The Story

[Lightning Blue]

This will be a semi jumble of things I've been thinking of.

Who is the GMAN and who is he working for? This goes for HL1 as well.


The little bit of backstory was interesting, but I want more!

The whole 7 hour war thing rather confused me. When did this take place?

Who are the combine/overwatch, and where did they come from?

What's the timeframes between HL 1 and HL 2...

More to come!

[Mr.Bill]

The combine/overwatch are from another place, like Xen, except it's the combines home planet, and from my guess, Breen has made a deal with the combine to make the humans their slaves.. of sorts, workers.. if you will, other wise combine would killl us all... and probably use world for resources.. I don't know about you's but I think the benefactor looked a bit like nihilinght?

Anyway, I'm guessing it's been about something like 15 years from the first hl...

and As for Gman... since he can seemingly stop time... I don't think he works for/with breen at all.. since he got gordan to finish  breen, and you see him talking with the resistence force sometimes... Gman might be someone from a higher order... like god or something.

That's all I can put together

[Anarki3x6]

gman = god-man

cant wait for hl3 so the story can continue, one of the best stories ever!

[Cheez]

The speculations going around seem to be a good explanation of who the combine are and why they are here on earth.

Basically the general concensus (though it may be completely wrong) is that the combine are a conquering race that controls a vast number of planets. Xen, being one of them. The nihilanth was a puppet leader placed on Xen by the combine in order to control the Vortigants (alien-slaves in hl1) so that they could be put to work for the combine.

When gordon kills nihilanth at the end of HL1, the combine see this as an act of aggression towards them, so they in turn strike at the earth. The earth, not knowing what had happened in black mesa, is quickly overrun, this is now known as the 7 hour war, which was ended by Dr Breen when he negotiated the surrender of the earth, and was rewarded with the title of administrator of C17.

This leads me to believe that the G-Man is an agent for hire, and has many agents like gordon that carry out his plans (remember the black ops in Op forces?). Perhaps in HL1 he was hired by breen, because after all the G-Man was the one who forces the science team to carry out the expiriment despite the risk, and was the one who armed the nuke that destroyed Black Mesa at the end of Op forces. Perhaps Breen found out about xen and the combine, and saw it as an opertunity to seek out these races and gain their technology. He's always going on about how he wants to see manking evolve beyond what they are now so that they may survive, so why not? And when they turn hostile, he welcomes them with a surrender in order to gain their trust, makes sense doesn't it?

In any case, in HL2 someone obviously knows what breen is up to and wants him out of the picture, enter the G-Man, who just happens to have the right man for the job, one Gordon Freeman! And thus the cycle begins anew....

This is all just my opinion on what the story may be...there could be an entierly different reasoning, who knows.

[esuna]

The combine are humans, at least on earth they are, humans enslaved by "the benefactors" and converted in Nova Prospekt to combine. The evidence for this is people signing up to the Civil Protection at the start (promises of free food) and heavily suggested by the graffitti around the game which depicts a monkey's head, human head and combine head, suggesting that the combine is the next step in human evolution.

The GMan's employers and such can only be speculation, we've never been told who he works for, just that he does work for someone. Given his ability to seemingly stroll around the world casually, stop time and enter and exit view at will, it's logical to assume he's either from another dimension or at least not of the world in which HL is set. People have talked about GMan being Gordon's "agent," as it were, as some sort of mercenary.

As well have all figured by now, Gordon is the GMan's puppet, his lacky he calls out of whatever stasis or void he's kept in between jobs (Explained by the lack of any knowledge of the time between black mesa and city 17), his relationship is purely as a slave, he's left no option at the end of HL2 as he was at HL1, until the GMan sees fit to call it quits, Gordon is stuck being the "right man."

Which leads me to speculation of HL3. I haven't the foggiest idea of what could happen with the third in the series, but i think at some point, a logical step for Gordon, now he's been told that he's a puppet for the GMan and his employers, is to find out who's using him and put an end to it, would be quite cool. The GMan isn't, however, necessarily a bad guy at all, really.

[sonic]

It's all a bit confusing at the start when breen is talking on the jumbo screens, so here's what I think is going down.

