a black mesa partner facility (obviously not cannon). If we wanted to fit this into the cannon after HL2, it is interesting to think of the potential implications of G-man possibly wanting to deceive Gordon into thinking he was trustworthy. or he just said that because he seems to have trouble speaking english normally
I kinda read the gman scene as this alien doing his best to help gordon understand what's going on. Like how he thinks for a second before arriving at the word "employees". He's trying to put it in terms that Gordon can understand
@@Leadhead I super disagree. I think valve just had no idea how to end the game, so they had a VA say some jargon and called it a day. Seriously think you way overthought everything about this game lol.
@@Leadhead People can only really speak dialectically with each other within 2 SDs (~30 IQ points). Beyond that, the dumber won't really be able to understand the smarter. It takes a very talented rhetorician to speak to someone more than 2 SDs below them in a way that they can understand. Someone extremely intelligent may have to think over their words several times before coming up with a way to communicate with an average person. It makes sense that G-Man would stutter.
The unused Nihilanth line was used in Half Life Source, according to the wiki. It replaced a line of his that goes "Alone... not you alone... not you alone...".
@Stellvia Hoenheim not even remotely. I could see that theme in half life 2 a bit and definitely see your point for alyx, but the central idea is unforeseen consequences. You create the resonance cascade and the unforeseen consequence is the combined occupation of earth. You stop the destruction of the citadel in episode 2 and inadvertently destroy most of city 17 whereas if you left the core to its devices it would've only taken the central part of city 17 with it with most likely few casualties. But after you stop its meltdown it kills any rebels with hope of escaping city 17 who were left behind and the combine also now see that humanity is much more a threat than they previously assumed, with the combined occupation before hand being almost indifferent and lazy. we were mice and they were lions cupping us in their hands as they played with us. Now they will come at humanity with much more lethal force. Alyx makes a deal to save her father but the Gman takes her for his bidding. Unforeseen consequences is the central theme if half life and always will be. Not to say though family isnt also a theme, just much less developed than the main idea.
@@cryojudgement2376 i can sorta see how gordons responsible for the deaths in hl2 n stuff, maybe a few in hl1, but i dont really think he was responsible for most of the deaths
Taking "I am the last" and "We are their slaves" almost could imply that it is suggesting to you that if you kill it off, you'll win the fight. Like encouraging you to win rather than being all in on ending you. Slaves do what they're commanded to do, not necessarily what they want to do. What made Half-Life one of the greatest games and indeed stories of all time is that it DOESN'T answer the big questions. You're forever left wondering just wtf happened. Sometimes, mysteries are best left unsolved and I'm eternally grateful to Valve for understanding that and giving us such a great experience.
Exactly. You can see that in the Alien franchise. The engineer was reinterpreted as a big blue guy in a suit. Not very menacing in comparison what he looked like in his chair in the first Alien movie. The mystery was gone and so was the fascination with it. Some things are better not explained.
@@wilhufftarkin8543 You could have made a third part. But at some point too many of the original developers of the story had left. It would be possible to wrap it up without revealing too much so that the appeal would be gone but without the right people working in the project they opted to not persue it any further.
It's something I've always loved about Half-Life as a franchise, the immense potential depth of it is insane. Most people always consider the Combine Advisors to be high-up in the Combine hierarchy, when in reality they're probably near the top of the low level rankings.
g-man was one of combines man from the future and he was sent to talk to Gordon after Gordon defeated the big monster plotting against the combine thus gman got to Gordon and thanked him, but he couldn't say stuff from the future to not disrupt the timeline and not alerting Gordon so he could not be ready for the combine, so he spoke vaguely leaving gordon confused
If we are going to incorporate the Combine into our HL1 theories after all... then I'd put forward the idea that G-MAN isn't an agent of the Combine. To me it makes sense that he was probably present at Black Mesa to observe the unfolding events and then take counter measures to make sure the Combine didn't stumble upon human teleportation technology. We know that one weakness of the Combine is that they can't teleport once in another universe and so have to travel by conventional means. They are desperate to overcome this weakness and hence why they passively allow Eli and Kleiner and co to continue their research prior to HL2. So, I'd wager that in HL1 the G-MAN arranged the military clean-up to kill most all witnesses to Black Mesa's research, ensuring the Combine, which would inevitably invade, could not obtain them and grill them for information. It would make sense to kill the science team and scuttle the base and only spare a handful of researchers to keep knowledge of the tech alive, but also easy to safeguard. G-MAN then sends Gordon back when the research is nearing completion and ensures that the Combine is thwarted just before they can get their hands on the tech.
That's a great take on it. I think it's obvious that G-Man works for some entity other than the Combine, but I like your take on why G-Man is being employed to do what he's doing here.
I think this is further supported by the fact that G-MAN gives you the option to either go into stasis or fight an unwinnable fight (kill you) at the end of Half-Life 1. Really drives the, you either help me fight the Combine or help me by dying and keeping the information on teleportation a secret.
Half Life 1 is my favorite video game story. Such an intricate narrative, that is never actually narrated to the player. It truly feels like you're living a story rather than having it be told to you. No other art medium could have pulled this off. The feeling I get from this game, its atmosphere, its plot, has not been replicated by any other artwork.
what is intricate about it? it's very simple. not DOOM simple but so simple I don't think it could exist in any other medium because there's almost no substance. it's just a personality devoid husk running around trying to survive, meeting up with various copy pasted coworkers who are also doing the same.
Thought: if the resonance cascade is the equivalent of blowing open a hole in the wall between universes, perhaps the rocket launch is the equivalent of putting a door over the hole. It doesn't completely seal off the hole, but it makes it hard enough that it requires conscious, intelligent action to move between them, which in this metaphor is somebody choosing to open the door.
In this case, the Nylanth continues the invasion because since there's a door, now there's a chance the Combine can use our universe to invade Xen. It becomes imperative in this case to establish a foothold on this new bridgehead into Xen.
@@skeletondandy7405 bß. Z z z z. Z. Z. Z z z z z z z. Z z z z z z z. Z z z z z zz z. Z. Z z. Z zz. Z z z z z. N n zz. N. Z. Z z. Z z z z z z. Zz. Z z z z z. X ZXx zz xzxzxz z zz Z zz z Z. ZxXxcxz czc xcx. Cxcxcz xcx xcx xcx xcx xcx xcx xczZ. Z. X Cx. Z z z zz. Z Zz. Xx x. .Z . Z.
@@skeletondandy7405 I don't think the rocket gave the combine the ability to invade Xen. I do believe the combine were always able to invade Xen, they just really weren't able to track the location of the last nihilanth. We know that the Combine possessed the ability for interdimensional/interuniversal teleportation, that's how they invaded Earth after all. But we also learned that the combine lack the ability of local teleportation within a single dimension, this is one of the driving plot forces in HL2. This lack of local teleportation technology is a weakness for the Combine as seen in HL2 where the resistance can easily outmaneuver Combine forces via their own teleporters. This lack of local teleportation for the Combine also makes it difficult to chase and find their enemies as seen with the 7 hour war, where even an overwhelming combine force was unable to take out all of Earth's resistance forces. So yes, even if the Combine suspected the nihilanth and his forces to be in Xen, it would still be difficult to find them outright and subdue them. Xen is a very large dimension after all. Personally, I think the rocket was meant for the Lambda Team to re-establish control for teleportation between Earth in Xen, a consequence of this was that all random teleportation stopped but the Nihilianth was still manually able to send troops through. Whether or not the Lambda team really wanted Gordon to go to Xen since the beginning is vague, perhaps G-Man had an even larger role in the plot-points of HL1 then we think?
I don't know if my opinion is based on speculation or observation, but I was always under the impression (given I think the newspaper in HLA gives a few-month gap between the cascade and the invasion) that the portal storms were the physical symptoms of matter being transported back and forth from Xen to Earth. (matter being removed or placed inside other matter is probably VERY destructive) To me, it makes sense that that would have happened for the initial cascade, hence the structural damage to the BMRF in many places. Perhaps the Nihilanth (after a few hours, imo we don't see controlled tactical teleportation until perhaps the end of Unforeseen Consequences) managed to take advantage of this discord and direct it for his purposes. The rocket is said to close the portal (or something along those lines), only for them to discover its being held open. The problem I've always had with that line of thinking is that, with the rocket in place, and the Nihilanth dead... why the portal storms? I've discussed this with others, and I came to a sort-of head canon explanation: The cascade (I believe) is said to be self-sustaining. Just because the rocket closed (or in the case of OP, "put a door on it") the portal, doesn't mean it stopped the cascade. I wonder if portal storms were always a thing, but whether or not those portal storms actually teleported Xenian matter is up to if the portals are open or not. What if Xenian matter was only being teleported to Earth on the 2-3 days from the start of the cascade to the Nihilanths demise? What if all portal storms after that fact was simply "local" teleportation of Earths matter? Ie, pieces of earth matter being removed and placed on other parts of Earth. This would explain in my mind how the portal storms in episode 2 don't teleport Xenian matter...
One thing most people miss about the final boss is how human he looks compared to literally everything else. It's as if he is from earth or a species eerily similar to humans.
I remember noticing this and the grafted arm back in the day. Putting the two together with the aliens' obvious genetic proficiency, I assume that the Nihilanth is somehow partly grown from human DNA. That's why it only had two arms.
Leadhead, I believe Marc Laidlaw said at one point during an interview that the Combine was not planned in HL1, per se, but that a force filling the same role in the story *was.* They knew vaguely that there was a force threatening the Xen aliens.
Laidlaw's explanation of the Nihilanth and the reason for his invasion of Black Mesa also completely aligns with the theory presented in this video. He did a great job piecing it all together.
