I just played through Half-Life: Source today [Regret spending the $10] and I’ve already completed Half-Life2, Half-Life2:Episode One, and Half-Life2:Episode Two [Backwards yes, but it made the HL2 story more interesting]. So I’m having a few issues as far as the story is told.
Vortigaunts are hostile in HL1 and then allies in HL2?
[list]We ‘free’ them in HL1, and so they’re now allies in HL2.[/list:u]
We close the portal from Xen in HL1 yet Combine/Vortigaunts still exist seven years later?
[list]If I listened correctly from Alyx in HL2, Combine/Vortigaunts can teleport to Earth but then cannot teleport out because [insert forgotten reason here].[/list:u]
Forgive the lack of knowledge towards this, I rushed through HL1 [Hated the graphics and disappointment of Half Life: Source]. I intend to spend more time once Black Mesa is released.
I’m pretty sure the vortigaunts are all leftovers from the Resonance cascade. And new generations of them.
As for the combine and their teleport problems. They can teleport between universes, as in, only through ours and into theirs or from theirs into ours. They can’t teleport around INSIDE of 1 universe. Which is what humans have invented and what the combine want to get their hands on, because it could help them a whole lot.
Now see, there is a problem. What’s to stop them from porting to theirs and then back to ours in a different location [eg. I teleport from my bedroom to another universe, then teleport back to this universe but to my kitchen instead].
I think it either needs a super-portal thing, or it can only be teleported to a fixed location that takes a lot of machinery to produce, and wouldn’t be easy to move around. Well, it’s what I think, anyway. Or, it may just not be accurate, and only get you to an approximate area. Either way, it isn’t practical for use for short range teleporting, apparently.
It takes an enormous amount of energy to teleport from one universe to another. Hence why it took Breen so long to reach the top of Dark Fusion Reactor and teleport to the Combine homeworld which is what gave Gordon the time he had to stop it. And also why the Combine needed to actually blow up the citadel to gather enough energy send out the information packet containing the Borealis to the Combine homeworld.
Which leads me too the Borealis, we all know Aperture Science has a lot of stuff going on with Portals, so I’m guessing that’s why the Combine want it, because it probably has some sort of superportal generator in it which the combine can use to quickly travel to and from their home world.
Vorties in HL1 are enslaved… or didn’t you notice their ultra-metal accessories? When they reach our universe, they are escaping from the Xen border-world… it’s like a dimensional prison, but not like the cool 2D prison from Superman 2. If you escaped from supermax prison and saw aliens, you’d probably try to kill them, too.
Nobody “closed the portal,” the Lambda team just “patched” the dimensional rift(s) made by the Resonance Cascade. The speech by (presumed to be) Kleiner before sending you off to Xen was foreshadowing the encounter with Nihilanth. (the big, floaty blank-face thing) I think Kleiner says, “…there, you should find a being of tremendous power! Destroy it if you can. Only then can we put this mess behind us, once and for all!”
The part you mention is at Black Mesa East; and it’s the stuff Mossman tells you. She goes on about how the Combine can teleport to our world, but then have to rely on planes, trains and automobiles when they get here. Although there is that teleport in Nova Prospekt, it takes buh-jilla-globs of power to run. Don’t you remember having to wait a really long time to re-charge it?
The Combine were in control of Xen when we discovered it, but the Resonance Cascade (RC) made them aware of our universe, and so they became very very curious about us. Xen was not only a prison, but a factory. It “built” the alien grunts (hornet-shooting beasties) using the vortigaunts as slave labor. When the invasion started, the Combine opened a new portal to our world, rather than rely on the rift created by the RC.
@Duggeek- Thanks, that clarifies everything for me. I’m a bit fuzzy on Half-Life 2 since I took in Episode One and Episode Two right after, then completing The Lost Coast, then cycling back 'round for Half Life: Source [This was all within the past two weeks].
He means he regrets buying Half Life: Source, which is a port of Half Life into the source engine, basically some effects were better by pratically the same game as Half Life
The Combine were not in control of Xen. The Nihilanth was the last of it’s race and was being hunted by the Combine, so it fled to the borderworld and enslaved the Vortigaunts and all the other aliens, and then started pumping out Alien Grunts. Then the BM experiments created a conduit between our universe and the borderworld and the Xenians started invading. The Combine took advantage of the conduit and used it to punch a hole between their universe and ours, and they invaded Earth.
Last of its race? Is that why it had all the aerials stuck up its arse? Is that why its facial features were erased? I know Combine handiwork when I see it… that’s enslavement, not “being hunted.”
I gots no problems wit dis… coz dats what da Combines do.
That’s all very tidy… and I suppose they invaded because… why… they needed the space? They were tired of the floating-islands and grew envious of our smooth, continuous horizon? They’re extra-dimensional, not one-dimensional.
Half-Life: Source I’m pretty sure is the cause of these guys making Black Mesa. Because Half Life: Source wasn’t sourced in any means noticeable [to me]. So these guys wanted a true Half Life: Source retitled of course to Black Mesa: Source for legality issues.
Buying Half-Life: Source and vice versa while having the original for other reasons than coding and mods and making funny Garry’s Mod poses and such is not a good reason (Although i guess you already know) But it features a few improvements:
Ragdolls! (With crossbow pinning!)
Cubemaps!
3D Explosions!
Some prop barrels at the beginning of Apprehension!
Ropes!
Physics Brushes!
and it’s easy to modify, so you can easily add more stuff!
But if you’ve got Half-Life: GoldSource then don’t bother buying HLS.
In interviews with marc laidlaw, he stated that the intent of the nilianth was to have it seem like there was something big that it was running from and that its back was at the wall on xen. The cascade gave it a new hole to go through. The big thing was later written as the combine.
iirc, valve’s RTB made mention that the nihilanth escaped to xen, supposedly from the combines grasp and subsequently enslaved the vortigaunts.
edit: ninja’d
except in this case, that’s what the Nihilanth did. Also, the idea of the combine hadn’t been fleshed out when HL1 came out
the combine are not from xen. On the side, in episode two the vortigaunts restate that they [vorts] are natives of xen, and mention they had an ancient tradition of antlion (another xen native) husbandry. Obviously if the combine were from xen, there probably would’ve been no place for that.
Wait, I thought that Valve have stated that nothing is native to Xen, and that Nihilanth, Vorts, Antlions, Agrunts, Gargs, etc, were all from some other planet and were forced to flee to Xen by the Combine.
I mean, Nihilanth, Vorts, Gargs, and Agrunts are likely from the same planet because they share a similar anatomy of the third arm thing. And Antlions were clearly implied to be from the same homeworld as the Vortigaunts. But they never said that that homeworld was Xen.
Agrunts are genetically engineered, though. Also, IMO, the Nihilanth and vorts had been enslaved by the combine, but the escaped, got to xen, and the Nihilanth kept the slavery up to engineer the Agrunts and maybe the Gargs, with the help of his controller minions. (possibly also engineered, since Nihilanth was the last of his race)
Maybe the Agrunt army was to fight the combine, maybe it was just to replace the vorts. Who knows.
I had no idea they were engineered. O_o the game didn’t really make that clear. I mean, they came out of pods, but I thought that was, like, storage or something. lol
[quote=“Ballsopt”]
On the side, in episode two the vortigaunts restate that they [vorts] are natives of xen, and mention they had an ancient tradition of antlion (another xen native) husbandry. QUOTE]
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