Purple Vortigaunts (click this link for hardcore Spoiler action!)

Operational

Operational

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Haven't see this discussed yet.

Popular theory after Ep1 seemed to be that they were a special group of Vortigaunts. This appears to be proven as false after the Alyx resurrection scene where all the Vortigaunts turned the same purple after being touched by the user of the Extract.

Your companion Vortigaunt describes it like so:
closecaption_english.txt said:
Antlion husbandry was once our ancestral practice. The creatures exude many valuable compounds, but the extract is the most prized by far. It dissolves the false veils that divide the vortessence. All this you shall witness...
Click to expand...

Does this mean that Vortigaunts close to the citadel had some Extract to save Alyx? Maybe whatever process the G-Man uses allowed the Vortigaunts to follow and rescue Alyx before freeing Freeman.

And what makes the extract so special anyway (apart from being a plot device to limit the Vortigaunts and get Gordon into some Antlion caves)? Perhaps its like a fuel or enhancement for abilities the Vortigaunts already possess.
 
The extract helped them heal Alyx, not teleport her away from an explosion like at the end of HL2 (and there were many, many Vorts in that scene). I imagine the extract could benefit that but we also know that Vorts do not require extract to do these things, so we shouldn't conclude that they had some. Your second question is unanswerable, and I can't see anything coming out of speculation about it other than a general consensus that it provides some sort of energy boost for the Vortigaunts' special powers.
 
This confirms that Vortigaunts and Antlions have been together for a long time.
 
I think what people misunderstand about the tip of the Citadel is that neither the Vortigaunts nor Gman can 'stop time' or anything so silly; the only reason both Gman and the Vorts were able to intervene at the top was because of the singularity explosion and its damage to space and time.
 
Rapstah said:
The G-Man appearance in EP2, then? Eh?
Click to expand...

The Gman can influence Gordon in a lot of ways; first, he can alter his perception of the events unfolding around him and second, notice how Gordon 'entered' into the thingy with the Vortigaunts, which clearly pulled him out of normal space, which is where we know the Gman operates. It's got nothing to do with stopping actual time in any way, shape or form.
 
Operational said:
Popular theory after Ep1 seemed to be that they were a special group of Vortigaunts. This appears to be proven as false after the Alyx resurrection scene where all the Vortigaunts turned the same purple after being touched by the user of the Extract.
Click to expand...
Whose popular theory was that? =/

It was rather easy to tell they were normal vortigaunts projecting astrally through the vortessence. I've never even HEARD the other theory. Glad I didn't; someone might've gotten slapped!

Anyway, it does confirm that the extract is used to reach that plane. It says right there, "dissolves the false veil." Not the first time we've heard those words, either.

I liken the process to shamans. Think of Native Americans who smoked tobacco and imbibed elixers that were meant to uncloud the senses and put someone in a trance-like state, receptive to the spirits and higher planes of existence. Same deal with the larval extract.
 
I like to think of it as a "drug" that temporarily makes the Vorts' minds(and therefore their powers) act faster and stronger. Note how they were all so eager to use it as soon as it was mentioned. :laugh:

And I wouldn't doubt that the Vorts would have had a large supply of emergency extract by the end of HL2...which is probably how they managed to pull Alyx out of the explosion and Gordon out of the G-Man's stasis.

One thing I don't understand though is why the extract would be destroyed if the Guardian is killed. I don't see any direct link between them, and the Guardian isn't even close when the Vort gets the extract. Seems like something Valve just threw in to give the player an excuse to not kill the Guardian.
 
Time doesn't exist as one big thing, it's a thing of perception, if the G-Man stops time for Gordon he stops time.
 
Apocalypse89 said:
One thing I don't understand though is why the extract would be destroyed if the Guardian is killed. I don't see any direct link between them, and the Guardian isn't even close when the Vort gets the extract. Seems like something Valve just threw in to give the player an excuse to not kill the Guardian.
Click to expand...

Except for the fact that the Guard cares for the larvae.

EDIT: Crap, double post, sorry ;(
 
Yeah, killing the Guard would put the larvae under threat, but it doesn't seem like it would suddenly make them die in the few minutes it takes to reach the extract.
 
The Vortigaunt wouldn't know how quick Gordon was to bring him down.
 