The rocket you launch contains a satellite loaded with a Xenium Resonator, which uses Xenium, the same crystal you light poorly aimed lasers at during the beginning of the game. This was meant to close the portals being opened, and Xenium Resonators were used to close the Combine Superportal powered by The Citadel in City 17 during Half-Life 2. The rocket didn't work due to the fact that the Nihilanth - The boss you fight at the end of Half-Life - was holding it open.
I like the "is it freemans fault" bit cause when i was like 6-7 and playing this every new game i started my Father would poke fun at me and say "you pushed the cart to far in dude ahhh you killed everyone" made me irritated back when i was that age thinking it was true now i just get a laugh every time i watch something on Half Life 1 lol.
That actually reminds me of of a bit from the Half Life VR but the AI is self aware series, in which Gordon is trying to push the cart, but a guard is frustrating him and he pushes it in too fast.
Isn't it "lock you alone"? The Nihilant says it when it teleports you to various "dungeons" during the fight. Plus, it doesn't make any sense if it is "not you alone"
@@Kinkoyaburi Nothing the Nihilant says makes gramatical sense. He Is an outwolrldy being from another dimensión who barely speaks a human languaje let alone comunicates with words. He Is learning to communicate as he speaks like the Gman does.
@@Kinkoyaburi I've played Black Mesa and in it he says "Not you alone". I thought of it as an angry remark. As in I can't be defeated, not by you alone. Reflecting on Gordon being a one man army.
they just made a new half life game and recent leaks seem to suggest a new game is coming out in a year or two, it's not like the half life spirit is going to dissipate anytime soon now that valve's making games again
@@sealacious i understand he changed his gender, but my mind always assumes its a dude because of his voice, any new new viewers are gonna assume its a guy
A few other things I never see anyone talk about when it comes to Half-Life lore: 1. The Vortigaunts weird perception of time. It seems they at least partially see a lot more of time than the present at once, and several lines from both HL2 all the way up to ALYX hint at this. "We see you still at Black Mesa", the all-knowing Vortigaunt in the sewer, and the Vort you meet in ALYX that's been disconnected from the "vortesence" outright confusing the passage of time, not knowing whether Eli is alive or dead at the moment because he's seeing everything unfiltered right now since he's disconnected from the hive mind that'd usually help him interpret things. 2.The implied life cycle of the Headcrabs. Those things are fascinating. The way I see it, the baby crabs are born from the Gonarch, they mature into the typical crabs we all know and love and that's all fine but...what happens when they attach to a host? WHY do they attach to hosts? I fully believe that over time the mutation the host obviously suffers gets more and more severe as the headcrab continues to grow until they're finally large enough to become a Gonarch, at which point the host is COMPLETELY turned into the Gonarch's breeding sack. It's a truly horrific fate for the host, especially when you factor in the fact that HL2 implies they're still conscious... We also see species like the Lightning Dogs/Revivers seem to have evolved to mimic the Headcrab's zombification defense. They're clearly a different species, and unlike Headcrabs their hosts are deceased, but the fact they also take over a host body and move it around can't be coincidence.
Perhaps the headcrabs consume their host, while also using the host to kill more prey, allowing it to have more food sources? After enough time, it grows large enough to become the gonarch, and possibly reproduces parthenogenically? It's just speculation for now. Hopefully Valve can clear some of these details up.
Headcrabs find hosts to turn them into gonomes, which is a straight upgrade for it; hosts prior to that are more of a hinderance to a headcrab as they are slow and too large for it's own good. It only took a few days for the process after all. Headcrabs in half life 2 have been modified by the combine and cannot advance from host stage as they constantly create shambling zombies which are just detrimental for both parties for long-term survivability. Fast Headcrabs and Poison headcrabs have different strategies
yeah a lot of marc laidlaw's writing is like that, I'm reading some of his books from the 90's and they are very vague and much deeper than you could ever imagine.
That ending was perfect. "Because the world of Half-Life is one in which humanity opened the door to questions that absolutely no human could ever answer." It's exactly why I hope Gman never gets explained by Valve and remains a mystery to us all. Love your content.
@@hyakugame I'm sorry, did you want me to write an essay in the RUclips comments on how Half Life as a series is "brilliant?" The fuck is your point, man? You go around just being negative on random comments? We're all here enjoying some videogame nostalgia, and you've got to come in being pedantic. Find a hobby or something - maybe you'll feel better.
She doesn't have much to talk about though, i always saw Half-Life 2 as the less mysterious one. Not saying it isn't mysterious or good, it's a Half-Life game, it's obviously good and mysterious!
What I like in not just HL, but HL2, after the initial shock of a situation subsides, you have a cast of very intelligent people who get together to get themselves out of it. There's never just one "command character" who makes all the calls, or the protagonist finding things themselves to do, or simply being given objectives at the start of the level. The scientists of Black Mesa have the composure to come up with methods on the fly to slow or halt the invasion, eventually realizing, "Hey, we were preparing to launch a satellite array to put out energies to help modulate displacement energy. Why don't we proceed with the launch and just use that to close the door?"
Didn’t Gordon just do as he was told, with the experiment? And therefore, if not him, someone else would have done so? In subsequent “Gordon caused people to die” instances, did he have any other choice?
If anything Breen was the cause as he ran the experiment counter to his colleagues insistence to not proceed. Gordon was the unlucky bastard who put the crystal in, not the one who took a crystal from a alien in a human costume
It was also kinda my fault, I was working on repairs on the AntiMass Spectrometer and left my thermos of hot chocolate up there, the beam must have opened it and spilled on the machinery
I'm super late to this, but this was an absolutely incredible video. You had me thinking about Half-Life in a way that I never considered. Great work. Subbed.
@@curple3 It is just nonsensical noise, only that the human mind tends to trick itself into hearing words and making shit up when in reality it was nothing
To me the alien invasion always seemed “desperate.” I think it’s pretty clear Nihilanth had been Eyeing up our world since the experiments begin. However I don’t get the impression it was his first choice for what he really wanted to do. He is basically a fugitive from a race of slave masters, who fled to Xen which seems to be very inhospitable to higher forms of life. The reason that his forces seems so miss matched with the US military is because humankind is in a much better position than he is. His troops are either blindly obedient due to mind control or slaves who really want no part in war and were also fleeing from the combine. His technology, while better than ours in a few areas, seems to be scraped together, probably from pieces of salvaged technology from the various species that use Xen essentially as a refugee camp. The only reason he’s taking this gambit is likely because he knows the combine will eventually find his operation and destroy everything. TL:DR A well-funded invasion of another planet doesn’t use wild animals as screening troops.
I think this is also supported by the fact that in straight-up battles against the US Armed Forces, the Xenian forces require overwhelming numbers to prevail. It's only thanks to the way that teleportation acts as a _huge_ force multiplier that the military is ultimately forced to withdraw.
The combine taking over the vortigants makes sense, since in the half life 2 beta, when you go to the spot where you usually meet alyx in half life 2, you can see a metro cop leading vortigants into an alleyway at gun point
Maybe? But presumably they can comfortably burrow into the head of any species that has a head. They would fit over a Vortigaunt without too much issue, I would imagine.
@@Swiftbow but we never see a vortigaunt zombie. Infact vorts eat headcrabs with no problem. My headcannon is the wildlife of Xen(including tentacles, Gonarch and Gargantuas) is not native to Xen and they got teleported there from distant planets/dimensions
I played this game a quadrillion times and never noticed how teleports become more organized after the rocket launch. Interesting details you've got there!
Although that's true, I always interpreted it as that the invasion is ramping up while you were away. You spend a long time leading up to the rocket launch essentially in the bowels of Black Mesa. Post rocket you return to the surface where there's a full scale war going on between the soldiers and aliens. It could be as the video conjectures, or it could just be enough time has passed for things to have escalated.
For me I always thought we accidentally cleaned up the signal like on old TVs and radios when you’re changing channels there’s a bit of static in between. the resonance cascade blurred the line between two dimensions and alerted the Nylanth to us but because of the accident it was shooting blind when teleporting its soldiers but once the satellite was launched in the resonance cascade was stopped it wasn’t going to ignore what was brought to his attention by us
gman has always reminded me of like a Greek god, on mount Olympus. In greek/roman myths, the gods will see some mortals doing something, take some angle, and then go in and just fuck with them. Blow that ship off course, seduce this person, curse that person, etc. He's just there to manipulate the narrative.
It always sounded to me like the rocket was just a prerequisite to get Gordon to Xen, not an absolute solution in itself, based on the security guard's wording. Cool observations on the Nihilanth's body; I never noticed those before. The structure at its bottom looks very similar to the appendages in the synths of HL2. That rare voice line you mentioned is indeed in the game. I heard it when I replayed the game today (Steam version).
Speaking of Nihilanth's body, I can't help but of thinking of Dune's Guild Navigators. Look up the image "Guild Navigator from DUNE (1984) by artist Paul Hanley"... With that said the Navigators in Dune were able to predict routes in space travel, if not even warp space-time itself (might be a movie-canon, but still). So, since it is mentioned here that Vortigon soldiers seem to teleport strategically (seems to be a deliberate story feature, not just part of "level design" and difficulty multiplier), one could consider Nihilianth was able to see into the future on multiple dimensions, and that might hint it knew Gordon would sure kill it.
well tbh we're not really sure if gman is the boss or just a doll in hands of his employers However none can say anything for now but only half life 3 can confirm
My only fear is that one day we’d get a hl game explaining all of this, combine, gman, employers, and we’ll lose all the mystery and intrigue. Really hoping Combine never get rewealed past Earth happenings
I love how Gordon keeps finding himself in a bigger and bigger and bigger situation throughout the series, but still keeps silently mowing through everyone who comes against him
18:42 In Half Life: Alyx, G-Man physically shows Alyx, through time travel, that her father will die but that he would prevent it if she helped him break out of prison. I think it's safe to say G-Man did not cause the Resonance Cascade, rather he knew it was going to happen.
