So I'm herding antlions in Sandtraps, and I still have lots of questions. I was wondering if I missed some story in a manual or something. However, if they are going to be answered later in the game (or in later episodes), don't spoil it for me.

From what I understand so far:
1) The Combine (whoever/whatever they are) have subjugated the earth and herded the remaining humans into a few camps. Where did they come from? Another portal? They have really cool organic-looking (and acting?!) ships!

2) Gordon Freeman is regarded as a messiah, presumably for waxing that freakish baby-thing on Xen. G-man only said Gordon has been sleeping up til now. What is up with that? Taking a loooong nap?

3) I assume G-man's identity and affiliation is revealed sometime in a later episode, but yeah, I'm assuming he doesn't work for the Combine or the humans.

I had other questions, but I can't remember them right now. If I do, I'll add them to this thread.

I don't think this is explicitly stated in the games, but the story is that the Nihilanth was what was keeping the Combine out of Xen (and by extension, our universe, because they are "close" together in the array of multiple universes). When Freeman killed the Nihilanth it allowed the Combine access to our universe. So they're from some alternate dimension that's not Xen.

And we don't really know anything about the G-Man, but yeah he pretty much has his own agenda. He has access to very powerful technology like time dilation fields, teleporters, and some sort of stasis thing that keeps Gordan "asleep" between the events of HL1 and HL2 (there are several years between them).

1) Basically, yes. It's presumed that they were the ones who previously controlled the Borderworld (Xen of HL1) and Gordon messing with that flagged their attention.

2) At the end of HL1, Gordon is presumed to have taken the offer from the G-man. The G-man has pretty much just kept him away in his own little stasis or some such until HL2.

3) I'm told Episode 2 sheds some light on the G-man, but I haven't played it yet, so your guess is as good as mine.

This can all be explained with a timeline:

2000: Black Mesa Incident. Gman takes Gordon out of the situation and puts him into stasis.
2002: Black Mesa has caused portal storms in which aliens from Xen start to populate the earth. People move to big cities.
2004: Combine come in through the portals and decimate everything. They enslave people and use their DNA with other animals DNA to make supersoldiers (the overwatch, aka combine soldiers). Breen sells earth to the Combine in order to end the 7 hour war (and is made ambassador of the earth, as promised to him back at black mesa.) Later that year, the combine cause more portal storms, and breen convinces mankind that the combine can save us from the monsters. They put up a suppression field and poison the water to make people incapable of having babies, and stops them from remembering the old days.
2020: HL2, Gordon gets taken out of stasis by gman.

Also, Gman is still unknown, but we know he works for whoever pays him, which is sometimes the combine, sometimes other forces, and sometimes it's the resistance. We still don't know what "pay" is, or what it requires. You'll learn more in HL2, Ep1, and Ep2

Also, you work for Gman, as he asks you to at the end of hl1.

1) The Combine controlled Xen, just like they now control Earth. They put Nihilanth in control of Xen (Nihilanth : Xen :: Breen : Earth)... when you killed Nihilanth, you attracted their attention, and so they invaded Earth.

2) At the end of HL1, you are forced to agree to work with GMan. He puts you into stasis until the events in HL2.

3) More and more of GMan is revealed as time goes on... if you look carefully you'll see him watching you at some points in HL2 (just like in HL) and he pops up to talk to you at one point. He also makes appearances in Episodes 1 and 2 which give further information about him. Make sure you pick up the Orange Box if you haven't already so you get the epsiodes.

I thought the Nihilanth was an enemy of the combine. :/

There's some debate both ways. It appears that the Nihilanth thought he was protecting the people of Xen (and the vorts) by making deals with the combine. Breen genuinely thinks the same thing, as well.

Some of the things the nihilanth say at the end of the first game seem a little at odds with that.

Just because they're against the combine doesn't mean all of their actions are to fight the combine. Think of the Nihilanth as the Lions the Combine have tamed in order to protect and guard their prize, Xen. A lion is going to protect your prize well, but it's not going to just let you walk in and take it, themselves.

I dunno, it just makes more sense that the Nihilanth ran away from the combine to Xen because they could not follow.

