Half-Life 2 (PC)

[Ish]

Help me!!!

Stuck on the follow freeman bit where laser death is raining down from the heavens.
Dunno where i'm meant to go. Everywhere is shut off with the blue force-fields.

What to do??

For Mad Gear:

You have to get to that official looking building on the far side. You have to get there by criss crossing across the plaza i.e. run all the way to the right, all the way to the left, and then all the way back to the right and you can get in there.

[Chadruharazzeb]

Woot! I'm about (at a guess) half way through AntiCitizen One atm. It's certainly the most demanding in terms of hardware, and it's also rather exciting. Not quite as thrilling as Call of Duty, but it's bloody good nevertheless. Haven't come across any Striders in a mano-a-mano yet, but I've seen them stomping about pwnering. Squad mates are moronic and useless. I try to lost them by telling them to stand somewhere and buggering off, but they always catch up when I get held up by combat.

Has anyone tried starting the game and using the all weapons cheat and nailing the CP's with the magnum? Think I might give it a try, see what occurs

[replicant]

Lamar best character ever!

I sighed a sign of relief when I saw the cheeky chappy was ok after the initial teleportation disaster. I didnt want to kill headcrabs incase I hit poor Lamar by accident

[Harmony]

Use the floating barrels to lift the ramp where you got off the air boat.

Thanks

[Nijo]

Haven't played much this weekend, but I *finally* made it to the sandtraps. Did anybody else find that bridge hard? Damn, had to crawl across once, turn off the defenses, then crawl all the way back again while taking out a helicopter. Three times I died trying to jump off the last girder, with the previous autosave way back on the other side!
Gah.

[MikeF]

Justfinished it, throughly enjoyabe affair even if it was onthe short side

[Mad Gear]

Cheers Ish, though i was goin mad.
Stuck inside the citadel now.

[Spatial]

Lamar best character ever!

Yep, I was glad the little bugger was Ok, but I do wonder how she got back after skipping off into the wilderness ? I'm guessing Dr Kleiner went off in his teleporter to find her

Anyone else notice that during the teleporter malfunction that the birds from the first area can get trapped in there with you ?


I've viewed the end sequences a few times now, and while Valve aren't giving much away, there's lots of little things to chew over.

Warning Lots of Spoilers and a long out pouring of thoughts :-

Firstly the teleporter malfunction. Its never found out why it goes awry with Gordon when it worked with Alyx. When its all going on, they say something (or someone) is interfering with the transport - the Gman perhaps ?

The end sequence shows that he's pretty much omnipotent in his powers. He can teleport across dimensions at will, and can litterally stop time it would seem. Begs the question why someone so powerful would even need someone like Gordon Freeman....

The Gman seems to be directing everything that you as Gordon Freeman do, from the time when you wake up, to placing you in City 17, to getting you out of there when he thinks you've done your job.

Its more than a bit ironic that Gordon is hailed by all as `The One Free Man`, except he isn't. He is nothing but a pawn for the Gman and his unknown machinations.

If it wasn't for the fact that he's seen talking to the resistance members in parts of the game ( he's talking to Col Odessa Cubbage at one point ) and the fact that he's the only other thing on the TV apart from the 24 hours Breencast, I'd have said that nobody else could see him.

What about The Combine ? For ages everyone thought the cannon fodder soliders were The Combine, but they're refered to in the game as The Overwatch or The Transgenic Army by Breen himself. Make's you think that there's more to them than nazi wannabes in jackboots and gas masks (in fact there's somewhere in the game a black and white poster which shows a cross section of a monkey's head, then a human, then an Overwatch solider ). Breen is always banging on about the evolution of the species too.

After seeing the `Prowlers` in the citadel and what seemed to be their creation using (what looked like) the prisoners from Nova Prospekt, I can believe that he was doing all sorts of things to further mankinds evolution and stop them being crushed underfoot by The Combine.

The Combine (or part of it ) is clearly seen talking to Breen on the monitor - the large insect thing with the bondage gag / ventilator for a mouth.

Breens last conversation with that is very interesting ( before Freeman and Alyx show up to reign on his parade ). He says that he will gladly give them City 17 if they get him to safety. When The Combine representative says something (unheared) about where its going to send him, he panics saying that he would not survive in the destinations environment (this might go back to the Overwatch soldiers having the fitted resperators, and the fact that the Combine Rep seems to have some kind of respirator gag on) . When The Combine rep. tells him that he can always use a host body he panics and declines, only to quickly change his mind.

A host body ? Now that we know that technology exists in this game world, does it tell us anything about our friend The Gman ? Is he an alien ( as many people originally thought ) using a host body to mingle with human relatively unseen ?

There's lots of interesting bits in the Gmans final speech as well. If you listen to it, he seems to use the word `time` again and again, except where it matters the most, when he talks about how you will find out everything in time

"I trust it will all make sense to you in the course of...well, I'm not really at liberty to say"

Why does he purposefully avoid the word at that exact point when he's been so liberal with its use up until then ? A sign of things to come perhaps ?

The Gman indicates at the end that he's now open to hiring you out to possible `clients` who have seen your work at City 17 and are impressed.

"I've received some interesting offers for your services. Ordinarily I wouldn't contemplate them, but these are extraordinary times."

Why are they extrodinary times ? What's happening ?

Is the Gman an intergallactic mercenary pimp ? What could possibly motivate someone (or thing) that can manipulate space and time unless it was in their own interests (what ever they may be ) ?

Breen's conversation with you when you're trapped in the metal cacoon at the end seems to indicate that in this instance you were brough to City 17 by the highest bidder.