There’s a script by laidlaw (writer) sayijg that the crystal was brought to black mesa by super intelligent beings other than humans. So yes, he did cause the cascade.
He did cause it. He was the one that gave the crystal to Breen and probably the one who made Freeman arrive late at work. All in order to cause the Resonance fot his (or His employers) uknown purposes
I really like the idea of the Nihilinth needing that third arm to properly control the vortegaunts. To me it feels like a being with only two arms wouldn’t know how to properly control a third arm in a psychic link, until you graft on a new arm and connect it to the brain.
Nihilanth being enslaved fits into the grand theme in Half-Life that there's always 1 level up pulling the strings, the advisors are revealed to just be another enslaved synth (mostly through breengrub if you've heard of it) "the one free man" is being used by a force incomprehensible to everyone else, and even he, G-Man, has his own employers. This bit of thematic weight applies to every single element of these game's stories.
I JUST finished playing Half-life 1 on Steam and the audio you are referring to at 12:49 played for me EXACTLY in the same room as the background video you had at that moment. I actually thought it said “we are the same”.
It's a really big pet-peeve of mine but I recently came to the conclusion (opinion really) that the game looks much better in software mode. The texture filtering they use is kinda rough and makes a lot of the textures look like weird colored splotches if viewed up close. I only noticed that when I was in a vent but it also explained why the eyes of the female assassins when their visors flip up looked so weird. It even looks completely different under water in software mode so it feels to me like that was the way it was supposed to look. The problem is that you can't scale the game to modern resolutions in software so I guess I'm alone on this.
@@517342 This is a really interesting point, I'd never considered it before. It was around the time where most of the art was probably designed with software primarily in mind as filtering was still only a niche option.
@@Cappsy Hardware acceleration was the new thing back then and it's definitely a good thing but I can really only recommend trying out software mode at least once. It gives the game a completely different feel. I think it's one of those cases where the game looks better, is better technically but somehow loses the artistic choice for realism.
One thing I always wonder about, in Gman's ending speech, the dead soldiers are clearly in xen, not on Earth. If Black Mesa lore is taken, they probably got randomly pulled there by the Nihilanth, but I always wonder why they are actually there. Was there more going on than Gordon knows in xen? It seems likely that Gman provided the xen crystal that created the resonance cascade, how many other attempts did he make to kill the nihilanth before, or during, the events of Black Mesa?
Just from that I could see him kind of unsatisfied with his employment. Almost as if all the acts, from the resonance cascade, to getting rid of the Nihilanth, to keeping Gordon in stasis for later is part of some sort of plan. Are the Combine (or who ever they work for) his employer? No idea, but that ... being clearly has some own agenda.
The reason why there's a xen background in that scene is because the goldsrc engine can't change backgrounds on the fly. You can't have two different backgrounds for the same map. (For the G-man tram area at the very end the devs just encased the tram in a black rectangle.) Plus the ground is the sand texture from the desert areas of Half-Life. So yeah, It's canon that the marines never invaded xen.
Never looked at the invasion this way before, could def believe it. And the thought of the end boss guy “running” or hiding from another bigger or more menacing enemy - fuck that’s a bit spooky to think about.
I've definitely heard the "slave" quote in the game. It was triggered when I entered the huge factory with all of the vortigon slaves and I interpreted it to be them saying it somehow
18:46 in half life decay, a "expansion" of half life for ps2, we can see gman giving the crystal that caused the resonance cascade to black mesa, so basically he caused it by giving the most pure, yet the most instable sample to them, he knew what he was doing
The HD models clash so bad with the low res textures and geometry of the environment. The original models may be graphically outdated, but they have actual harmony with the rest of the game.
Well, Freeman's actions DID lead to consequences and, for a first time player, the thought of the military deciding to nuke the place after two cover up attempts was pretty unforseen
This makes me think of Neon Genesis Evangelion, you get everything from the first person perspective without the lore getting spoon fed to you which allows you to share in with the experience of the characters who also don't yet know whats going on. I i think this is a big part of what makes them Great.
@@DanielAnderssson we will never see a true continuation. Mark Laidlaw is gone and valve let's people work on projects out of passion. The original team is gone so that magic is also gone. Unless they get the band back together we'll never get a true continuation.
Eli said that gman himself brought the xen crystal. While very pure, its unstable. Gman knew it's going to be the catalyst of half life's events that would serve his end.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
I cant help but notice man's hesitation when he says employers, like he's struggling to find an English equivalent of a much more complex concept. In fact, it seems like most of his lines of dialogue is him struggling to talk in metaphors, because humans would not understand what's really going on.
great observation! I always caught that feeling, but never really tried to articulate it. Good take
I never thought of it like that!
maybe in 2 and on, but in 1 he just sounds like a deliberately-speaking career bureaucrat politician; the word "employers" is the only time he outright breaks up his sentences.
@@lepidotos yes
For me it feels like the way he speaks is because he's not used to speaking by blowing air thru meat-flaps; this is not his usual body, not how he usually communicates, perhaps it's not even the laws of physics he's used to interacting with.
I forget how scary gman canonically is after playing gmod and sfm for a decade
me too
i played gmod tons before touching the half life series and had no idea of the significance of that funny suit man.
Gordon Freeman, in the flesh...
I watched an HL:A playthrough and was like ha ha funny suit man until he scared the absolute shit out of me.
playing sfm
I like how most all the creatures and beings in the "Half-Life" universe, from the tripods to the bullsquids to the Nihilanth, all have three legs - yet a "three" is something we've yet to see in the series.
All the three limbed creatures are aliens, representing how the number three is alien to valve
@@dagobahstudios3662incredible. Bravo vince
Gaben defies us all. XD
"the truth, you can never know the truth"...
Half-life 3, confirmed! 😂
I always found it interesting that the crystals in the Nihilanth's chamber seem to be of the same substance as the sample that was in the cart at the Cascade.
It makes perfect sense, even if the game explains nothing about them
He eats those tho
@@SubayAdamm2 He fed off their energy to shield himself during the fight, but I think it's a stretch to say he eats them.
@@hannibalcase1100 That is maybe the wrong word to say because i watched a turkish documentary. And my english isnt that good
xen crystals are just, in xen, thats what they do really
There's an interesting thing I discovered replaying the beginning of half life recently. At one point, right after entering black mesa, you can find a scientist arguing with the gman behind a glass window. You can't properly make out anything they are saying. However, in the italian version of the game (I was playing that one, I don't know if this happens in any other language as well) that scientist is actually dubbed and you can clearly hear him saying stuff along the lines of: "I already told you I'm not going to allow this equipment to be pushed beyond it's limits" or something like that. I found that exact audio file in the game's folder. It's called "c1a0_sci_mumble". In the folder for the english audio files, it's a mubled, incomprehensible voice, but in the italian version it's a clear speech behind a subdle filter. Idk, just thought I'd share some localization-exclusive lore.
PS: the same does not apply to the gman, you can't hear what he's saying in either version.
Interesting. I’m now actually wondering maybe in other language editions of the game it’s possible to understand what G-man says.
Yes, the anti matter spectrometer was rated for use at only 70 percent power. The scientists took it up further than that. I believe the trio of scientsist in the room prior to the one with Eli talk about this with you.
@@vipuldass2318 It's more than that. In Episode Two Eli shares some more information - not only spectrometer was pushed to 110% power, but crystal itself was delivered by Gman. According to Eli "when he delivered crystal, I knew that test should be stopped, but didn't stop. Whole world went to hell these days".
its because g man knows every language including alien language
In one of the versions of the game, either before or after a certain patch, I recall the G-Man pointing at the window and saying “Freeman” a few times, but I can’t remember anything more specific than that.
Fun fact: when playing custom levels in portal 2, you may hear cave Johnson talking about the universe you are currently in. In one universe Aperture buys out Black Mesa and Cave stops the experiment that causes the resonance cascade.
That's fan made though isn't it?
@@barackobruhma7182 Nope. It's part of the official engine-thing for custom portal levels.
@@chloespades oh wow, i thought it was fanmade and tried for a while to get them in my levels
“Cave Johnson, new CEO and owner of Black Mesa. That’s right, you’ve been bought. First order of business we’re renaming you under the Aperture brand, I’m leaning towards Blaperture Mesa, marketing boys think something else so Blaperture Mesa it is. Next they tell me you people are conducting some anomalous materials research that could result in a resonance cascade, so I’m shutting that down before you idiots end the world. ..A resonance cascade, you’re supposed to be scientists! Use some common sense.”
@@ic0nic707 You know something's wrong when Cave Johnson is the one making rational decisions
Fun fact about the combine being planned thing: Mark Laidlaw (lead writer for Half-Life) released two companion writings for Half-Life shortly before release in mid-1998. In the one talking about the Nihilanth, it mentioned a group of super intelligent aliens enslaving other races and exploiting the worlds they control.
"Teleportation has been mastered by a chain of superintelligent (compared to us) aliens. Mainly, they use it to exploit and enslave the races they encounter; their exploitation may be open or it may be extremely covert, involving political manipulation of the worlds they control. It all depends on what they want out of the species they intend to dominate.
The civilizations which are potentially the most dangerous-and also the most useful-to them are those which have independently arrived at the creation of a teleport technology which could surpass their own…for as in all things, even advanced alien superscience is bound to become obsolete, and the drive for a more powerful technology is unending."
So even before Half-Life 1 was released, Marc Laidlaw was thinking about the entity that would become the Combine, even to the point of mentioning that this entity's main interest in Earth was their supperior means of interdimensional teleportation, which is a plot point in retail HL2.
Do you mind pointing to the writings? Would love to read them!
Seconding the other fellow, having links to this sort of content would be fantastic.
