7 hr war-need info

[hari66]

Hi, i'm new to this forum. its a fantastic place.absolutely love to be part of it.
i was reading a few of the posts and had a few doubts

1) where in hl2 is there proof\ hints\details of the 7 hr war?

2) who are the strange creatures whom we see inside the citadel but never appear in the actual gameplay?

3)about striders, i read in one post that they were modified humans. really? have i missed something in the game?

4) i also read about the combine draining earths oceans and i couldnt see any hint in the game.

can anyone help me out?

thanks in advance

 

[$kelet0r]

1. In Eli's lab on the wall (also read Raising the bar)
2. Stalkers = Modified human slaves, Synths = 2 types of death dealers like striders and gunships
3. negative. they are modified creatures from another world enslaved by the combine
4. personally they don't really play this up much ingame and it isnt mentioned ingame - some hints are that you can travel along the beach yet you can clearly see sea carved areas that are now a long way from the water but I'm not convinced that Valve in the end decided to include this theme....if they did it's not obvious

 

[Sulkdodds]

3. Are you sure they're 'modified creatures'? They seem much more like they were built, or grown, from scratch.
4. It's pretty obvious sea levels are dropping from the couple-dozen jettys stranded three metres or more above the waterline.

 

[$kelet0r]

3. Are you sure they're 'modified creatures'? They seem much more like they were built, or grown, from scratch.
4. It's pretty obvious sea levels are dropping from the couple-dozen jettys stranded three metres or more above the waterline.

3. Who knows what the process involves tbh. Personally I think they are more bio than machine.
4. You see I would have thought that too but you should see how far the sea goes out in some harbours/coastlines like mine in Dublin - the sea at low tide can't be seen it subsides so far :| It is mentioned in RtB but ingame I wasnt convinced - it may have been far too subtle when it should have been 'hey where's the bloody water gone?'

 

[ríomhaire]

There was also an idea that a giant portal was draining all the water to Xen.

 

[Llama]

Even though the Combine arnt on Xen

 

[ríomhaire]

Even though the Combine arnt on Xen

Portal Storms

 

[Asknoone]

There was also an idea that a giant portal was draining all the water to Xen.

I think it meant a Combine constructed portal in the middle of the ocean.

The Combine are however draining the planets resources. As it says in the walkthrough, "They are collecting and re purposing the planets resources for their own nefarious plans."

 

[hari66]

thanks,people
that probably accounts for all those stranded ships,right? .man,was i blind!!
and i want to ask one more q.,ok. at the end of halflife ( the first one) ,if gordon refuses to go along with the g-man, a large army is shown briefly. why?
what is the gmans link to this army? whose army is it anyway? the nihilanth's?

 

[$kelet0r]

thanks,people
that probably accounts for all those stranded ships,right? .man,was i blind!!
and i want to ask one more q.,ok. at the end of halflife ( the first one) ,if gordon refuses to go along with the g-man, a large army is shown briefly. why?
what is the gmans link to this army? whose army is it anyway? the nihilanth's?

We're not sure
My theory is that Nihilanth and the controllers were part of the Combine empire and broke away hence all the Combine influences (mech soldiers, modifications on the nihilanth, factories etc. The war was between the Combine and Xen. The Gman as an agent of the combine engineered the resonance cascade with the help of Breen knowing what would happen using earth as a pawn. Freeman interfered but ultimately his actions resulted in the Combine conquest of Xen pleasing the Gman who hires him. The army you see at the end of HL1 were merely the original creations of the Combine (the mantha, race x and garg are to me synth without a doubt) that the Xenians had not taken with them or held on to when they rebelled.

Problems with this theory
- The Combine don't know about Xen = of course they do, its just the Xenians were not Combine controlled. The fact that they do not have local teleportation in HL2 merely suggests that the Combine are not omnipotent, hell their computing technology appears remarkably inferior to human tech of 20 years previous.
- Race X don't look like combine = to me they do, they just have more biological technology than mechanical implants. There is nothing to suggest that the Combine before the invasion of Earth were mechanical technology reliant.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Could be true.

Personally, I reckon the G-Man might have been working for Earth in a sense.
By which I mean either that some human organisation knows a lot more and has a lot more power than anybody thinks, OR that something from somewhere else is using Earth in a war against the Combine.

The second theory there seems most likely to me. The G-Man was essentially a mole in the US government for some alien power who wanted to strike against the Combine. To do this, they wanted control of Xen - the crossroads. To this end they engineered a conflict between Earth and the Nihilanth, using Freeman to take out Nihilanth so US soldiers could occupy Xen. Then they got pushed out again by the Combine; the portal storms began.

Or, hell, something.

 

[99.vikram]

The G-Man was essentially a mole in the US government for some alien power who wanted to strike against the Combine. To do this, they wanted control of Xen - the crossroads. To this end they engineered a conflict between Earth and the Nihilanth, using Freeman to take out Nihilanth so US soldiers could occupy Xen.

The Gman seemed too powerful to be a mole. More likely the US Govt knew exactly what he wanted, and helped him to earn the support of a trans-dimensional ally.

All this thinking is making me woozy :|