Humanity has reached a point that it can attain immortality.

That letter that breen reads out states that the "combine" has stopped humans from reproducing. Something about "evolving" and moving on from our primal instincts, the instinct to breed.

But why is this? Anybody got anything else to add to make it a bit less confusing?

[Diablus]

The GMan isn't, however, necessarily a bad guy at all, really.

Correct you are Mr. Anderson....




I dont assume the Combine are in fact human or have evolved from the humans, . Mabye very close to it, but what I assumed that giant ...Blob....  Breen was talking to was some sort of important figure of the combine. And breen claims he would be galaxies away (or universes i dunno which 1 he said) at the last few minutes of the game. So i feel that the humans signing up for Civil Protection were the lowest class of the Combine Military rankings, thus poorly equiped fed (im sure small portions of food) So the Combine would have the conquered planets own people patrolling it for the good of the Combine. So the Combine could focus on other galaxies, planets, etc rather then have their "elite" soldiers patrol a scum, small, planet like Earth which they assumed werent a threat, until gordon came into play .

[esuna]

The GMan isn't, however, necessarily a bad guy at all, really.

Correct you are Mr. Anderson....




I dont assume the Combine are in fact human or have evolved from the humans, . Mabye very close to it, but what I assumed that giant ...Blob....  Breen was talking to was some sort of important figure of the combine. And breen claims he would be galaxies away (or universes i dunno which 1 he said) at the last few minutes of the game. So i feel that the humans signing up for Civil Protection were the lowest class of the Combine Military rankings, thus poorly equiped fed (im sure small portions of food) So the Combine would have the conquered planets own people patrolling it for the good of the Combine. So the Combine could focus on other galaxies, planets, etc rather then have their "elite" soldiers patrol a scum, small, planet like Earth which they assumed werent a threat, until gordon came into play .

[snapback]34226[/snapback]

Don't mistake the benefactors and the combine. The combine are the grunts, the troops, the soldiers. They're the converted humans from Nova Prospekt, along with the weird "slaves" they also have in the citadel. The benefactors are the huge slug like things you only see on the video screens.

I'm not sure where the combine name came from, but if you look at a few definitions. Firstly, combine, as in to combine, as in merge, this could be one reasoning for the name as it merges both alien technology and human biology. Another way to look at it is a combine harvester. The harvester theory is backed up by the fact that the citadel is constantly expanding. It destroys the human architecture as it grows and converts it to a cleaner, combine space. Also, a combine harvester reaps and cleans the grain as it progresses across the fields, a fitting analogy to the combine in HL2 sweeping the globe and cleansing the human population.

EDIT: As to poorly fed, the humans in city 17 are already poorly fed, if you speak to one of the citizens in the train station, he wishes he was in the civil protection so he could get a good meal. So there's that idea out of the window. They're fed poorly so the insentive is there to be recruited into the combine.

[Malevolent]

The combine are humans, at least on earth they are, humans enslaved by "the benefactors" and converted in Nova Prospekt to combine.

[snapback]34211[/snapback]

Hmm, I don't know if they all are. Does it specifically say that, or is there a hint to that? Wouldn't they need "real" Combine troops at least in the beginning?

[degamer106]

wtf happened at the end.  All i see is the thing blow up, the portal close, and then time freezes.  G-man comes in to say some shakespeare and then mr freeman is left in the dark  :blink:

[degamer106]

actually i just found this little article on the story  :ph34r:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Half_Life_2_PC/450...-2.html?tag=top

[Malevolent]

wtf happened at the end.  All i see is the thing blow up, the portal close, and then time freezes.  G-man comes in to say some shakespeare and then mr freeman is left in the dark  :blink:

[snapback]34240[/snapback]

The common theory is that the G-Man stores Gordon in a place where time does not go by for him (Gordon). The G-Man will bring Gordon out for the next assignment or mission. No one knows if this is true though.

[sonic]

Yeah it is mal, the G-Man brought gordon out of that place because somebody hired him to take out Breen. Then when he did that, the G-man puts gordon back into stasis until somebody hires him again for another job.