Give Source.
I'm pretty sure they go into detail in HL2 about how The Combine are actually fucking garbage at teleportation at least local teleportation. Eli says something to the effect that The Combine interdimensional travel equates to boring a hole through the barriers between dimensions and stabilizing it.
Yeah when he said in the video that it'd be ridiculous if the combine were planned, I was screaming at the screen "what a dumb fool" as I remembered it was pretty obvious from this.
Game intro: you are a M.I.T. graduated scientist just going to his job very late
Game ending: You ended an entire alien race and potentially doomed humanity's hope of freedom
Well, our survival as a species even.
This is why I don't go outside
All for the plot
Lesson learned!
Okay tier list of lifeforms: Mankind - F, Vortigaunts - E, Nihilanth - D, Combine - C, Gordon - B, G-Man - A, Employers - S
When I first played Half-Life, I thought the Hound Eyes were cute the way they prance around and bark, and I didn't want to kill them until they started attacking and forced me. As it turns out, they were originally intended to be non-hostile, but in early play testing players mowed them down, so the devs decided to make them aggressive. I think that's a shame.
Seriously?
* Sonic Boom *
@@ChefPrownlos"Internal bleeding, detected"
In my opinion, the houndeyes are still non-hostile. I think there sonic booms are actually there uncontrollable happiness to see a human, and they don’t mean to hurt Gordon.
@@vesnabernjak-ord8674 so they chase you everywhere no matter what clearly knowing you're getting hurt by them?
I want to make a band purely so I can call it Resonance Cascade .
Title track is Unforeseen Consequences
This would be awesome
@@rumraket38 and the first case of controversy is a DMCA complain which, ironically, is a foreseen consequence
Do it
They already exist
one of my favorite things in any game that does it is baddies fighting baddies. If a group of raiders run into a pack of wolves, i expect the raiders and the wolves to fight. Not for them to join forces against me. Something about enemies of my enemies being enemies adds a sense of realism and satisfaction that I can not under-emphasize.
Making skeletons dual in Minecraft is so satisfying
it makes you feel part of the world, like there are other conflicts besides "player vs. every NPC." if EVERYTHING in the world prioritizes you as their number one target it makes you feel too singled out and it's immersion-breaking.
I also love that bro
This happens in Halo at multiple points, with the Covenant fighting the Flood and you caught in the crossfire. It does feel so realistic and expands the scope of a game to me.
Quake even had a bit of this in game, with some speed runners taking advantage of it. And I agree, it makes it more authentic feeling and it's a fun mechanic to play with. For Half Life, I just really enjoyed witnessing the battles and sneaking around watching them for as long as I could. Which is one thing I enjoyed a lot about Sven Coop, and eventually console commands in Half Life 2, creating big battles between forces. Hell, it even stems back to using gun buddies in Battle Tanx 64, or the labtop gun sentry mode in Perfect Dark. But Half Life felt so organic and like shit was really out of humanity's control
My favorite take on G-man is the meta narrative one : his "employers" are valve devs, his job is to set in-game events into motion so that the game can happen, and when it ends, he puts the playable character into stasis for the eventual next game.
This is brilliant. I love it!
That makes a lot of sense, but it certainly takes the realism out of the games, but to be fair the G-Man sections are pretty surreal and dream-like anyways
That's a great take. Perhaps his full name is Game Man
@@pappapaps Gabe Man
@@AwesomeTheAsim Garry Man
Thing is, it makes sense when you play it
Checks out.
I wasn't expecting you here
yoo
Listen
It would make sense if you start to make Half-Life Reloads!
G-man is gonna be a lot more relatable when
*Half-Life: Taxes,*
where you help g-man fill in his tax report,
drops.
Half Life W-3
bruh imagine what a tax report looks like to a dude who's like some interdimensional shapeshifting alien. Like, list all your property in all timelines. Literal hell
@@bruhistantv9806 Oof, and in 1998 to boot.
Yes
Half-Life: Depreciation
to address the "leaps in logic" to the beginning, in the recent 25th anniversary documentary laidlaw even said that part of the joy of writing half life 1 is the whole "there's something bigger than you going on here" that makes the story not only easier to write but also more fun for both him and the player, so that is definitely the intention of half life
Wasn't HL1 just the latest remake of Doom and Quake with finally some story and a serious-looking science research complex, rather than merely shoot-at-everything disaster arena?
I loved the exploring and seeing all the high-tech infrastructure, and all the gullible mad-scientists who seemed how unaware that they were being exploited by corrupt government and power-mad military, and that it was inevitable that some big disaster must soon occur.
@@yosefmacgruber1920 you should watch the documentary he mentioned.
Yep, they licensed the Quake engine, but not only did they highly modify it, but they also designed the game so the player would never be out of the in-game experience. That's why you could always move in HL's cutscenes, everywhere you looked something was happening, even if it was just a printer infinitely putting out paper. Even if you left the PC you would see Gordon playing with his weapon or the crowbar or whatever, It sounds simple today, but nobody had ever seen stuff like that at this point. And I am not citing anybody, I was there at release and we couldnt believe it.
@@Jaaayzen
I was referring more to the HL story-line, and not so much what engine that it runs on.
On my PS2, I think HL was my first major game after ICO, and so it was kind of amusing, that HL didn't lead you by the arm, or force you to watch what was happening. It make my ICO seem like a little kiddie game in comparison. I realize that there are invisible "trip wires" that trigger an action sequence, hence the many "amazing coincidences" that things happen just in time corresponding to your arrival.
I do not recall any printer continuously spitting out paper?
I think it may have been PS2 _Ape Escape,_ if you let the game idle, the game would detect that, and your character would get bored and pull out a boombox.
It seems hilarious, but Gordon Freeman must be carrying around 300 pounds of weapons and ammo, without even a backpack. And he never gets tired nor has to take a restroom break.
In the video game _Animal Crossing New Horizons_ my character has 40 pocket slots. Must be nice in some ways, to be a video game character. And in most video games, surviving a fall or jump of some 20 or 30 feet, is no big deal. How do I get such a power-up in real life?
There's a part in the lambda complex just before teleporting to xen where a scientist outright says that the portals are being held open by the Nihilanth at that point.
love your videos
Fancy meeting you here
that's mentioned in the video
9:14 is the timestamp
He says that in the video
the colonel expects perfection, yet here you are
Blaming gordon for the incident is like blaming the first fish to step on land for ruining your life.
Technically the fish faults'.
I hate that fish
and so we must do exactly that. because it is funny
Fucking fish
@@kayzeaza dude what. thats entirely different. like were talking about a single action from one individual that just fucked shit up for everyone domino effect-wise and youre talking about many actions done by many cogs in the machine. completely different topic, man
I always assumed the scars on the Nihilanth were more of an autopsy/vivisection scar left when they stuffed it full of machinery. The classic Y shape of it and all. If it was just to craft on the arm, you'd expect the stitching to be around the arm, rather than just the bottom portion of it and then going down the torso. I also assumed the cuffs on him was to signify it, despite being the "mastermind," was also a slave. Like how Breen was in 2. It had will and mind, like the Vortigaunts, so needed shackles to enslave it. The Grunts (and likely the Controllers) didn't need them because, like the combine troopers in 2, they were bred to be subservient.
Yeah I think he was wrong about that, and his story he presented doesn't make much sense either.
The way you depict the scale of the enemies makes it truly horrifying. It reminds me of how in the leaked half life 3 plot there's that similar concept of futility where all of humanity's efforts were meaningless because the Combine had a Dyson sphere. Anyways, great analysis Leadhead
Out of curiosity, what's a Dyson sphere?
@@kon-ichiwa6987 Not trying to sound rude, but if you can write a comment asking for something you can just as easily look it up on google.
@@kon-ichiwa6987 it's like a massive power generator with its fuel being a star
@@ananta8514 Damn, that's awesome! Thanks :)
Legit, thinking about the sheer SCALE of the forces at work in the Half-Life series made me realize that the Half-Life game is secretly a Lovecraftian horror story disguised as a first-person shooter.
Half-Life raises questions that cannot be answered because it tells a story about mankind uncovering things that could never be understood.
I love it.
Half-life is the best Lovecraftian game ever.
Amen!
@@TheDigitalWatcher Bloodborne takes the top spot for me.
@@kato1kalin ooh thats also a good cosmic horror game
That's such lazy cosmic horror. We can't understand it because no one's explained it. It's like saying algebra is beyond human compression after skipping too many classes. Just a c*ck tease of a plot.
I think the G-Man deserves a much closer look, especially from a perspective that's entirely focused on the first game. We see him when Gordon first arrives at Black Mesa and he's conversing and shaking hands with various scientists at the facility. They know him. They're friendly with him. And, considering his main power seems to be teleportation (quite evident at the end of the game), it's very likely he offered the basics of teleportation tech to the scientists at Black Mesa. He may be a "seeder", teleporting to various inhabited worlds, offering teleportation tech, then forcing an invasion. I don't know who he works for but it doesn't seem to be the Combine. Nor do I think he has any permanent allegiances and, in fact, I suspect his "employers" quite often end up his victims.
many good points you got here
G-Man is the God of capitalist.
There’s a script by laidlaw (the hl writer) dictating that the crystal was brought to black mesa by super intelligent beings other than humans. That would obviously be the g-man
@@reducedtoatoms3973 I mean G-Man is the person who brings the crystal, so yeah
@@Plamler yeah I can’t remember if it’s a specific piece of dialogue or if I simply implied this in my head in my first play throughs of hl1 but I swear they mention him or some random person/being bringing the crystal for the test that day.
I never really fully realised that half life is actually some pretty chilling cosmic horror
How
You didn't realize a game about an alien invasion is a cosmic horror?
