SOme more info for the Speculators

[Ghost]

I've gone back to FAQ I started a while back to be posted on www.gamefaqs.com concerning the plot of Half-Life based on careful inspection of the game.

The following are some points I found very interesting that I think those who love to analyze predict may like:

- Having taken Latin, when I first heard the name Nihilanth mentioned I noticed part of the word right away. The word "nihil" means "nothing" when translated. This is more than likely NOT a coincidence.

- The G-Man is probably the adminstrator. There doesn't seem to be too much argument against this. Throughout the beginning of the game you hear about a visit from someone from administration. The same reference is made in the Blue Shift manual, as there is a reassignment leter to Barney Calhoun form the office of the administrator.

- The G-Man's initials may be LM. The letter in the Half-Life manual is from the Office of Adminstration and is signed LM. The letter in the Blue Shift manual is also signed with these initials. This could be said to be an alias.

- The actual game takes place somewhere in the year 2000. The Date of Barney's reassignment is written as 05/09/200- and will take up his new assignement on 05/15/0-. I know some forms to have it written that way and to mean the year 2000. However, and here's a contradiciton, Shephard's last entry in the OpFor manual is dated March 15. Though his last entry says the mission could happen any day, it seems more likely it happened within a few days of his last shown entry. But still, this may or may not actually be a contradiction; Barney's first day on the Blue Shft is the day of the accident at Black Mesa and that occurs after the last entry of Shephard's journal. But then if you go back to the original Half-Life manual, Freeman's first day of work is May 15 (also writeen as 200-). IMO, the date is May 15, 2000. In which case that was one hell of a first day Freeman had.

- Shephard arrives right after the incident begins (as said in Blue Shift), and wakes up after Freeman was knocked out and traversing through the desert to Lambda. Why? The one point in Freeman's game where there are no G-Man is after he has been knocked out and is making his way to Lambda, the first time you see him again before the end being in a lab using a teleporter. In this time, the G-Man could have been watching Shephard. Also, Shephard does not see him after reaching Lambda and then sees him aghain after leaving Lambda. In which case the G-Man probably had just made his offer to Freeman before making his last appearance to Shephard before Shephard fightsd the last boss.

- There was actually a bio written by Valve but not widely known, and appear on PHL, containing a brief look at Freeman's past, found here: http://www.planethalflife.com/half-life/guide/overview.shtm

- Dr. Kleiner was the name of the man in charge of the anamolous research laboratory. This is known by : A) the bio listed above since he was the one who hired Freeman, B) In the Blue Shift manual, the man recieving a copy of the letter was a Dr. Kleiner, and since the reassignment was to the anamolous materials labs, it makes since the man in charge of it would get a copy for a new secuirty officer, and C) It's mentioned in the letter to Freeman in the original Hlaf-Life. The scientist in the E3 demo is also called Dr. Kleiner.

- Black Mesa and it's labs fall under the Nucleuar Regulatory Commission. Their Emblem may be seen throughout certain levels of the game. The Commission is ran by 5 commissioners, one of their chief duties being administrative work. Now this could mean that the G-Man is in fact one of the five commissioners. However this is unlikely since SOMEONE would've taken a little more notice to someone THAT top level being present at either Black Mesa or Shephard's Boot Camp. More likely, he's one of their assistants. This would mean the employers he mentions to Freeman are the Commissioners and the President of the United States. If he is an alien, well, then there is even more the conspiracy.

- The motto of the Lambda Lab is "Superbus Via Inscientiae" or "The Proud Way of the Ignorant." This confuses most people since inscientiae looks like science. Hmm...

- The sprites seen when you first put the crystal into the beam of the test chamber are the same sprites Shephard sees converging at tthe portal for the final boss in OpFor. In fact, many areas of Black Mesa have begun to turn into Xen-like materials (I'm not referring to the Biodome). In which case, what could have been happening is that two dimensions were actually being merged, controlled by the creature that Shephard fights.

- The name of Gordon's M.I.T. paper was "Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement on Supraquantum Structures By Induction through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array." In other words, the experiment that Gordon does in the test chamber is based on this. By applying quantum energy to a crystal of Extremely Long Wavelengthes (the crystals seen on Xen) he successfully creates a rift that allows transportation between point A and point B to be zero. His experiment was accidental however, he probably wouldn't assume it to work in the way it did. But what happens is that the beam being used on the Xen crystal was in fact too powerfull/ just powerful enough to cause the crystal to begin to breakdown and become energy, which in turn was so powerful as to open rifts around the crystal (which is why he is teleported, in fact the first time Freeman is hit by a beam he isn't teleported to Xen but to another part of the test chamber across from where he was). Now, a creature took control of this new rifts and kept them open and made them spread (either Nihilanth, the G-Man, or Race-X from OpFor).

And this folks is the greatest irony of Half-Life that no one seems to realize. The very thesis that Gordon Freeman sets out to prove is in fact the very one that causes the Black Mesa Incident. He was right, but now he may wish he wasn't after all.