But the larvae's death looks like it would be something that would happen over many hours or even days. Antlions don't exactly have predators swarming around their nests, waiting for the perfect chance to strike(headcrabs and zombies are hardly threats). And it's not like the remaining Guards, Workers, and regular Antlions are incapable of defending the nest.

I still don't see how killing the Guardian would suddenly cause the Vort to give up and declare the extract "destroyed".
 
it's a game, they didn't want you to kill it. I thought it was abit odd after replaying that part but they had to do it, for the chase scene and re-appearance of the guard
 
The main reason that was put in was for gameplay reasons. Players would spend all their ammo trying to kill the Guardian, so they made it so that you would have to merely run away from it rather than attempt to kill it.
 
I know it was put there for gameplay reasons...I was just saying how the story explanation for it makes no sense.
 
Didn't the Vort state at one point that the Worker Antlion's poison weakened the Vort's powers? I think the Antlions are collectively a bit more mystical than we originally gave them credit for.
 
Apocalypse89 said:
I know it was put there for gameplay reasons...I was just saying how the story explanation for it makes no sense.
Click to expand...

Agree, but as for the above poster said, maybe hes right in the way that the extract simply becomes useless if the Guardian dies.
 
Maybe the Guard's are the males and fertilize the extract?
:o
 
They own up in the commentary to the fact that it was a game device to ensure that you ran rather then fought.
However since it's an alien species that we're dealing with we can make up and kind of reason we like for this being the case.
As already posted by Rapstah time is mutable. Besides I'm sure there was previous vort chat where they talk about time and how from their perception is different. Still, when the GMan does his big speech about time he claims that there was a time when they didn't care about Alyx but now do, suggesting linearity. At this point however the discusion is more than pointless other than to say that both the GMan and the Vortigaunts appear to be able to step outside of time, to all intents and purposes, even if not stop it in the more traditional sense.
 
Samon said:
I think what people misunderstand about the tip of the Citadel is that neither the Vortigaunts nor Gman can 'stop time' or anything so silly; the only reason both Gman and the Vorts were able to intervene at the top was because of the singularity explosion and its damage to space and time.
Click to expand...

Why would it have to do anything to do with the singularity explosion? I just assumed it was g-man doing his thing. (Removing you from normal space that is, NOT stopping time.) Since he does almost the same thing in Ep 2.
 
Darkside55 said:
Whose popular theory was that? =/

It was rather easy to tell they were normal vortigaunts projecting astrally through the vortessence. I've never even HEARD the other theory. Glad I didn't; someone might've gotten slapped!
Click to expand...
Really? It is the only theory I can remember that was raised at the time - the semi-circle of Vortigaunts in HL1 seen during the RC were the ones who showed up at the start of Ep1 and were somehow different from normal Vortigaunts.

Apocalypse89 said:
I know it was put there for gameplay reasons...I was just saying how the story explanation for it makes no sense.
Click to expand...
Yea it did make me wonder when I first played it - it might have been better to say something like, "he is too powerful to kill this far into their hive".

Samon said:
I think what people misunderstand about the tip of the Citadel is that neither the Vortigaunts nor Gman can 'stop time' or anything so silly;
Click to expand...
I don't think he stops time I think he utilises a very slow teleport.
 
I too have never heard of the 'special purple vorts' idea. I also think that the vort saying 'the extract will be ruined..!' can be made to make sense if you just use your imagination. Maybe the guardian emits pheremones which ruin the extract when it dies? Or maybe it's the other way around, and the guardian discharges something which keeps the hive healthy? *shrug* Just because it's an obvious gameplay device, doesn't mean you have to get annoyed by the concept...
Operational said:
I don't think he stops time I think he utilises a very slow teleport.
Click to expand...
Hmm...except in that case wouldn't you get put back long after the vorts were finished with Alyx?

The slow teleport was as I understood it a side effect of using Xen as a slingshot relay - there's no reason to suppose that Gman uses the same technique. It seems to me that he knocks Gordon (by methods unknown - perhaps innate powers) into a pocket-plane/subdimension and so alters his perception of time.
 
The slow teleport was as a result of the explosion just as you left.
Yeah there are loads of potential reasons why the death of the gaurdian would ruin the crop. Just make one up that you're happy with and stick with that, I can't see it becoming an issue at a later point.
 
I think after the discusion about it taking a week Alyx suggests that it may be due to the explosion and Kliener says that you seem to have discovered a slow teleport and that it suggests a new line of research.
 
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