Im not sure on this, i had a feeling that the combine controlled xen but had no real use for it (or didnt know how to exploit it), they made the vortigaunts slaves, and made nilhilanth the controller, he floats on a sort of mechanical base so is part combine himself. There the slaves made alien...
thats an interesting post, like the nilhilanths quotes at the end of hl1 when he basically says that the gman is not a man
interesting, i wonder what it means?, and im sure mark laidlaw will never tell us :D
i like your thinking, you'ra a clever guy. i didnt notice the factory similarities. On xen the factories were making alien grunts, made by alien slaves. On earth the factories were making combine soldiers made by human stalkers. both the alien slaves and human stalkers seemed to be controlled...
in the the prima guide it says
Combine Advisor
"Behold the real face of the combine. A giant, green, sluglike entity with the gift of telekinesis appears for the briefest moments on Breen's computer monitors within the Citadel."
other cool things in the guide explain that the stalkers...
i dont like the hl soundtrack much, i didnt even bother adding it to my music collection. the halo soundtrack however is awesome, shame the game isnt a good as HL.
For HL3 i think valve should put a bit more money into the soundtrack. Halo guy was a proper composer