If he was on their side and Xen was the one thing keeping the Combine away from earth you think they would have invaded long before the events of HL1. (Especially because humans were traveling back and forth to xen before the cascade)

Xen wasn't what was standing in the way of earth, Xen was the planned escape route of the inhabitants of Xen, and then the Combine figured out what was going on.

Personally, I think the Nihilanth was a random big boss at the end of Half-Life, and they didn't really have a storyline going on until they started developing Half-Life 2.

But that's just me.

Personally, I like to think that Xen was under the control of the Combine, and the Nihilanth was the equivalent of Breen. Why? Because of this quote from a Vortigaunt:

That makes sense, because the Alien Grunts seen in HL1 seem to be the Xen equivalent of the Combine Overwatch Soldiers. After the Nihilanth is defeated, you don't see the grunts anymore, (only vortigaunts ) which indicates they don't occur on Xen naturally.

Just as Overwatch are created from baseline humans, the alien grunts have some Vortigaunt characteristics. (like the third arm)

As I understand it, Nihilanth and the other residents of Xen escaped from the Combine to Xen. According to the Wiki on Nihilant, there's a lot of dialogue supporting the theory.



Do note that Nihilanth wears the same "chains" as the enslaved Vortigaunts (Who still wear them in HL2).

Also worth mentioning, the Combine has shown a tendency to deploy various Combat Synths in substantially useful numbers (In fact, I recall one theory about them literally "spamming" them to take Earth). All Nihilanth's forces had were some sort of "fighters". If the Combine were actually launching an organized invasion, I would have expected them to have a lot more firepower or at least able to get a hold of it on short notice to combat the HECU's armor.

Only the one janitor one i believe.

Yeah, but how many other Vortigaunts do you see under Combine control?

Edit:

[QUOTE=Combine Wiki Entry]Until recently, many players speculated that the Combine may have possibly controlled Xen, based on the similarities to some practices and technologies used by the Nihilanth. However, Valve Software marketing director Doug Lombardi has stated that the Combine had, in fact, invaded a different homeworld from which Nihilanth's race was forced to escape. The defeated Nihilanth sought refuge in Xen, where the Combine could not (or would not) follow.
“ We had a glimpse of the larger threat when we were working on Half-Life 1. In other words we knew that once you cleared out the Nihilanth, you were going to discover something worse beyond it. We knew that some immense threat had chased the Nihilanth and its creatures out of their own world and into Xen, from which location [i.e. the world beyond Xen] they were all too glad to seize the opportunity to continue on to Earth with suppression through the citadels. But the exact nature of the threat was left to be solved in Half-Life 2.[1] ”

This does, however, establish that Nihilanth and the Combine are former enemies who would have had knowledge of each other. When contacted, Marc Laidlaw provided more information:
“ I'm pretty sure Doug was restating something I'd told him; I [am not] clarifying it, since it's the foundation on which the series continues. What we saw in HL1 was the very end of a long struggle between the Combine and the last of the Nihilanth's race ... The Nihilanth's "world" (if it could be said to have) was long since in the past as far as the Nihilanth was concerned; Xen was their final retreat, and they had their back to the wall, as it were, when the fissure appeared that let them spill into our dimension. Xen itself is sort of a dimensional transit bottleneck--an area of continual contention.[2][/QUOTE]

They would have had too. Even in fairly large numbers, none of the things we see in HL2 would have held a candle to modern military technology.

Im guessing they sent in a couple million or so gunships, a million striders, a ****ton of headcrabs.
Etc.

I was checking out that wikiquotes page and noticed this gem I had completely forgotten about... this is Breen talking about Gordon in between HL1 and HL2: "I have good reason to believe that in the intervening years, he was in a state that precluded further development of covert skills."

Wonder how he found that out...

G-man, Duh.

Nah the Barnacles and headcrabs whilst used by the Combine are still Xen aliens.

Or atleast seem to be.

Play HL1 and actually pay attention to the storyline.

That will explain ALOT of things in HL2.

Portal Storms.

Duh.

Hyperaccurate orbital beam mortars? Small amounts of armor that can withstand numerous modern man portable guided rocket hits? Vehicle/Synth mounted weapons with effectively unlimited ammo? A dropship that can outmaneuver and probably outrun any modern transport helicopter? The extremely well armored striders being dropship transportable? Dark matter reactors? Tiny man portable combat drones?