[Legionnaired]

OK. My analysis:

It's been several years since HL1 and Black Mesa;

1) The female doctor says that it muct have been great to work with the two scientists when they were at the top of their field.

2) Alyx says you probably don't remember her from Black Mesa. There's a picture in Eli's lab of him, his wife, and Alyx. She's around 8-14 or so then, and Eli looks the same in that picture as he does in the one in Dr. Kliener's lab, with the whole BM research team. Since Alyx looks in her mid twenties now, we can assume it's been between 5 and 7 years.

3) The sheer size of the Citadel, and the infrastructure required to set up a presence on the scale of the Combine's suggests a signifcant timeframe between the inital conquering and the events in HL2.

3a) This suggests that the Combine/Benefactors took over shortly after the events in HL1.

My theory is that the benefactors are a collective entity that controls most of the Mulitverse. In HL1 when the portals were opened up, it showed the rest of the Multiverse a universe that wasn't known yet. The Benefactors moved in and took over and started attacking. Breen negotiated the surrender, and some of the population started to volunteer to join up with the Benefactors. They became the combine, genetic "trans-humans" that worked under Breen, that would keep working until the rest of the populace could be modified and join up with the collective Benefactors.

Note that there are two different types of gunships, in fact, all weaponry the Combine/Benefactors use. In "Route Kanal," You fight the human-looking hunter killer choppers, when later on you fight the airships that, when examined, are mechanical, but have a much more organic look to them.

Also, the lower level combine use a simple 9mm pistol, where the upper levels use the pulse rifles. Note that the secondary projectile from these is a sort of contained singularity, it quite literally takes enemies out of existance, they just float away and disappear. Not human technology.

So, we see the rift between advanced mechanical human tech and mechanical/organic tech, both being used on the same side.

The Combine are the transient forces that still use the human weaponry and devices, but the organic weapons are those beamed through the portal from the Benefactors themselves. Or, at least, manufactured or grown from machinery that came through the portal.

The G-Man is an extra-dimensional being that saw HL1 go down, and snapped Gordon up as a Mercenary, and is now renting him out to the highest bidder. Possibly to other unseen nations in other universes, who fight against the Benefactors.

[sonic]

Somebody just linked this in the #redorchestra channel, it's a pretty good read

http://members.shaw.ca/storage_4/hl2story/

[Malevolent]

Very good link there Sonic.

[Crispy]

Very good link there Sonic.

[snapback]34383[/snapback]

^^, I just emailed the guy to congratulate him.

[BobTheJanitor]

Somebody just linked this in the #redorchestra channel, it's a pretty good read

http://members.shaw.ca/storage_4/hl2story/

[snapback]34319[/snapback]

Some misinformation there though. The combine aren't also known as the synth. The synth are another race that the combine has already absorbed. It was from them that they got the striders, the gunships, and the odd creatures you briefly see in your tour of the citadel. The only actual member of the combine race that you see is on the view screen at the end (or the very beginning during the teleport mishap). You can noclip out to where he sits in a little dark room and get a better look at the model. Little grub with stubby arms. If you hit him, he'll try and whack you back with his little arms.  

[EmperorPenguin]

Do you remember at the end of HL when the G-man is touring around Xen with you explaining (cryptically) what you've just accomplished, and there's the one scene with the dead soldiers and destroyed tanks?

I always assumed that this had meant that the army (whether under orders from G-man or whoever) had attempted to invade Xen but was failing.  So it looked to me as though it were suggesting that although the game would make you think that the Xen aliens were invading our universe, in fact we had invaded theirs first and they were simply retaliating.

Now I've also given thought, since according to the new theories it seems Earth and Xen weren't really at war (hasty generalization, I know), that maybe those destroyed Earth forces were really just the G-man's earlier brute force attempt to kill the Nihilanth that failed, before he decided that a single man could get in where an army had failed.

Either way, that scene has always left me wondering, particularly with these new theories that are arising.  What do you guys think?

[Diablus]

If so... were Race X units in HL1 considerably... Combine Units?


(not literally their own units, but elite Xen forces combined with biotechnology and mechanics?)