@@sneezewax3567 lmao
@@sneezewax3567 I just never really thought about it that way. I thought of it being more like Halo, where it's just aliens invading and you need to fight them. Didn't necessarily think of it being akin to Lovecraftian horror.
@@RaidenPSX halo also has abit of cosmic horror
The line "Their slaves, We are Their slaves'' is just really rare and heard it once in game so it is canon :)
When you teleport to a new location in the Nihilanth chamber, then can you hear the voiceline
Yeah.
I’ve heard it in half life source as well
@@toufikasultana7218 half life source is very, very broken, I don't think it counts
@@gamingandotherstuffchannel ??? dude it's the same game, the broken part is the source engine implementation when everyone was expecting a remake, even when people hated it, i had fun with the ragdoll scientists.
hl:s is broken lol. it used to get patches but when the steampipe update happened valve just kinda stopped updating hl:s, and since the source engine keeps getting updates it caused a buggy mess
HL1s story may not have many characters, as the only notable ones are the Gman and Nihilanth, but it tells a story through subtle worldbuilding through gameplay. Most games that have vague stories use mountains of reading documents and voice recordings to convey much of their stories. But Half Life lays it out entirely organically. It’s why it’s vague story is so remembered, and other like Outlasts aren’t.
Barney: What am I, chopped liver?
My favorite description of gman I've heard is "a creature doing an only adequate job of pretending to be human"
He's a space god but still stutters when he speaks.
@@hershloodu8925 I've always loved the theory that G-man stutters and talks the way he does because he's a being that isn't used to talking with humanoid vocal chords. It would be like if we humans attempted to speak to fish.
@@HOTD108_ That's actually pretty cool. Definitely implies that humans are less important to him.
Like Mark Zuckerberg?
g-man was one of combines man from the future and he was sent to talk to Gordon after Gordon defeated the big monster plotting against the combine thus gman got to Gordon and thanked him, but he couldn't say stuff from the future to not disrupt the timeline and not alerting Gordon so he could not be ready for the combine, so he spoke vaguely leaving gordon confused
good shit. makes me want to buy you a beer
When this comments 20 years old I expect to see “now, about that beer I owed y’a”
@@harp5713 "It's me Gordon! Hoolopee from Leadhead's comment section!"
@@BoshMind "hey, sorry for the scare i had to put on a show for the viewers"
Buh
Did you hear a cat?
I feel like the larger story is happening around Gordon and as one man, he is only peripherally aware of it. You are just trying to survive, you don't get all the answers. It's unsatisfying but it's realistic.
Gordon can only see what is within his reach, and he is not looking for answers, he is looking to survive and try to remedy things.
You're only sure about 2 things in life: death, taxes and the endless speculations about G-man. Wait, that's 3...
1st certainty: Death
2nd certainty: Taxes
2nd certainty: Episode 1: G-Man speculation
CONFIRMED
half life 3 confirmed
You: Counts to 3
Valve: Wait that's illegal
Alyx*
I stick to the theory that G-Mans ''employers'' are actually Valve Software.
Meta
and the ability of G-man that makes him godlike is to pass through the fourth wall
you are all wrong, gman works for aperture science
Ah yes it all makes sense now
G-man is an admin
I like this.
Marc Laidlaw had fully thought out the entire Half-Life plot in every detail, but then he went into the toolshed. A crowbar dropped on his head. After he woke up, all he could remember is that there was a big research complex, a creepy man in a blue suit and a crowbar.
I just want to mention that in the Nihilanth's chamber, the 3 crystals are evenly placed around him like a ring, except if one was missing. Like there was supposed to be 4.
The crystals in the chamber look exactly like the one in the test chamber in the beginning.
Yes there are many other yellow crystals in Zen, but they're all of different sizes and shapes, except for in this chamber.
Maybe the Nihilanth did this to get it back, I appreciate this comment.
As it was said, it is established that G-Man gave the crystal that caused Resonance Cascade. G-Man's "employers" (upper comment makes a remarkable suggest that humans wouldn't understand the scale of things, so employers it is) clearly made a power play, and caused the Resonance Cascade. We also know that G-Man's employers aren't Combine. Combine is a race who responded the distruption to invade Xen, and use it's inhabitants to their benefit. Similar to what they've done to Earth. There's some Frank Herbert shit going on.
Good catch, I remember thinking about “there should be 4th one, these aren’t evenly placed” in my first playthrough. 20 years later when I’m playing it again “wait, wasn’t there a 4th one. it seems off this way”.
@@LimeDida My take: The experiment didn't fail. It was a complete success. G Man is a manifestation of the Combine ALREADY insinuated into the government to manipulate mankind into opening the portal. The rocket was ready in order to stabilize the connection and the HEV suit was intended for Gordon, who was a patsy sent by the Combine to destroy the Nihilanth resistance.
@@TrismegistusMx I don't think that would make sense with the actions of the gman in the second game
I think it's interesting how G-man is portrayed or portrayed himself in Half-Life 1 like he was a government agent, saying things like he is taking away Gordon's weapons because they are "Government Property". We saw some more insight into this with a cancelled expansion, which had something to do with a junior G-man working at a black mesa partner facility (obviously not cannon). If we wanted to fit this into the cannon after HL2, it is interesting to think of the potential implications of G-man possibly wanting to deceive Gordon into thinking he was trustworthy.
or he just said that because he seems to have trouble speaking english normally
I kinda read the gman scene as this alien doing his best to help gordon understand what's going on. Like how he thinks for a second before arriving at the word "employees". He's trying to put it in terms that Gordon can understand
@@Leadhead You mean "employers", right?
@@512TheWolf512 Yeah, just a typo of his since he got it right in the video.
@@Leadhead I super disagree. I think valve just had no idea how to end the game, so they had a VA say some jargon and called it a day.
Seriously think you way overthought everything about this game lol.
@@Leadhead People can only really speak dialectically with each other within 2 SDs (~30 IQ points). Beyond that, the dumber won't really be able to understand the smarter. It takes a very talented rhetorician to speak to someone more than 2 SDs below them in a way that they can understand. Someone extremely intelligent may have to think over their words several times before coming up with a way to communicate with an average person. It makes sense that G-Man would stutter.
The unused Nihilanth line was used in Half Life Source, according to the wiki. It replaced a line of his that goes "Alone... not you alone... not you alone...".
20 years later there still no one on earth that can describe HL1 lore, even tho it's regarded as one of the best games in the past decades
Let alone changed storytelling in the gaming landscape forever
Not Even valve
@Stellvia Hoenheim not even remotely. I could see that theme in half life 2 a bit and definitely see your point for alyx, but the central idea is unforeseen consequences. You create the resonance cascade and the unforeseen consequence is the combined occupation of earth. You stop the destruction of the citadel in episode 2 and inadvertently destroy most of city 17 whereas if you left the core to its devices it would've only taken the central part of city 17 with it with most likely few casualties. But after you stop its meltdown it kills any rebels with hope of escaping city 17 who were left behind and the combine also now see that humanity is much more a threat than they previously assumed, with the combined occupation before hand being almost indifferent and lazy. we were mice and they were lions cupping us in their hands as they played with us. Now they will come at humanity with much more lethal force. Alyx makes a deal to save her father but the Gman takes her for his bidding. Unforeseen consequences is the central theme if half life and always will be. Not to say though family isnt also a theme, just much less developed than the main idea.
@Stellvia Hoenheim not to mention Gordon is responsible for all the deaths that occurred during both the black Mesa incident and the combine invasion.
@@cryojudgement2376 i can sorta see how gordons responsible for the deaths in hl2 n stuff, maybe a few in hl1, but i dont really think he was responsible for most of the deaths
Half Life 9 better have Gordon beating the shit out of the main god of the whole multiverse with his barehands as a grand finale.
Imagine gordon is so fed up of this bullshit that he talks in the first time and manage to beat the shit out of the guy
You mean with a crowbar?
@DBH Half-Life 9 confirmed
In full-dive VR
@@enzonline8896 "oh fuck you aliens this is the 9th and last time"
Taking "I am the last" and "We are their slaves" almost could imply that it is suggesting to you that if you kill it off, you'll win the fight. Like encouraging you to win rather than being all in on ending you. Slaves do what they're commanded to do, not necessarily what they want to do.
What made Half-Life one of the greatest games and indeed stories of all time is that it DOESN'T answer the big questions. You're forever left wondering just wtf happened. Sometimes, mysteries are best left unsolved and I'm eternally grateful to Valve for understanding that and giving us such a great experience.
Yep. That's why they didn't make a HL3. Everyone would be disappointed because everyone has his own theories.
But cliffhanger come on. Its still a dick move
Exactly. You can see that in the Alien franchise. The engineer was reinterpreted as a big blue guy in a suit. Not very menacing in comparison what he looked like in his chair in the first Alien movie. The mystery was gone and so was the fascination with it. Some things are better not explained.
@@wilhufftarkin8543 You could have made a third part. But at some point too many of the original developers of the story had left. It would be possible to wrap it up without revealing too much so that the appeal would be gone but without the right people working in the project they opted to not persue it any further.
@@wilhufftarkin8543 Yet them being proven wrong by a game coming out isn't the worst thing that could happen to them.
Always loved the idea of G-man’s employers. The thought of humanity being the absolute lowest peg on an interdimensional system of beings is spooky.
I never thought of it like that now half life seems even more terrifying
It's something I've always loved about Half-Life as a franchise, the immense potential depth of it is insane. Most people always consider the Combine Advisors to be high-up in the Combine hierarchy, when in reality they're probably near the top of the low level rankings.
g-man was one of combines man from the future and he was sent to talk to Gordon after Gordon defeated the big monster plotting against the combine thus gman got to Gordon and thanked him, but he couldn't say stuff from the future to not disrupt the timeline and not alerting Gordon so he could not be ready for the combine, so he spoke vaguely leaving gordon confused
one key factor about Half-Life is the idea of freedom.
