Few questions.

[Moshiach]

I've browsed over the stickies and through a few threads here but can't seem to find my answers, so hopefully someone can help me.

So the Combine attack the Vortigaunts who resist and run away. Is Nihilanth paired up with the Combine like Breen? If so, why is he running away to Xen?

When the portal to Earth opened, who exactly came through? Was it innocent Vortigaunts fleeing, or Combine-influenced Vortigaunts invading? If the former, then why are they attacking Earth and why is Earth attacking them? Was the initial transition of the Vortigaunts to Earth, which resulted in the deaths of many on either side, just a big misunderstanding? Was there an unmentioned truce somewhere between HL1 and HL2 where both sides realised they've just been played for chumps by the Combine?

 

[Darkside55]

First off, welcome to the forums.

To answer your question, let me clear up a few things. The Combine attacked the group of aliens we call the Xenians; these are the nihilanths, the controllers, the grunts, and the vortigaunts. The Combine weren't attacking the vortigaunts specifically, they were attacking all four of these races that lived on the same planet.

The vortigaunts were slaves to the controllers and the nihilanths. So when the Combine came, the Nihilanth (singular, there ended up being only one of his species left) evacuated all the races from their home planet to Xen. He brought the vortigaunts along when he fled because they were his slaves.

Now, when the portal opened up, the vortigaunts that came through were Nihilanth's "cannon fodder." They were frontline soldiers as well as scouts, sent in to check out this new world. All the sentient creatures that came through the portals to Earth--vortigaunts, grunts, and controllers--were an invasion force. Nihilanth figured that Earth could be another place to further run away from the Combine.

But the vortigaunts hate the Nihilanth, you see. So when he died and the vortigaunts became stranded on Earth, they worked together with the humans and they achieved a peace between the two races. They really didn't want to fight in the first place, they were only made to.

Hope that clears it up for you.

 

[kineaesth]

First off, welcome to the forums.

To answer your question, let me clear up a few things. The Combine attacked the group of aliens we call the Xenians; these are the nihilanths, the........... words................Hope that clears it up for you.

However, is any of this absolute fact? Not wanting to start beef with you, but that is just your well-educated and informed opinion.

....isn't it?

 

[Cheomesh]

Valve pretty much cleared it up AFAIK.

 

[Darkside55]

It's all absolute fact.




...and if it wasn't, it is now, because Darkside says!

 

[ktimekiller]

lol

 

[ríomhaire]

The vortigaunts (slaves), controllers (managers), grunts (soldiers), nihilanths (masters) made up one society which we, for lack of a better word, call the Xenians. The Combine attacked their homeworld and they were then, because of their natural affinity with teleportation, able to flee to the boarder world, Xen, where the Combine couldn't get to them. This is either because the Combine's teleportation technology sucks or because the last remaining nihilanth was able to hold them off.

It really isn't clear who was behind the resonance cascade (Signs point to the g-man having had something to do with it, though what exactly he did, why he did it and who he did it for is unknown) but the initial portals seem to have been mostly random; wild animals and vortigaunts alike being swept into Earth.

I think that the resonance cascade was as much a surprise to the Xenians as it was to the science team and they saw it as a human attack on them and mobilized to defend themselves. That's speculation though.

More organised vortigaunts seem to appear shortly after, probably scouts investigating the strange, concrete, alien world. It's not till after Gordon launches the satellite (Which according to Decay, was being used to halt the resonance cascade) that we see some proper military Xenian forces arrive. Grunts, mantas and vortigaunts arrive en mass and begin driving out the human forces and setting up defences.

After the nihilanth is killed by Gordon the g-man seizes Xen ("for the time being") for whoever his employers are and in the time between HL1 and HL2 the vortigaunts all end up on Earth and the humans and vortigaunts all realise that they’re in the same boat and begin to work together.

This relationship is solidified when the Combine attack. The vortigaunts fight with the humans because, A, they hate slavery and the Combine and want to see them destroyed, and, B, they really don't have much of a choice seeing as how they're stranded on Earth.