"Did you realise your contract was available to the highest bidder?"

How would he know that ? If it was The Combine that told him, why didn't The Combine hire Gordon first ?

Did the rebels club together and chip in to hire Gordon off The Gman ? Is there an alien benefactor working with the rebels, or does the Gman just have it in for The Combine in general ( is he even the rebel's benefactor ? )

It might explain why, through the whole game, it seems its only you that is surprised by the fact that you've ended up amongst old friends is City 17.

Not Dr Kleiner, Eli Vance, Alyx, Mossman or Barney stop to question that you've suddenly returned after a mysterious 10 year absence. Surely if someone was missing for 10 years and the last you saw of them they were jumping through an inter-dimensional gateway, you'd safely assume that they died a nasty death somewhere along the way.

Do they not question it because they all knew you were going to be there, and it was only a matter of time ?

I'm sure there's a lot more ( I haven't even touched on the stuff that the Vortigants spout ), but thats a pretty mammoth post and I'd like to see what everyone else thinks

[Magnakai]

I literally just finished it, and you're right Spatial, there's a lot to contemplate.

I always assumed that the Gman was under the employ of some shadowy organisation, that he was just their pointman. After HL1, it seemed natural to me that it would be the govenment, but the comments about bidders et al in HL2 seem to denounce that theory. In any case, I thought he popped up so often simply to check up on your progress and ensure that things were running smoothly.

All the business with time was interesting. I'm not 100% sure what to make of it, except that it's worth considering that you managed to somehow, albeit crudely, manipulate time for your own purposes. I don't know whether that was a consequence of the Gman meddling with the teleporters or just a happy accident, but it's certainly something.

I also think that Mossman might've known a bit more than we give her credit for. Alyx said that she'd remarked that "She should've been the one in the chamber that day." I assume she's referring to the time of the resonance cascade in HL. Why on earth? Would she like to fight through everything that you fought through in HL? Or does she just suppose that things wouldn't have screwed up if she was there? It's hard to tell. Think about the way that she had a sudden change of heart at The Citadel. Was that just cheesy storymaking on Valve's part? Was she a double agent all along?

In any case, the fact that Gordon Freeman, a physicist and "ordinary man" (as proclaimed by Dr. Breen in one of his speeches at Nova Prospekt) was able to fight through an alien invasion, a military crack team (HL) and a genetically enhanced military (HL2), as well as jump into another world and destroy a giant alien there... Okay, he's got an HEV suit, but is that really it? I personally think that he's a bit more than that. Maybe he himself is the result of genetic manipulation or selective breeding. Perhaps he is the result of a special "programme" of sorts, one that also produced Dr. Mossman.

There's no mention (to my knowledge) of how the Vortigons came to be as friendly as we see them in this game. I've read something on Gamefaqs linked to in this thread that says that they were under the control of the Combine in the first game, and that's why they were so hostile. The jewellery that they wore in HL does support this theory, and it also might provide an explanation of who exactly paid for you. Perhaps the Vortigons might have wanted the human race freed, to gain a fairly strong (?) ally against the Combine threat.


This is just idle speculation. I just finished the game, my mind's working on overdrive and I thought you guys might be interested.
Let me know what you think.

[Spatial]

I agree about Mossman. She's an odd enigma, and not as one dimensional as she first appears.

I had a feeling she would betray the resistance at an early stage and just didn't trust her at all.

Initially I thought she was simply a plant in the resistance by Breen to bring them down. However there are a few complex things going on here.

Mossman has a real soft spot for Eli and holds him in high regard. She may even love him (although its not really said, she clearly has feelings for the old man ), and she wants to make him see Breens point of view not by force but by gentle and eventual coercion. It would appear that Breen is happy for this to happen, up until Gordon Freeman shows up and sticks his crowbar into things, forcing Breens hand.

Clearly up until Gordons reappearence he didn't see the resistance as any kind of a threat at all and was happy for Mossman to do it her way.

It seems that Mossman has Eli's best interests at heart, hence her turning on Breen the minute she thought he was going to bundle him off into another dimension, so I think she's more than a simple double agent. It might be thats she's more of a double edged sword, trying to play both sides of the field to bring about peace ( and maybe a compromise between humans and The Combine )

I agree that she certainly knew more than she let on. The Test Chamber comment, although only said by Alyx, is certainly an odd thing for someone to say. Does it mean by rights should she have been in the Gman's employment ?

Actually it's a good job she wasn't as `The One Moss Woman` wouldn't have sounded as cool

[Concept]

God. I've got a lot to catch up on in this thread. I'm being left behind, I am!

[Ratso]

Woo Hoo!

I finally got it up and running last night and played for three hours.
Was it worth the wait?

OH HELL YEAH!

[Len]

So anyone had the Raising The Bar book delivered yet...? Concept, Spatial...?

I got a mail from Game last week saying it would ship and be delivered on time for release which was yesterday, I think, so fingers crossed it may be at home later.

[Loc]

V.interesting reading all those big spoiler ideas, makes you think. Just hope the developers are thinking like that too

I reckon in the third HL game, it will be Freeman going into the Gman's HQ or whatever he has and finding out wtf happened in the first two games, would be really interesting, I think.
Then you find out at the end it was all a test (again)

[Concept]

So anyone had the Raising The Bar book delivered yet...? Concept, Spatial...?

I got a mail from Game last week saying it would ship and be delivered on time for release which was yesterday, I think, so fingers crossed it may be at home later.

I got an email saying it was ready to be delievered and then another saying that there'd been a delay in stock shipment until Tuesday 23rd November. I'm waiting anxiously because this book has got a really good write up from what I've read.