If we are going to incorporate the Combine into our HL1 theories after all... then I'd put forward the idea that G-MAN isn't an agent of the Combine. To me it makes sense that he was probably present at Black Mesa to observe the unfolding events and then take counter measures to make sure the Combine didn't stumble upon human teleportation technology. We know that one weakness of the Combine is that they can't teleport once in another universe and so have to travel by conventional means. They are desperate to overcome this weakness and hence why they passively allow Eli and Kleiner and co to continue their research prior to HL2. So, I'd wager that in HL1 the G-MAN arranged the military clean-up to kill most all witnesses to Black Mesa's research, ensuring the Combine, which would inevitably invade, could not obtain them and grill them for information. It would make sense to kill the science team and scuttle the base and only spare a handful of researchers to keep knowledge of the tech alive, but also easy to safeguard. G-MAN then sends Gordon back when the research is nearing completion and ensures that the Combine is thwarted just before they can get their hands on the tech.
That's a great take on it. I think it's obvious that G-Man works for some entity other than the Combine, but I like your take on why G-Man is being employed to do what he's doing here.
Dude! It makes sense!
In Alyx, the combine somehow captured Gman. Until she frees him.
I think this is further supported by the fact that G-MAN gives you the option to either go into stasis or fight an unwinnable fight (kill you) at the end of Half-Life 1. Really drives the, you either help me fight the Combine or help me by dying and keeping the information on teleportation a secret.
why else would gordon arrive on a red letter day 🤔
Half Life 1 is my favorite video game story. Such an intricate narrative, that is never actually narrated to the player. It truly feels like you're living a story rather than having it be told to you. No other art medium could have pulled this off. The feeling I get from this game, its atmosphere, its plot, has not been replicated by any other artwork.
It's incredible that after so many years this is still one of my favorite games.
Fear and hunger?
what is intricate about it? it's very simple. not DOOM simple but so simple I don't think it could exist in any other medium because there's almost no substance. it's just a personality devoid husk running around trying to survive, meeting up with various copy pasted coworkers who are also doing the same.
lmao I've never expected to hear the word "telefrag" used in anything even remotely serious until today
If teleportation becomes a real thing and standing in a teleport spot kills you the official term should no must be telefrag
@@Xenomorthian agreed
@@Xenomorthian It should
@@Xenomorthian what if I teleport bread into someone?
@@Jack93885 “Bread makes you fat.”
Thought: if the resonance cascade is the equivalent of blowing open a hole in the wall between universes, perhaps the rocket launch is the equivalent of putting a door over the hole. It doesn't completely seal off the hole, but it makes it hard enough that it requires conscious, intelligent action to move between them, which in this metaphor is somebody choosing to open the door.
In this case, the Nylanth continues the invasion because since there's a door, now there's a chance the Combine can use our universe to invade Xen. It becomes imperative in this case to establish a foothold on this new bridgehead into Xen.
@@skeletondandy7405 bß. Z z z z. Z. Z. Z z z z z z z. Z z z z z z z. Z z z z z zz z. Z. Z z. Z zz. Z z z z z. N n zz. N. Z. Z z. Z z z z z z. Zz. Z z z z z. X ZXx zz xzxzxz z zz Z zz z Z. ZxXxcxz czc xcx. Cxcxcz xcx xcx xcx xcx xcx xcx xczZ. Z. X Cx. Z z z zz. Z Zz. Xx x. .Z
. Z.
@@skeletondandy7405 I don't think the rocket gave the combine the ability to invade Xen. I do believe the combine were always able to invade Xen, they just really weren't able to track the location of the last nihilanth. We know that the Combine possessed the ability for interdimensional/interuniversal teleportation, that's how they invaded Earth after all. But we also learned that the combine lack the ability of local teleportation within a single dimension, this is one of the driving plot forces in HL2. This lack of local teleportation technology is a weakness for the Combine as seen in HL2 where the resistance can easily outmaneuver Combine forces via their own teleporters. This lack of local teleportation for the Combine also makes it difficult to chase and find their enemies as seen with the 7 hour war, where even an overwhelming combine force was unable to take out all of Earth's resistance forces. So yes, even if the Combine suspected the nihilanth and his forces to be in Xen, it would still be difficult to find them outright and subdue them. Xen is a very large dimension after all. Personally, I think the rocket was meant for the Lambda Team to re-establish control for teleportation between Earth in Xen, a consequence of this was that all random teleportation stopped but the Nihilianth was still manually able to send troops through. Whether or not the Lambda team really wanted Gordon to go to Xen since the beginning is vague, perhaps G-Man had an even larger role in the plot-points of HL1 then we think?
I don't know if my opinion is based on speculation or observation, but I was always under the impression (given I think the newspaper in HLA gives a few-month gap between the cascade and the invasion) that the portal storms were the physical symptoms of matter being transported back and forth from Xen to Earth. (matter being removed or placed inside other matter is probably VERY destructive)
To me, it makes sense that that would have happened for the initial cascade, hence the structural damage to the BMRF in many places. Perhaps the Nihilanth (after a few hours, imo we don't see controlled tactical teleportation until perhaps the end of Unforeseen Consequences) managed to take advantage of this discord and direct it for his purposes. The rocket is said to close the portal (or something along those lines), only for them to discover its being held open.
The problem I've always had with that line of thinking is that, with the rocket in place, and the Nihilanth dead... why the portal storms?
I've discussed this with others, and I came to a sort-of head canon explanation:
The cascade (I believe) is said to be self-sustaining. Just because the rocket closed (or in the case of OP, "put a door on it") the portal, doesn't mean it stopped the cascade. I wonder if portal storms were always a thing, but whether or not those portal storms actually teleported Xenian matter is up to if the portals are open or not.
What if Xenian matter was only being teleported to Earth on the 2-3 days from the start of the cascade to the Nihilanths demise? What if all portal storms after that fact was simply "local" teleportation of Earths matter? Ie, pieces of earth matter being removed and placed on other parts of Earth. This would explain in my mind how the portal storms in episode 2 don't teleport Xenian matter...
One thing most people miss about the final boss is how human he looks compared to literally everything else. It's as if he is from earth or a species eerily similar to humans.
He is the man that is most likely to survive a car crash
I remember noticing this and the grafted arm back in the day. Putting the two together with the aliens' obvious genetic proficiency, I assume that the Nihilanth is somehow partly grown from human DNA. That's why it only had two arms.
Wow, this actually put a lot of insight into things that I didn’t pick over my 15+ playthroughs!
6 days ago tf
how is this comment 6 days old
@@danielbarrett6960 I’m a patreon supporter, I get a weeks early access to all his videos. You should really check it out it’s only a dollar a month!
@@skeefskits1713 oh I'll check that out
Leadhead, I believe Marc Laidlaw said at one point during an interview that the Combine was not planned in HL1, per se, but that a force filling the same role in the story *was.* They knew vaguely that there was a force threatening the Xen aliens.
Laidlaw's explanation of the Nihilanth and the reason for his invasion of Black Mesa also completely aligns with the theory presented in this video. He did a great job piecing it all together.
The rocket you launch contains a satellite loaded with a Xenium Resonator, which uses Xenium, the same crystal you light poorly aimed lasers at during the beginning of the game. This was meant to close the portals being opened, and Xenium Resonators were used to close the Combine Superportal powered by The Citadel in City 17 during Half-Life 2. The rocket didn't work due to the fact that the Nihilanth - The boss you fight at the end of Half-Life - was holding it open.
I like the "is it freemans fault" bit cause when i was like 6-7 and playing this every new game i started my Father would poke fun at me and say "you pushed the cart to far in dude ahhh you killed everyone" made me irritated back when i was that age thinking it was true now i just get a laugh every time i watch something on Half Life 1 lol.
YOU PUSHED IT TOO FAR LOOK WHAT YOU DID AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH
Cool dad
Your dad sounds cool. :)
Lol I actually thought I did it wrong the first time.
That actually reminds me of of a bit from the Half Life VR but the AI is self aware series, in which Gordon is trying to push the cart, but a guard is frustrating him and he pushes it in too fast.
Maybe the real Half-life 1 was the friends we made along the way
Tough shit then, cuz theyre likely all dead or turned into zombies
Cant have a full life without another half life. Friends are everything.
no it was BEER
@@slushisimcambi2521 Just be prepared for full life consequences.
Hahahaha
The "slaves" quote from the Nihilanth was originally gonna be used in HL1 but was cut and later used in HLS replacing the "Not you alone" quote.
Looking for an answer,thanks
Isn't it "lock you alone"? The Nihilant says it when it teleports you to various "dungeons" during the fight. Plus, it doesn't make any sense if it is "not you alone"
@@Kinkoyaburi not sure, it just sounded like "Not you alone"
@@Kinkoyaburi Nothing the Nihilant says makes gramatical sense. He Is an outwolrldy being from another dimensión who barely speaks a human languaje let alone comunicates with words. He Is learning to communicate as he speaks like the Gman does.
@@Kinkoyaburi I've played Black Mesa and in it he says "Not you alone". I thought of it as an angry remark. As in I can't be defeated, not by you alone. Reflecting on Gordon being a one man army.
“Then, Gordon gets abducted by a space-god”
*ad pops up*
Neat!
I got an ad for a mobile game.