 

[Kevin]

The combine didn?t exist back then.
But later, when Valve came up with them, they seemed to fit in and now the theory is, what it is today...where the combine were chasing the xenians around.

 

[Cheomesh]

Kevin you don't know that.

 

[Asknoone]

The Combine did, actually.

 

[Kevin]

No, seriously, the combine were not even PLANNED then.

 

[Cheomesh]

Kevin, I never knew you wrote for Vavle!

 

[Laivasse]

I would say that the place for the Combine in the story existed back then, in a way calculated by Valve. I doubt, however, that the Combine as we know them now, or the exact way that they fit into the Xenians' story, was fleshed out until long after HL1 - maybe even a little after HL2, with the story elements.

As for the OP's question, riom and Darkside summed it all up very accurately (based on info obtained from Marc Laidlaw hisse'f). I would add that it's possible that the vorts were being mind controlled somehow in HL1, and also that I tend to agree with riom that the Cascade may have come as a surprise to the Nihilanth too. It may have later have been used by him (Nihilanth), but less as an invasion than an attempt to get back at humans for troubling the Xenians and kidnapping subjects for study. Self-defense almost, or a legitimate war at least.

 

[Darkside55]

You know though, Kevin COULD be right. The Combine might have been an afterthought; in fact I personally always believed them to be an afterthought designed to move the story forward. But it doesn't seem preplanned, as well as it all meshes together. The reason I say that is because you can work retroactively, you can retcon, the Combine into the story. It isn't hard. Nothing that was set up in HL sets any sort of foreshadowing to the Combine specifically.

It really isn't clear who was behind the resonance cascade (Signs point to the g-man having had something to do with it, though what exactly he did, why he did it and who he did it for is unknown)...

It was Barney's fault.

BARNEY DID THE RESONANCE CASCADE

 

[Planetary]

Well, the Nihilanth mentions them, doesn't he? "Slaaaves... we were their slaaaaves' or something like that?

 

[Laivasse]

Well, the Nihilanth mentions them, doesn't he? "Slaaaves... we were their slaaaaves' or something like that?

He uses the present tense, iirc - 'we are their slaves'.

As such he could indeed be talking about the Combine (or an undefined concept which could later be the Combine) or he could be talking metaphorically - about the earth scientists, even the Gman and whoever he represents, including Gordon in the 'slaves' - or it could be just something cool and mysterious that the devs had him say, and then later decided what it meant.

 

[ríomhaire]

BARNEY DID THE RESONANCE CASCADE

For some reason I find the fact that you used the word 'did' hilarious.
Barney did the resonance cascade!




I always thought Nihily was refering to the controllers with his "We are their slaves" line, but according to Laidlaw the controllers worked for Nihily, so that's that theory out the window.

I still think that that line doesn't really fit perfectly with everything else we know. He speaks in the present tense, yet, according to the story that we know Nihily was relativly free at this point. Sure, he was backed into a corner, but at least he was master of himself.

I just thought of something. Seeing as how Nihily was previously under the thumb of the Combine, it's possible that that's were he got his shackels from (They really don't make much sense that the ruler of the species would be wearing them). Perhaps the collars are actually a Combine thing having been given a Xen twist? By that I mean that the vortigaunts were originally the slave species/caste of the Xenian society but they only got their yokes once the Combine came along.

Also, it doesn't really make sense to call the Xenian anymore, especially when we're talking about the time before they fled to Xen. Maybe...Nihilians? (Nihilist was taken )

 

[Cheomesh]

Nihilli?

 

[ríomhaire]

Sounds sexy.

 

[Moshiach]

So what'd the Combine use to invade the Xenians?

 

[Cheomesh]

I would imagine things they already had. Striders, gunships, moartersynths, things of that nature. After a while they may have even gotten some grunts or vorts on their side, similar to the Overwatch.

 

[Planetary]

Yeah, it was "are their slaves"; my mistake, things would've been much simpler that way.

I think that's the main reason that Half-life story page that keeps circulating thinks the Combine ruled Xen during the time of Half-life 1, with Nihilanth being like Breen and all that. But then Valve said the Combine never came to Xen, and that just mixed things up even more!