Forum:What Playing Decay Taught Me About Half-Life.

Just a few week ago I had just finished playing the campaign for Half-Life:Decay. What I learned is that story in the game taught me a lot about how about the facility Black Mesa was ran. That information answered a lot of questions I think the community had buzzing around and a few I just had myself.

(Notice: Just to get this out of the way. GEARBOX’S EXPANSIONS ARE CANNON UNTIL PROVEN CONTRADICTING. As you can tell Half-Life’s storyline follows a “tier” system like every other major franchise with the main titles being the highest tier and concept art being the lowest. Each lower tier supplements the higher tiers by filling in gaps they couldn’t answer. Now when a higher tier fills that gap its self and its contradicts the lowers tier’s story. Guess what? Now that gap has been retconned into the likely image that the main story wants. Example, Gordon Freeman’s flash light ran off the same auxiliary power supply as his oxygen and sprint ability. When Episode 2 came out, his flashlight was “retconned” into having its own power supply. So now his flashlight had always ran on its own power ever since the original Half-Life 2.

The tier system allows multiple writers to tell the story from their angle without that much conflict. Just be thankful that our universe is not as complex as Star Wars’. I know there are some people who doesn’t want to accept the expansions as cannon. But you have to admit how snugly the games fit in the story. I mean Gearbox’s storyline barley conflicted with Valve’s, while Valve’s didn’t mess with Gearbox’s. Two things from Gearbox’s cannon have already “leaked” into the official cannon. The explosion of Black Mesa and the xen crystal that was part of the resonance cascade was given by the G-Man (more on that later). Word of God Marc Laidlaw could have easily spat in Gearbox’s face by saying this is not cannon. But since he has not adds credibility to the cannocity of these expansions. Did I just spent half a page on cannon etiquette? Oh well.)

'''Why Dr. Cross, Green, Rosenberg, and Dr. Keller is not in that old Black Mesa Photo. ''' Don’t know which one I’m talking about? It’s the one with Breen’s face scratched out. It showed all the scientists that where involved with the project Vance, Kliener, Freeman; but what is this? Where are the other doctors? Where is Dr. Cross, Dr. Green, or the others?

The real world answer or the the simple answer would be that these characters does not belong to Valve. And to avoid any legal action they just didn’t put them in the picture.

The other answer is this. These doctors where not part of the research team. They where most likely part of the support team. What’s the difference? The difference is that the research team does all the equations, hypothesis,and conclusion making. If the Nobel Piece Prize was won, these where the guys that will receive it. The support team supplies the equipment and materials needed for the experiments. If any of the experiments does goes wrong, they are the first people to respond to it. Gina Cross provided the HEV suits and training for the suits. Collette Green was in charge of getting the xen crystals to the experiments. Dr. Rosenberg was the man who designed and built the anti-mass spectrometer. Dr. Keller was most likely in charge of the support team.

The support team was not in charge the experiments, just in charge in charge of the equipment.

The resonance cascade was not an accident.

Early on in the Decay campaign or any of the Half-Life campaigns other than Opposing Force. You learn a lot of stuff at Black Mesa was not going right that morning. Computers where malfunctioning, constant black outs, things that would make the administrator call off the experiment right? Wrong! In fact not only does he still green light the project he also recommends to run the anti-mass spectrometer beyond the safety measures. To add insult to injury they’re also running the tests with a very unstable sample. The administrator would have had to been the greatest moron in the world for to carry on with that many factors. Unless he knew this was going to happen.

But, who is this mysterious administrator? Well, no other than Dr. Wallace Breen himself, the antagonist in Half-Life 2. By the way. How did Dr. Breen get to be Earth’s Administrator? You’d think during the 7 hour war the UN would be brainstorming some sort of Earth representative to maybe diplomatically talk to the other side. Out of all the prime ministers, presidents, and other miscellanies politicians, not one was better qualified to represent the human race other than Dr. Breen? It seems to me someone already struck a deal with the combine.

Look, from the events in Half-Life we already knew that Black Mesa was studying the xen wild life before the cascade. So its not that far fetched that Dr. Breen could have already been talking to the Combine and planning a attack from the get go. The Combine gets access to Earth with the resonance cascade and complete enslavement of the human race. In return Breen gets to be supreme ruler of Earth. But wait, wasn’t G-Man the one who gave the “sample” to black mesa to test. Where is he in this whole fiasco? I’m about to get to that right now.

The true nature of the “G-Man”.

I’ve heard a lot of theories on who G-Man is. Some say he works for the vortigaunts, others say he’s a double agent working for the Combine. Hell I heard from someone that he is God! Whoever he works for or who or what he is. His actions does say what his alignment is. He crippled the human race by giving the sample to Dr. Breen. He crippled the Combine on Earth by putting Gordon on that train. With that said, he is most likely chaotic neutral. He doesn’t care what side he plays for as long as everyone loses.

How Dr. Kliener got that HEV suit.

There is a few events that we know happened between Half-Life 1 and 2. Gordon Freeman is put into stasis. Somewhere the along the way he get his suit taken and replaced with “civies”. While at the same time Dr. Kliener got a HEV suit and made modifications to it. Now there some theories out there about how this happened.

The first theory people seem to like a lot is that G-Man gave Gordon’s suit to Kliener or place the suit somewhere where he will find it. I really don’t like this theory only because there is not a hint of evidence that supports this. As you may recall, G-Man is not at good terms with the resistance. The Voritigaunts had to steal you away him. When Eli talked about how G-Man saved Alyx’s life. You could have sworn that he just signed a deal with the devil. I would think Kliener wouldn’t even talk let alone accept a gift from G-Man. Would you accept something from someone that dresses in a clean three piece suit when everyone else is wearing rags? And the suit you’re wearing now isn’t even your old suit. Yea Kliener called it your old suit, but it sound like he was joking around when he said that though. If it was his old suit why does Kliener call it the Mark V and not the Mark IV. And why does he have documentation that clearly says Mark V on it? He does say he made upgrades, but he’s most likely referring to the upgrades so you can use the Combine power stations. But where did he get the suit from then?

Theory two is Kliener got the suit while escaping Black Mesa. This theory actually has some evidence, because in the play station 2 manual of Half-Life 2 show the hazard course schedule. The schedule shows that Gina Cross was going to test out the Mark V prototype. This can also explain how Kliener could have escaped Black Mesa even though he was clearly injured. This also gives the reason why nobody else has an HEV suit. I’m pretty sure some resistance members would love to have one of these babies. This suit was most likely his personal suit until Gordon Freeman showed up. And Dr. Kliener just gave it to him as maybe a gift or Gordon would do better things with it.

Conclusion.

So there you have it. My theories on the Half-Life Universe. All of these theories are about 60% fact while the rest is speculation. I would like to thank Combine Overwiki for providing the huge database and information I needed for this essay.

If you have any ideas of your own to maybe supplement or disprove me. Please let me know by emailing me at

michael.delvey@gmail.com

You can also follow me on twitter at @matallic