Also: The bulletin board in Eli's lab with the newspaper clippings showed ships in the one about the Seven Hours War and they probably possess orbital strike capability.

The Overwatch are "transhuman" troops who are probably wearing more/heavier body armor than a modern US Marine...possibly have cybernetic implants on par with what the UNSC gave their SPARTAN IIs in Halo (Mind controlled radio in your head.)...

Doesn't really help their image that your probably only envisioning scenarios where an individual wearing powered armor always wins. The "Resistance" is usually seen losing till the player comes along, and they usually still end up dead...

The transporters alone would win a war for an army. I don't care who you are, what your army's like--if a rogue agent can set up a machine that transports units from one place to another instantaneously, with no way to track them, you're going to lose. Sorry.

ok... so can anyone tell me where the soldiers in HL1 fit in? Are they combine? They're human?

Pure speculation, but I always thought they were government soldiers sent in to clean up the mess and remove any trace of what black mesa were doing... but i don't see how that fits in with anything else.

And what about the other soldiers that come in to kill the soldiers in Opposing force? (Although it's been ages since i played that).

That's exactly what they were, Ni.

The black ops were to clean up the clean up crew.
Or something
And then nuke the place.

Playing Opposing Force would have told you that Adrian Shephard, the player, is a US Marine (Possibly Force Recon) and member of the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit (HECU).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HECU

Interesting that they were prepping for the resonance cascade before it even happened...
Their objective was basically killing everything that moves, either to keep it quiet or just in case. Shephard's NCO was in the process of telling their direct orders when their Osprey went down. I propose it was "just in case" scenario as "silencing" people is a "spook" job and the military and spooks are not known for getting along... There's also the fact that the spooks (The other "soldiers") DID come in to silence everyone, with a nuke so I'm sure if the HECU's objective had actually been "silencing", they would have had a nuke.

As for "just in case", it's when everyone is considered potential hostile. Especially true when a portal to another world has just been wrenched open and some of the aliens coming through are turning people into zombies, albeit those are rather obvious threats... Just imagine if HL had Alien facehuggers coming through instead of head crabs...

A question I have is the Race X aliens you encounter in OpFor... They're obviously unrelated to Nihilanth and his army... Are they possibly the Combine's advanced scouts?

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]The transporters alone would win a war for an army. I don't care who you are, what your army's like--if a rogue agent can set up a machine that transports units from one place to another instantaneously, with no way to track them, you're going to lose. Sorry.[/QUOTE]

They mentioned somewhere in the game that the Combine's teleporter was only good for getting to Earth and that afterwards they were stuck using what everyone else had to use. Still doesn't negate the fact that the Combine is an interdimensional Empire that has FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR greater resources to call on than Earth does and can call on them easily.

Thats what bugs me about HL2.

Why don't they just ****ing squash gordon and the rebellion?

Just because they have greater resources doesn't mean they utilize them wisely. The combine is a big empire to be managed, and I'm sure it's not easy to catch every little detail. Gordon probably came in at just the right time.

See, Half-Life's story intrigues me to no end. I just ****ing hate the gameplay.

Breen is seen telling them atleast twice about how much they need to kick gordon's ***.

You'd think they'd get with the program. I'm sure he told them he killed the Nihilanth.

Do I look like a Combine Advisor to you? As far as I can tell the only resources the Combine are actually taking from Earth are soldiers and water. Maybe they just don't care enough... Maybe "someone" is giving them bad advice... Especially considering that said someone has proven himself to be nothing less than a random omnipotent being in a suit and tie.

If it's questionable: The GMan did it.

Maybe it's not that simple to bring in reinforcements. How many reinforcements could easily come through Breen's portal, even when it was still functional?

The super portal seems to be the only way to efficiently bring in new combine troops/synths, and the only known way to make one of those is to blow up the citadel. If that is the only way, then it is understandable that the combine would normally hesitate to do it.

Thing is though, that if there are more citadels then how does stopping 1 super portal work if there are more?.

Just the one on Earth, Since the portal is down the combine can't send any more in or any reinforcements.
The ones on Earth are trapped.