He’s also able to stop time and cause people to be unable to move (end of Half Life 1 and 2).
I dunno. I just thought a quick visual “cast” as it were before the end would’ve been good, but that’s just my opinion. 
It’s a shame that the forum crash took the thread about this with it. We managed to pretty deeply explore how best to build the dramatic impact, even though the devs never made any actual comments on the subject.
It was pretty well understood that the original HL1 “bad” ending had a lot lacking. After having just fought the Nihilanth, the Alien grunts alone came off as rather pitiful, even if you did lose all your weaponry. The fact that they made no real hostile motions at you didn’t help any either. The only reason you felt doomed was because you had an invisible wall that kept you from booking it out of the area.
First of all, you do not want to stop Gordon from being able to move without a physical in-game reason for it. Half Life has CONSTANTLY maintained that the only emotional reactions gordon has are those that the player projects onto him themselves. You do not make the assumption that gordon is unable to move because he is frozen by fear and you definitely don’t force this effect within the game.
By the same token, allowing Gordon to run around all over the place does give more of an impression of Benny Hill. While utterly hilarious, it’s not the mood that is being aimed for here.
The easiest way to get the best of both worlds is to allow gordon to move, but to have the aliens who are surrounding him form a blockade which he can’t get past. This creates a logical reason that the player’s motion is limited.
Next is the issue of whether to actually show the aliens attacking. While doing this would make it more obvious that you are doomed, it actually detracts from the impact. What is NOT shown almost invariably has more effect than what is shown, as the player is left to extrapolate exactly how you will meet your horrible fate. Which is 99% of the time more intense and personally satisfying, provided you give them the initial setup to extrapolate from.
Also, not specifically showing Gordon’s fate could be important for another reason. It’s pretty commonly accepted that the beginning of HL2 assumes the good ending was taken in HL1, but that may not be the case. Gman may have picked Gordon up again just before the aliens finished killing him in the bad ending and then put him into storage anyway. After all, Gman just dumps Gordon at the beginning of HL2 and tells him to go do his thing. It’s not like Gordon agreeing or refusing to work for Gman’s employers would change any of that. By not showing Gordon getting attacked and killed it still leaves open the possibility that HL2 can follow both endings from HL1.
My most satisfying scenario:
You teleport into a cluster of alien grunts, with one gargantua directly in front of you and a few more beyond the cluster of alien grunts. Maybe a few tentacles in the background, mostly for decoration. None of the aliens are looking directly at you.
You can look around at first, but for a brief moment you can’t move (because the teleportation is still finishing up) once you can, the closest Gargantua turns to you, with the other aliens grunts turning just half a beat behind. The alien grunts are already close enough together that it would already look fairly unlikely to break through(impossible, actually, via means of invisible wall to ensure no chance of squeezing through), but on spotting you, they close up ranks to ensure you are blocked from all chance to escape.
At this point, the game checks to see where you are looking, and once your field of view crosses over the gargantua that is closest to you, it leans forward and roar threateningly (pretty much exactly as what was shown at the end of the black mesa trailer) As it roars, the screen starts a slow fade that accelerates rapidly to black just as the roar finishes. Of course, if the player refrains completely from looking in the gargantua’s vicinity, it would eventually trigger on its own in order to preserve pacing, even if it means you aren’t looking directly at the gargantua when it lets off the roar.
If I may throw in a suggestion; the ending was basically a hallway in Xen full of at least 4 actual Alien Grunts. The rest were just sprites :meh: Perhaps with the sizeable advantage of the Source engine you could make the AGrunts appear in all directions?
Hey, the G-man himself said refusing the offer would result in something “Rather anticlimactic after all you’ve been through.”
The full unused G-Man refusal speech goes as follows:
“Well, it looks like we won’t be working together. No regrets Mr. Freeman, but there are a few survivors of your personal holocaust, who would like the chance to meet the man responsible for the total annihilation of their race.”
To me, this means only the warrior caste of the sentient Xen life (Grunts and Controllers) and not Wildlife and not slaves (Slaves would have been grateful after all.)
i would just like to see a firing squad of alien grunt attack you before it goes black.
Where the fuck did you get any of that from that quote? Seriously, what is the process that runs through your head?
I think he deduced that all the Xenian armed forces were annihilated due to Freeman’s actions. The Vortigaunts and wildlife (such as headcrabs) were clearly not and therefore are not part of this “race”.
The ability to control time isn’t exactly controlling people directly.
Explain to me how its wrong and I’ll ignore your little “hey-look-at-me” over-reaction.
True dat!
These guys would beg to differ:
I think the scene should be Gordon teleported in, just as the heavy breathing ends the screen fades back to show the army of alien grunts, but only an arms reach away, the one directly in front look over his shoulder, see Gordon, turns, raises a fist and as it comes down on the player the screen drops black. The music behind this short clips could be a single tone that gets louder and louder then cuts out when the screen drops black.
Ya know, I actually forgot that the Vorts screwed up his plans. Thanks for the reminder :3
This gave me the imagery of a dark room where you notice the walls beginning to move and then you see them; millions of the BM cockroaches heading towards you, crawling all over you and the screen until it’s completely black…
I don’t think I like the idea of what can be described as a firing squad of agrunts approaching you. It seems too much like they are waiting for you. If anything it should be more like you are teleported in behind them and they turn around and notice you. But I am sure that the dev’s already have something worked out for the ending and it will be epic nonetheless.
You just proved his point. It took a dozen Vorts to oppose the Gman. That’s some hefty odds there.
It took one Freeman to kill how many Vorts? 
Are you saying FREEMAN! could actually APPOSE! Gman!? Not possible. He’s not one with the Vortessence (until later in the HL episodes >_>).
Vortessence is the essense of vorts. Freeman can kill any number of vorts and take their essence…
In HL1 Freeman teleports in behind a squad of grunts, so why can’t he teleport in front of them in BM?
I wasn’t saying he couldn’t, I was just saying I didn’t quite like the idea of it, seems too much like they were waiting for him. It doesn’t really matter anyway, I will be happy with whatever happens at the end.