That is a cool theory.
That is indeed a cool theory, and one I hadn’t considered.
And I agree that we should keep canonicity debates away from this thread, please. No more OP4/Blue Shift stuff please. Let’s talk about the Xenians, that’s a way more interesting discussion anyway. Canonicity debates are never ending in any fandom for anything, and are just never really that productive as everyone has their own headcanon for their favourite series.
Sorry, I get excited when talking about Half-Life.
I think we were responsible for the invasion, by the xenians and the combine. Xenians being enslaved, and or/soldiers. We have been visiting xen for quite some time, and also, quite some time.(swidt) We have been pulling critters from xen and who knows where. When messing with space time and teleportation, we really don’t know the extent of the benefits/consequences from teleportation. What we have seen though, has been mostly catastrophic. From the initial invasion, to the 7 hour war. A large amount of study has been done in bimolecular engineering and technology. From some of the white boards, we can see that, not only are we dealing with an unknown number of alien species, but also, we are finding that there has been some tinkering under the hood. Species being altered for combat, toxin resistance, pretty much our worst nightmares. From insect like features, to fully robotic implementations. Now, looking at the Half-life, Black Mesa and Portal lore. Time travel elements seem to be there, from events spanning thousands and thousands of years, to things being noticed all through Black Mesa from different time periods, real world events, pay wages by year, transportation disasters, posters from conventions in specific years. But looking at it from another way, what if time travel isn’t happening. What if its visiting multiple parallel universes, countless universes that have exactly the same string of events and timeline, mirroring our own, but just at different stages of time. Like Portals PETI program. Then others that are slightly different than our own, to some that are radically different. Eventually, things would start to get jumbled up. From parallel universes at different times, crossing back and forth. There could be many Dr. Horns at the same time and over many different times. We (Black Mesa Scientist) could very well be responsible for altering any number of alien species, crossing it with some of our own found in our reality, being shipped back and forth through time and different reality’s, eventually leading to the combine. The ieil, a combination of big brother, bigger brother, and our reality as we know it. An Illuminati type class of species. Ones that know what is going on behind the scenes, guiding different versions and timelines to do different things at different times. A multi dimensional game of chess, being orchestrated by unknown forces. An invasion would have to be planned, not just a spur of the moment event.
Our reality could be the ground zero for the creation of the combine and its invading forces…
Beautifully said.
I’m actually really wondering how the devs are going to handle Xen regarding its exploitation (maybe a little hint Chon? 
). In Half-Life Blue Shift and Opposing Force you can see that the Black Mesa scientists have been stealing crystals and Xen’s native lifeforms and ruining the landscape with human technology cluttered everywhere. I really hope they expand on this idea further, showing the destruction of the Xenians’ natural habitat that the scientists have caused on Xen… makes you wonder whether the humans even are the “good guys” in Half-Life. After all, the aliens are just fighting for their survival themselves, and I doubt that the Xenian wildlife that’s teleporting to earth is invading our world with any motives in mind. They’re just (more or less randomly) being teleported in, first used by the Nihilanth as “military”, then later abused by the Combine for their own needs.
#spreadawarenessforheadcrabs
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Humans are the bad guys in this story. Wallace Breen is a different case, Black Mesa may have been going to xen for a while and studying Xen fauna but that would not make sense to be the reason behind the invasion.
Black Mesa is definitely not an evil corporation like Umbrella from the Resident Evil Universe or Horzine from the Killing Floor Universe. You could say that the invasion and all the destruction is the cost of progress.
What if I told you Breen was actually the good guy, that the earth surrender was the only way to save the dimension and that when Gordon killed Breen, it prompted the Combine beings who were controlling the guys that were controlling the advisors to open a superportal to a black hole, essentially erasing the half-life-earth dimention’s solar system. When the game fades out at the end of Half life 2 episode 2, that was actually the portal being opened and the half life universe being wiped from existence.
