Half Life 2 episode 3 discussion

Half-Life Series
#101

The reason they want it destroyed is to make sure the Combine don’t get their hands on it. However I can’t imagine it’l hold the Combine back forever.

What would be needed in order to strike the Combine would be to create a Resonance Cascade on their homeworld. I honestly can’t think of anything else strong enough to screw up their plans, I mean, their worlds will basically be factories for invasion armies. How the hell is Freeman, even with a Vort attack force, going to be able to put down that kinda firepower?

Unless of course the Gman is doing the same thing in other universes, amassing armies of his own for one big push, but I doubt it.

#102

@HL3 shirt, Valve employee handbook

#103

Considering Eli’s reaction (“I can’t let it happen again”) perhaps the Borealis tech is capable of this? It’d also make sense for the Combine to want to get their hands on it, since it’d give them a way to teleport reinforcements in and they could use it later to smash their way into other universes more efficiently.

I don’t think the Combine Overworld would look much like Xen, it’s more of a parallel universe to ours rather than a dimensional rift like Xen is. I picture it as a dead Earth with millions of Citadels protruding like spines all over its surface.

Also, I’m hoping Valve makes more use of world portals in the next HL game. I can just imagine fighting through some Escher-like environments caused by malfunctioning portal arrays in the Borealis. It’d be confusing, but if anyone could make it work it’d be Valve.

#104

I’ve always imagined that the way to halt the Combine problem wouldn’t be to destroy their home universe (they’re way too powerful for even Gordon Freeman to actually destroy), but rather to create a sort of Anti-Resonance Cascade, wherein our universe is permanently blocked off from all inter-universal travel. We’d then just have to mop up the Combine forces remaining on Earth, and then we’d be good.

#105

Except for the Xenian wildlife currently inhabitating the planet. How are you going to get rid of all the headcrabs, antlions, and so forth?

#106

No no, they don’t have local portal tech. Never have. They always used conventional earth stuff for transport; remember all the trains in HL2, particularly those fancy razor trains.

They could, in theory, use inter-dimensional portals to go to and from a central ‘hub’ of some sort, but the energy required to go to and from dimensions is probably much higher than if you just use earth stuff.

#107

So, how did the Combine get to Earth in the first place if not through portals?

#108

They came from another world, using the interdimensional portals that they do have.

They’re not space aliens.

#109

I bet the Resonance cascade and following Portal storms came in handy, but it is never stated explicitly anywhere that they used them, only that they got alerted by the Cascade or the Defeat of Nihilanth, so I’d go with Pyro:

They have interdimensional portals they can use. Mossman tells us in BME that they can use these interdimensional portals (presumably with high amount of energy needed) but haven’t mastered local teleportation (I think local refers here to our universe or dimension or whatever you wanna call it) so they can’t teleport anywhere on earth or teleport in more forces that are within our universe (stationed on mars, the orbit or the heck elsewhere, could also be that there are no more forces at all).
One attempt to call reinforcements was the Superportal in EP1,EP2 (remember, the energy used was from the collapse of the citadel, so it must be reeeeeally resourceful to open such a portal or send a message through it) but the Resistance managed to shut it down, so I think the Reinforcements are either prohibited by the satellite to open another portal or are shut off temporarily until they have the energy to open another interdimensional portal.

If the latter then --> attempt to go to combine homeworld is absolutely necessary to prevent them from ever coming back again, otherwise it would be a endless circle, only waiting for the the next arrival of the combine.
If the former is true, we would only have to find the Borealis and destroy to cut the combine within our universe off. Remaining Forces on earth aren’t such a big problem I suppose…

As for Xenian Wildlife: I think earths ecosystem and the humans have to get along with them. I think it’s not do-able to get rid of them entirely. After all, they are here since the resonance cascade, so they adapted to earth or the earths flora and fauna adapted to them. They are now part of earths wildlife. I think it’s like with non-native species that immigrate or get imported by humans: Either they adapt to the new environment which comes along with changes in the environment ( possibly extinction for other species) or they themselves die out, but it’s not that nature isn’t able to cope with them.

#110

Basically, the Combine can teleport between universes (perhaps only when the barriers between them are sufficiently weakened such as in the case of the portal storms), but they can’t teleport between different points in the same universe, like the human tech can. Thinking about it, the reason humans can do it is probably because it’s based on reverse engineered Xenian teleportation, which the Combine never got their hands on because of the Nihilanth.

#111

Until the combine stole that technology thanks to Mossman. They even had a working teleporter in Nova Prospekt. Why do people think that just because that was destroyed the combine can’t do it again?

The hand book was filled with all kinds of jokes & references. HL3 is the joke.

#112

The prototype made by mossman was built to show the combine that breen was worthy of his position. It was presumably destroyed in the chaos that was the failing of the main reactor core. Thats why they are hunting the Borealis

#113

Thank you everyone…I stand corrected.

#114

Well, technically it was destroyed at the end of Entanglement, when that happened and, you know, caused the uprising.

#115

That was a prototype that got destroyed along with Nova Prospekt, like people have said. There presumably was another one in the Citadel for Eli and Mossman to have been sent to, but then that would have been destroyed too. Even if the Combine still had the ability to construct another one (with their human scientists dead/deserted they may not), they had their hands full with the Uprising, so it’s unlikely they’ve had any time to build more.

#116

Here’s what I don’t get: When you use the teleporter in Nova Prospekt, it takes a week for you to get to Kleiner’s lab, and he remarks that “we’ve invented a very slow teleporter.”

But when you used it the first time, in Red Letter Day, it was instantaneous. It couldn’t be that only Judith’s was slow, or that the Combine technology just worked differently, because Kleiner says ‘we’, not ‘they’. So what was different the second time?

#117

It seems that alyx didn’t calibrate the teleporter to well due to a bunch of combine attacking from every corner, maybe she made a mistake when putting the data to go to kleiner’s lab and combined with the teleporter colapse, a time machine was created.

#118

I had assumed that it was because the teleporter was destroyed by the Combine Elite forces.

#119

So they’re hunting for technology that they should have had in the first place but didn’t bother to take any notes on how they made it? Yawn.

I could say the same thing about the teleporter technology being blown-up along with Black Mesa. Or are you trying to tell me that the combine just sent mossman the parts needed to build the thing without learning how to replicate it once it’s successful or make sure she isn’t just building a bomb or something? Destroying something doesn’t wipe-out the blueprints or erase it from history.

If they have the time to go searching for a legendary Boat in the middle of the arctic, they have time to build another teleporter. Besides, they have telekinetic grubs & a truckload of machinery to work with, there’s no need for human scientists unless they somehow forgot how to make one.

#120

No, the combine teleportation technology isn’t as advance as humanities. They cannot go from A ( Universe ) B ( Xen ) C ( New universe ). Instead they have to go from A to C directly, bypassing B which takes an absolute TON of energy and furthermore means they cannot travel within their own universe unless using some form of space ship, which simply isn’t feasible.

Well the teleporter technology at Black mesa didn’t get rebuilt until TWENTY YEARS LATER, even using science personnel from the facility. Now there is nothing to say the Combine have any of the information on how Mossman built the one at Nova Prospekt, or if they did, that they stored the information anywhere else. Nova Prospekt was not expected to be destroyed in the slightest.

In fact it was their main base of operations in regards to teleportation technology and perhaps a self contained hub for all of said information.

TBH I’m bored of explaining shit to you, so this will be the last. You now have 7 people explaining very simple things to you simply because you refuse to hold your sense of disbelief in regard to a science fiction computer game, which is furthermore pathetic.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.