Yep
you know it's gonna be good when Leadhead uploads
I didn't know that until now so I had to hit the sub button for sure lol
Imagine how different things would be if Nihilanth decided to do this stuff peacefully and have an alliance with humanity
The 7 day war
@@xninewxw7559 hour
Still would have lost fighting the combine but hey it might have lasted days
Likely wasn't a proper course of action. Strike while the iron is hot; it takes lots of time making peaceful first contact
@@Piscesmoon-e9b the combine would still win, but in seven days
thats what i thing the meant
Love that this guy keeps Half-Life spirit alive
@@sealacious did you watch the entire video?
they just made a new half life game and recent leaks seem to suggest a new game is coming out in a year or two, it's not like the half life spirit is going to dissipate anytime soon now that valve's making games again
girl
@@sealacious i understand he changed his gender, but my mind always assumes its a dude because of his voice, any new new viewers are gonna assume its a guy
@@protix9880 she* and her* still a girl, even if she has a deep voice
A few other things I never see anyone talk about when it comes to Half-Life lore:
1. The Vortigaunts weird perception of time. It seems they at least partially see a lot more of time than the present at once, and several lines from both HL2 all the way up to ALYX hint at this. "We see you still at Black Mesa", the all-knowing Vortigaunt in the sewer, and the Vort you meet in ALYX that's been disconnected from the "vortesence" outright confusing the passage of time, not knowing whether Eli is alive or dead at the moment because he's seeing everything unfiltered right now since he's disconnected from the hive mind that'd usually help him interpret things.
2.The implied life cycle of the Headcrabs. Those things are fascinating. The way I see it, the baby crabs are born from the Gonarch, they mature into the typical crabs we all know and love and that's all fine but...what happens when they attach to a host? WHY do they attach to hosts? I fully believe that over time the mutation the host obviously suffers gets more and more severe as the headcrab continues to grow until they're finally large enough to become a Gonarch, at which point the host is COMPLETELY turned into the Gonarch's breeding sack. It's a truly horrific fate for the host, especially when you factor in the fact that HL2 implies they're still conscious...
We also see species like the Lightning Dogs/Revivers seem to have evolved to mimic the Headcrab's zombification defense. They're clearly a different species, and unlike Headcrabs their hosts are deceased, but the fact they also take over a host body and move it around can't be coincidence.
bros really becoming headcrab nuts after being a host for too long
Perhaps the headcrabs consume their host, while also using the host to kill more prey, allowing it to have more food sources? After enough time, it grows large enough to become the gonarch, and possibly reproduces parthenogenically? It's just speculation for now. Hopefully Valve can clear some of these details up.
Headcrabs find hosts to turn them into gonomes, which is a straight upgrade for it; hosts prior to that are more of a hinderance to a headcrab as they are slow and too large for it's own good. It only took a few days for the process after all. Headcrabs in half life 2 have been modified by the combine and cannot advance from host stage as they constantly create shambling zombies which are just detrimental for both parties for long-term survivability. Fast Headcrabs and Poison headcrabs have different strategies
yeah a lot of marc laidlaw's writing is like that, I'm reading some of his books from the 90's and they are very vague and much deeper than you could ever imagine.
He is one of the few authors that could do cosmic horror as good as or better than H.P. Lovecraft.
@@dangerjoe8911 yeh
This was a surprising nostalgic moment back to 2000 when I first played this game about how mysterious it was and the oddness of it all.
That ending was perfect. "Because the world of Half-Life is one in which humanity opened the door to questions that absolutely no human could ever answer." It's exactly why I hope Gman never gets explained by Valve and remains a mystery to us all. Love your content.
This is why i didn't like Dishonored 2 as much as the first one..they started explaining the character of the Outsider and made him uninteresting
would be awesome if hl3 came out and after playing it we still had no idea what the g-man is
How brilliant is this series that we're still discussing it over 20 years later.
You're not really setting it apart from many other series then.
Hate people throwing the word "brilliant" like candy, like you're that many geniuses.
@@hyakugame I'm sorry, did you want me to write an essay in the RUclips comments on how Half Life as a series is "brilliant?"
The fuck is your point, man? You go around just being negative on random comments? We're all here enjoying some videogame nostalgia, and you've got to come in being pedantic.
Find a hobby or something - maybe you'll feel better.
@@hyakugame U mad bro?
@@dronespace super mental
Just because there is a lot of unanswered questions in the game it doesn't make it brilliant automacly.
This was great. Would love to see a "What even happened in Half-Life 2?"
Yes! There's even more to talk about!
She doesn't have much to talk about though, i always saw Half-Life 2 as the less mysterious one. Not saying it isn't mysterious or good, it's a Half-Life game, it's obviously good and mysterious!
@@Jtzkb
leadhead identifies as a woman but yeah, I want a series around this it’d seem interesting
Honestly, if he hasn't done it at this point, I'm having his balls for breakfast. No way will he get away with this laziness, smh.
@Pee Pee Portal 1 is very vague, Portal 2 is kinda vague, but not a lot.
What I like in not just HL, but HL2, after the initial shock of a situation subsides, you have a cast of very intelligent people who get together to get themselves out of it. There's never just one "command character" who makes all the calls, or the protagonist finding things themselves to do, or simply being given objectives at the start of the level. The scientists of Black Mesa have the composure to come up with methods on the fly to slow or halt the invasion, eventually realizing, "Hey, we were preparing to launch a satellite array to put out energies to help modulate displacement energy. Why don't we proceed with the launch and just use that to close the door?"
Didn’t Gordon just do as he was told, with the experiment? And therefore, if not him, someone else would have done so?
In subsequent “Gordon caused people to die” instances, did he have any other choice?
Gordon causing unintentional disasters.
I definitely caused people to die.
disaster just follows gordon wherever he goes, he's a bad omen
@@doughboywhine Nah man, he's the Mothman of the Half-Life universe.
If anything Breen was the cause as he ran the experiment counter to his colleagues insistence to not proceed. Gordon was the unlucky bastard who put the crystal in, not the one who took a crystal from a alien in a human costume
The resonance cascade was my fault. I threw a desk chair into the experiment in Half Life Black Mesa...
As long as you didn't fuck with my microwave lunch, I think it'll be okay.
Oh, didn't expect to see you here. Hope you're doing well.
It was also kinda my fault, I was working on repairs on the AntiMass Spectrometer and left my thermos of hot chocolate up there, the beam must have opened it and spilled on the machinery
it’s okay i’ve taken care of every thing.
every. thing.
Nah it’s my fault, I didn’t bring my passport.
I'm super late to this, but this was an absolutely incredible video. You had me thinking about Half-Life in a way that I never considered. Great work. Subbed.
I love the little details in the game, like the "alien slaves" (vortigaunts) sometimes screams "DIE" while attacking you or the soldiers
Oh shit! I thought it was just me having some sort of auditive pareidolia and trying to make sense out of the vortigaunt's alien sounds!
@@curple3 It is just nonsensical noise, only that the human mind tends to trick itself into hearing words and making shit up when in reality it was nothing
To me the alien invasion always seemed “desperate.” I think it’s pretty clear Nihilanth had been Eyeing up our world since the experiments begin. However I don’t get the impression it was his first choice for what he really wanted to do. He is basically a fugitive from a race of slave masters, who fled to Xen which seems to be very inhospitable to higher forms of life. The reason that his forces seems so miss matched with the US military is because humankind is in a much better position than he is. His troops are either blindly obedient due to mind control or slaves who really want no part in war and were also fleeing from the combine. His technology, while better than ours in a few areas, seems to be scraped together, probably from pieces of salvaged technology from the various species that use Xen essentially as a refugee camp. The only reason he’s taking this gambit is likely because he knows the combine will eventually find his operation and destroy everything. TL:DR A well-funded invasion of another planet doesn’t use wild animals as screening troops.
Yep.
I think this is also supported by the fact that in straight-up battles against the US Armed Forces, the Xenian forces require overwhelming numbers to prevail. It's only thanks to the way that teleportation acts as a _huge_ force multiplier that the military is ultimately forced to withdraw.
The combine taking over the vortigants makes sense, since in the half life 2 beta, when you go to the spot where you usually meet alyx in half life 2, you can see a metro cop leading vortigants into an alleyway at gun point
Have you ever wondered why there's a sepecies in Xen that seems like it was created specifically to take control over humans? (headcrabs)
Maybe? But presumably they can comfortably burrow into the head of any species that has a head. They would fit over a Vortigaunt without too much issue, I would imagine.
@@Swiftbow but we never see a vortigaunt zombie. Infact vorts eat headcrabs with no problem.
My headcannon is the wildlife of Xen(including tentacles, Gonarch and Gargantuas) is not native to Xen and they got teleported there from distant planets/dimensions
@@kesorangutan6170 Headcrabs also take control of combine soldiers
@@abalyon7043 Well because zombine are partly human :D
@@kesorangutan6170 that’s not a head cannon, that’s literally what it is
*"You are man, he's not man. For you he waits, for you..." - Nihilanth*
Did you make this up or is this a voice line because I don't remember? It would probably be G-man then.
@@mrscientific4956 Its one of the unused Nihilanths voicelines, check the voice files
Nihilanth name is not-man check out game theroies the g-man
@@tommys4ge ...
hey nice btbam profile picture
"What even happened in Half Life"
Unforseen Consequences
HL Alyx was also revealing, because it showed that even the combine shat it's pants with gman
I played this game a quadrillion times and never noticed how teleports become more organized after the rocket launch. Interesting details you've got there!
Although that's true, I always interpreted it as that the invasion is ramping up while you were away. You spend a long time leading up to the rocket launch essentially in the bowels of Black Mesa. Post rocket you return to the surface where there's a full scale war going on between the soldiers and aliens. It could be as the video conjectures, or it could just be enough time has passed for things to have escalated.
For me I always thought we accidentally cleaned up the signal like on old TVs and radios when you’re changing channels there’s a bit of static in between. the resonance cascade blurred the line between two dimensions and alerted the Nylanth to us but because of the accident it was shooting blind when teleporting its soldiers but once the satellite was launched in the resonance cascade was stopped it wasn’t going to ignore what was brought to his attention by us
The more alone I feel when playing as gordon comforts me knowing that everyone else was just as alone as I was when playing gordon.