I don’t think there has been any evil intent by any scientist, just a whole lot of ignorance , trying to run before learning to walk. But at the same time, being manipulated by the G-man and his “employers”
Exactly. The scientists didn’t have any right to just come to Xen and mess with its lifeforms and biotope just for the sake of scientific progress (well… mostly weapons research?), it’s really ignorant and somewhat questionable from an ethical viewpoint (Questionable Ethics anyone?). Reminds me of America’s colonialization in the 16th century… and that didn’t turn out too well for the natives, did it…
One of the fun things about Half-Life is that it’s got a lot of grey areas; whether intentional by Valve or not.
I mean, you still always know who the “bad guys” are because they’re the ones trying to kill you, but you’re never quite sure if your guys are pure and good either. And for the gentleman who requested a hint about where we’re going with Xen: yes, we are exploring the concept of scientists in Xen in some good depth. It will form a part of the Xen adventure.
I’ve always looked at the resistance as the actual “good guys” but the scientists as the “good guys but did bad/wrong things and kinda got what they had coming” and that the rest of humanity kinda paid for that too.
As for the Xenians, I think they’re good, but we’re desperate to escape the Combine and acted out of fear and that desperation.
Personally I’ve never really seen Gordon as the “good guy”. He’s definitely not the bad guy (even less so in Half-Life 2) but I wouldn’t call somebody who kills hundreds of marines a “good guy”. Even if they are murdering your friends / colleagues and planning on doing the same to you. Gordon can’t even be considered a hero in any way (not in the original at least), as his only concern is his own survival - something that made Half-Life so much more relatable and realistic in my opinion (I believe Valve was very much aware of this).
In Half-Life 2, as previously mentioned, the conflict between “good” and “bad” isn’t as complicated, but it’s still there. After all, Gordon kills plenty of Civil Protection units in City17. (Remember: Civil Protection is not augmented or brainwashed in any way, they’re just normal ordinary people following the Combine’s orders for better living conditions.) Of course the Civil Protection are acting extremely immoral and cruel throughout the games, but they are not completely to blame for their behavior, just like the marines in Half-Life 1.
Secondly: Thanks for the hint! Xen is gonna be great.
That’s why HL1 is much better than HL2 and especially Opposing Force when it’s even more complicated.Gordon is neutrall and playing on both sides and while in HL2 rebels are good guys without doubt, but in EP1 you can hear that some rebels against combine but in the same time against Keiner rhetoric.Combine is the pure evil of course at least by our standarts and it will be interesing to see their main world,their buildings,nature,objectives in other worlds and on Earth and especially their true form and head.
Not entirely on topic, but definitely related: What was the point of the Satellite Delivery Rocket from On A Rail?
https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Black_Mesa_satellite
It’s supposed to stop the invasion, but aliens keep warping in in the subsequent chapters, not to mention the Portal storms leading up to Half-Life 2…
The holograms in Mission Control mention a “satellite portal array”, so it is likely somehow related to travel to and from Xen- and, therefore, the ultimate plan to destroy the Nihilanth. How satellites in orbit would help with that is anybody’s guess, as is the problem of how, if these satellites were so important, Black Mesa had been going to Xen without them for years.
It’s possible that the satellites orbiting the Earth are able to open portals to corresponding locations in Xen and thus provide a vantage point from which the Nihilanth could be located/identified, but that’s pure speculation.
I always assumed they had a similar mineral in it to what you start the cascade with, and that it’s able to redirect the power fluxes on earth back into space again. Turns the earth into a big ass Faraday cage, I guess.
Yes, that was its purpose. However, as if was found out in Lambda Core, the portals couldn’t be shut down because something (Nihilanth) was keeping them open from the other side, thus the requirement to kill him to close them once and for all.
Or so they thought. The thing is, that didn’t seem to work at all, as the number of Portal Storms only increased, ultimately leading to the Combine invasion during the 7HW. Why, no idea.
According to Kleiner in one of his HL2 monologues, the whole event left behind a very small, contained portal to… somewhere. This is what the Combine used to get to Earth.