Epic Fail X_X
Half life has no fucking cannon. 85% of it’s ongoing story line consists of retcon. Fuck, Half life 2 was 100% retcon.
Deal widdit.
Im not familiar with the term retcon, but I think what you are saying is that the majority of the story in the HL saga is built upon mystery and extreme vagueness… almost to the point at which you wonder if Valve even knows what the details of the story really are. So basically its easy to say that mostly everything in the expansions could be considered canon.
Thanks for being one of the few people with common sense man 
If the mod were dead then i would immediately move on from it and continue on the many other projects i could do to add to my portfolio. If it was dead, it would also state so on the Moddb page… so unless anyone sees that notification, its not dead.
retcon means retroactive continuity as in developing a story retroactively with new content
In other words, deliberately changing what was previously considered fact in a story/series. It’s not hard to google it, by the way.
And how is HL2 a retcon? Sure, it had a massive change in style and location from HL1, but AFAIK it didn’t change any of the plot points from HL1.
That’s the thing. Half life 1 had damn near no plot points, and Half life 2 had to invent a bunch of shit that happened in HL1 when you were conveniently looking away. Breen, for example.
The basic premise is that “the BM incident left one portal open and more shit came through.” Mention black mesa a few times, give some old generic NPCs names and personality, you’re gold.
I mean, look at the HL2 characters. Look how they were introduced. Most of it is “oh, yeah… I was here the whole time! Remember that generic security guard? I WAS ALL OF THEM!”
Next thing you know, Half life 3 is gonna come out with a major character named Mike. One of the recycled citizen models. “remember when we thought the combine war was as bad as it could get?”
So if they don’t include it in a game, it’s not part of its plot. You cannot make any suppositions about canon, then. There’s no canon, just what you see in the games, the rest is there waiting for being used(or not) in a future game. Isn’t it?
Actually, it had that weird Xen cannon at the end of “Forget About Freeman,” right before you descended on the cargo elevator into Lambda Core. But this is far too subtle for the average BM forumite, so instead I’ll spell it out:
LEARN TO SPELL “CANON” CUNTBAGS[/SIZE]
Canon is what Marc Laidlaw says it is when he wants it to be so
Personally I don’t see why the add ons can’t be cannon.
The biggest changes are made by OP4, and these can be looked over with little implications into the main story line.
The changing of generic marines to the HECU could well be seen that the vast majority of troops in Black Mesa are marines, whilst the HECU were called in when things went really tits up.
Race X could well be a tiny, cult like sect of aliens living in Xen. Clearly advanced in technology ( in terms of bio engineering ) they could well of been stranded on Xen, and ‘refused’ to join the Nihilanth. Now hunted to near extinction by the Nihilanth they use guerilla tactics with bioengineered forces. Only able to use their teleport and tunneling device when the Nihilanth is too busy with its own invasion and Freeman.
As for the barnacle gun, I just think of it as being attached to something. Something with some kind of electricity that passes through it in order to get a reaction out of the barnacle.
oh god ive created a monster
I understand, and you’re right. Some things in HL2 didn’t make a whole lot of sense, probably because back when they made HL1, Valve couldn’t have known if the game was going to be successful enough for them to be able to make a sequel. But the series did become successful, so if they were going to make a sequel, they would have to go somewhere with the story. Putting HL2 back in Black Mesa would have made no sense, so they had to come up with a story based on the elements of HL1. It could have been anything and we could still say it was a silly extrapolation. They could have had G-Man put Gordon on alien worlds to fight monsters alone again, or had him fighting governments and their conspiracies. And of course, any style was going to please some people and alienate others. But with games like Halo and Deus Ex already immensely popular, I think they didn’t want to seem like they were now content to be band-wagoners, and decided to do something ground-breaking again. Just my 2 cents on the whole thing.
Lol. Of course I spelled it cannon after that. 
@Xalaner: Conveniently looking away? You mean fighting for your life in a secret complex underground? Not really the kind of scenario where you’d know what was going on anywhere else. You take this as a negative, for me it’s a realistic positive.
“Mention black mesa a few times, give some old generic NPCs names and personality, you’re gold.”
You say this as if its such a simple, obvious thing to do that would automatically work. Like you could just do it with any game sequel you like. Fleshing out a vague story retroactively without actually cheapening the experience isn’t easy to do.
Also, its with Valves self depricating view of their old technology that actually gives them merit, and again adds to the depth of the series lore and the community that follows it. Having Barney with the same face as HL again fleshed out the original whilst never cheapening the experience. Something not easy to do. As much as you seem to wish to believe.