@@germainlechapelain9203 it makes sense
gman has always reminded me of like a Greek god, on mount Olympus. In greek/roman myths, the gods will see some mortals doing something, take some angle, and then go in and just fuck with them. Blow that ship off course, seduce this person, curse that person, etc. He's just there to manipulate the narrative.
seduce *many* people
@@terribledeadlinegameplay Yup that is just Zeus fucking around with them, literally.
damn, greek gods are assholes.
@@Gogglesofkrome call me zeus
@@terribledeadlinegameplay ZOOS
It always sounded to me like the rocket was just a prerequisite to get Gordon to Xen, not an absolute solution in itself, based on the security guard's wording.
Cool observations on the Nihilanth's body; I never noticed those before. The structure at its bottom looks very similar to the appendages in the synths of HL2.
That rare voice line you mentioned is indeed in the game. I heard it when I replayed the game today (Steam version).
Speaking of Nihilanth's body, I can't help but of thinking of Dune's Guild Navigators. Look up the image "Guild Navigator from DUNE (1984) by artist Paul Hanley"... With that said the Navigators in Dune were able to predict routes in space travel, if not even warp space-time itself (might be a movie-canon, but still). So, since it is mentioned here that Vortigon soldiers seem to teleport strategically (seems to be a deliberate story feature, not just part of "level design" and difficulty multiplier), one could consider Nihilianth was able to see into the future on multiple dimensions, and that might hint it knew Gordon would sure kill it.
For me G-man isn't good or evil, he's beyond space and time or human comprehension. He already knew what would happen at black mesa that day.
"Prepare for unforseen consequences"
well tbh we're not really sure if gman is the boss or just a doll in hands of his employers
However none can say anything for now but only half life 3 can confirm
He’s filming a movie or a documentary like trolling animals in the wild with a mirror or something.
@@brickofwar9727 😳TROLLED THE ENTIRE EARTH BY CAUSING A RESONANCE CASCADE😨 (GONE WRONG) (COMBINE INVADED) (HALF LIFE 3)
I’m pretty sure the gman had something to do with the xen specimen
My only fear is that one day we’d get a hl game explaining all of this, combine, gman, employers, and we’ll lose all the mystery and intrigue. Really hoping Combine never get rewealed past Earth happenings
I love how Gordon keeps finding himself in a bigger and bigger and bigger situation throughout the series, but still keeps silently mowing through everyone who comes against him
gordon is too handsome to wear a helmet
True
now now gordon doesnt need to hear this, hes a highly trained runway model
Too bad he cut his ponytail
@@average_enjoyer sellout
18:42 In Half Life: Alyx, G-Man physically shows Alyx, through time travel, that her father will die but that he would prevent it if she helped him break out of prison. I think it's safe to say G-Man did not cause the Resonance Cascade, rather he knew it was going to happen.
There’s a script by laidlaw (writer) sayijg that the crystal was brought to black mesa by super intelligent beings other than humans. So yes, he did cause the cascade.
He did cause it. He was the one that gave the crystal to Breen and probably the one who made Freeman arrive late at work. All in order to cause the Resonance fot his (or His employers) uknown purposes
I really like the idea of the Nihilinth needing that third arm to properly control the vortegaunts. To me it feels like a being with only two arms wouldn’t know how to properly control a third arm in a psychic link, until you graft on a new arm and connect it to the brain.
Nah that third arm thing is a penjs
@@OneUnintelligentSpork stunning observation!
@@OneUnintelligentSpork based
@@dudewheresmycar4203 based on what
Nihilanth being enslaved fits into the grand theme in Half-Life that there's always 1 level up pulling the strings, the advisors are revealed to just be another enslaved synth (mostly through breengrub if you've heard of it) "the one free man" is being used by a force incomprehensible to everyone else, and even he, G-Man, has his own employers. This bit of thematic weight applies to every single element of these game's stories.
I really like how they made the Half-life story ambiguous, makes for interesting theories from fans
I JUST finished playing Half-life 1 on Steam and the audio you are referring to at 12:49 played for me EXACTLY in the same room as the background video you had at that moment.
I actually thought it said “we are the same”.
i wish i had friends that liked halflife as much as me
Lol I feel the same. I have plenty of irl friends but only one that is as into half life as me.
I love half life :)
Sameeee
yeah :(
Same, i feel like few i know even want to give the games a chance which is quite sad
That rare thing: a HL1 video that uses footage using the original models and not those terrible Gearbox ones
The hd pack annoys me because half the models are better and half are worse, so im looking at something I dislike either way
@@swordofthereal Yes! Exactly.
The snarks are probably the ones with the best design.
It's a really big pet-peeve of mine but I recently came to the conclusion (opinion really) that the game looks much better in software mode. The texture filtering they use is kinda rough and makes a lot of the textures look like weird colored splotches if viewed up close. I only noticed that when I was in a vent but it also explained why the eyes of the female assassins when their visors flip up looked so weird.
It even looks completely different under water in software mode so it feels to me like that was the way it was supposed to look.
The problem is that you can't scale the game to modern resolutions in software so I guess I'm alone on this.
@@517342 This is a really interesting point, I'd never considered it before. It was around the time where most of the art was probably designed with software primarily in mind as filtering was still only a niche option.
@@Cappsy Hardware acceleration was the new thing back then and it's definitely a good thing but I can really only recommend trying out software mode at least once. It gives the game a completely different feel.
I think it's one of those cases where the game looks better, is better technically but somehow loses the artistic choice for realism.
One thing I always wonder about, in Gman's ending speech, the dead soldiers are clearly in xen, not on Earth. If Black Mesa lore is taken, they probably got randomly pulled there by the Nihilanth, but I always wonder why they are actually there. Was there more going on than Gordon knows in xen? It seems likely that Gman provided the xen crystal that created the resonance cascade, how many other attempts did he make to kill the nihilanth before, or during, the events of Black Mesa?
Just from that I could see him kind of unsatisfied with his employment. Almost as if all the acts, from the resonance cascade, to getting rid of the Nihilanth, to keeping Gordon in stasis for later is part of some sort of plan. Are the Combine (or who ever they work for) his employer? No idea, but that ... being clearly has some own agenda.
The reason why there's a xen background in that scene is because the goldsrc engine can't change backgrounds on the fly. You can't have two different backgrounds for the same map.
(For the G-man tram area at the very end the devs just encased the tram in a black rectangle.)
Plus the ground is the sand texture from the desert areas of Half-Life.
So yeah, It's canon that the marines never invaded xen.
I never took it that they were in Xen, just that the GMan is showing Gordon that the military got it's ass kicked.
Never looked at the invasion this way before, could def believe it. And the thought of the end boss guy “running” or hiding from another bigger or more menacing enemy - fuck that’s a bit spooky to think about.
Was literally watching Freemans Mind when this dropped XD
I've definitely heard the "slave" quote in the game. It was triggered when I entered the huge factory with all of the vortigon slaves and I interpreted it to be them saying it somehow
its in half life source
@residentidiocracy7342 That would make sense, because that's the version I played
Remember the old theories about Gman being Gordon from the future? Do you think Alyx mistaking Gman for Gordon in HL:Alyx was a nod to that or a hint?
I think it was just a nod. Immediately afterwards, he shoots the idea down.
Can't spell Gordon Freeman without spelling G-Man
New Freemans Mind? New Leadhead? My day is made.
*WAIT,* a new episode?
A great day for Half-Life fans indeed.
@@Bacony_Cakes indeed!
@@tedstapleton5561 noice
It is a good life, brother. May it never change
Don't know why, but i keep rewatching this video every 2 months or so. Good content and channel!
14:05 I'm ashamed to admit I basically hive-handed the missions all the way to Xen because I was too scared to peek around corners
at least being a coward in half life is a valid tactic
The “Using the Hive-Hand to shoot around corners to check for enemies” Is a very valid tactic.
That's how I beat the Nihilanth in the end. Ran out of ammo so whacked it with the alien tech.
18:46 in half life decay, a "expansion" of half life for ps2, we can see gman giving the crystal that caused the resonance cascade to black mesa, so basically he caused it by giving the most pure, yet the most instable sample to them, he knew what he was doing
I actually completely love this theory, especially the rocket/nihilanth/random v strategic teleportation aspect. Great vid.
Holy shit I'm early. Feels good man. The half life video are some of my favorites, I've got high hopes
Twas in fact "fire"
Yee
The HD models clash so bad with the low res textures and geometry of the environment. The original models may be graphically outdated, but they have actual harmony with the rest of the game.
Well, Freeman's actions DID lead to consequences and, for a first time player, the thought of the military deciding to nuke the place after two cover up attempts was pretty unforseen
This makes me think of Neon Genesis Evangelion, you get everything from the first person perspective without the lore getting spoon fed to you which allows you to share in with the experience of the characters who also don't yet know whats going on. I i think this is a big part of what makes them Great.
Half Life's story and lore is so amazing. I've been a fan of this game universe for over a decade and it still feels fresh, intriguing and mysterious!
Yeah but it's also sad in many ways. I dont think HL 3 will end with a happy ending.
@@DanielAnderssson The decade plus cliffhanger ending is even more tragic :,,,( #hl3confirmed
@@DanielAnderssson we will never see a true continuation. Mark Laidlaw is gone and valve let's people work on projects out of passion. The original team is gone so that magic is also gone. Unless they get the band back together we'll never get a true continuation.
Eli said that gman himself brought the xen crystal. While very pure, its unstable. Gman knew it's going to be the catalyst of half life's events that would serve his end.
I vaguely remember this. Is it from one of the HL2 episodes?
@@fosty. At the end of Episode 2.
Also in one of the expansions, dont remember if Blue Shift or Oposing Force