That's all I remember off the top of my head right now. I have more written down and I wanna go through the game one more to do some more G-Man spotting and to write down all the important conversations.

 

[LoneDeranger]

I havent finished reading all of your post yet, but LM stands for Laidlaw, Marc, Half-Life's writer.

And Nihilath's name comes from "nihilism", which means "a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility".

 

[Ghost]

I know what Nihilism is, but the word nihilism derives from the latin root "nihil." Depeding on what Laidlaw was going for, it could be either word, but in either case it has SOMETHING to do with nothingness, whether it be a play on an old latin word or on Nietzche's philosophy.

I'm just trying to figure out what it's application is in the game.

You know it would probably help us all out if someone read the guys books, it could even be that some of the characters are based on characters from his novels.

 

[LoneDeranger]

I tried to buy his books but they were not in stock.

I did read quite a few of his short stories though.

P.S. In Gordon's locker is a copy of The 37th Mandala and The Orchid Eater.

P.P.S. Here is a look inside the infamous briefcase ... interesting.

 

[Direwolf]

Wow...that bio is pretty interesting. Lots of stuff in there I never knew.

 

[Darkside55]

(Argh, this is the second time I have to write this long post; I was logged in but when I went to preview the forum told me I wasn't! :angry: )

I always took Nihilanth's name to be "nothing" also; as in, he wanted to create an end to everything. At least, everything on Earth; that's my guess.

I also assumed that LM was the name of the administrator (never connected it to Marc Laidlaw), however I had my doubts because in most business letters it is the typist's initials that appear at the bottom, such as a secretary's initials or a transcriptionist's initials, not the initials of the individual the letter is from (unless G-Man typed it up himself).

With regards to the date, I think it would've had to have been before 2005; likely 2000, or 2001. The date of the "accident" is definately March 15; however, I don't believe this to be Freeman's first day on the job. He would have had to first have arrived at the facility, dropped off his documents at the Personnel Dept., done urinalysis and bloodwork, set up his locker and his dormitory, and attended orientation. In addition, Freeman seems to be on friendly, first-name terms with security and science personnel. I do not believe they were so warm towards him simply by reading his nametag, and they would not have "recognized" him from the Anomalous Materials labs if it was his first day (even if 'Sector C' was on his nametag as well). The letter from the G-Man was sent to Freeman on the 5th, and only instructed him to return the letter and all enclosed attachments by the 15th, no later. This does not mean Freeman could not have arrived earlier. I believe that he likely concluded his affairs at Innsbruck around the 10th of March, departed for New Mexico on the 11th, and arrived on the 12th, giving him three days to set up, which is ample time to get acquainted with the faculty and his sector of the facility.
Adrian Shephard and the military arrived on the 16th. This is evidenced by his last entry, written on the night of the 15th (it would have to have been written at night; all other entries indicate that things happened earlier in the day, and that he was writing at the day's close), that states, "We were told 'it' could happen tomorrow."
I haven't yet played Blue Shift (can't find a standalone copy! ), but I'm positive that Adrian could not have arrived "right after the incident." It's only the middle of his game when Freeman makes the jump into the border world, and I believe Freeman's trek across Black Mesa to have taken three days. The military did not arrive quickly to BMRF in Freeman's game, as well.

I got lost in what you were saying about Freeman's theory, but there was teleportation going on before Freeman arrived (sorry if this isn't what you were saying at all). BMRF had been using crystals to power their expeditions into Xen, collecting specimens from the border world long before Gordon arrived. What caused the incident was the pure crystal from Xen that the scientists had "discovered." During times when there are two scientists speaking to each other, one will sometimes ask, "Do you expect some kind of alien subterfuge?" I believe that the aliens, under Nihilanth's instruction, planted the pure crystal there for the humans to find. Once they had that sample, the aliens knew they were going to try another teleportation experiment on it, and Nihilanth tricked them into opening a rift which could not only not be closed on their end, but that he could amplify, creating more dimensional rifts on Earth. G-Man likely knew what they were planning, but didn't have a hand in it; I think that he went along with the testing of the sample because it would achieve the end that he wanted that much quicker: the control of Xen. He used the alien's own trick against them, and succeeded where they did not in controlling the other world.
I don't believe Race X was important in any way. They were simply drifters from another world that hopped from their world, to Xen, to Earth (or possibly they inhabited another area of Xen; they certainly do not resemble any type of creature from the areas explored by Gordon and Adrian). G-Man destroyed Black Mesa after their arrival because the teleportation got a little out-of-hand, and decided to destroy any trace of the "embarrassment" that was BMRF, even though the real goal of the facility was achieved.

And speaking of G-Man, LoneDeranger, where did you get a picture of the inside of G-Man's briefcase? Was it in the Valve pak file? I've always wondered what was in there; I see he carries a pistol, I thought he'd have a weapon in there, although personally I believed the briefcase would be just a cover for a submachine gun (a la "The Replacement Killers").