Random thoughts on HL2

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

The references to an accident with a cat during the teleport development
have got to be a reference to the classic story "The Fly" by George
Langelaan (on which several movies have been based). In the story, an
early teleport experiment makes a cat disappear into thin air.

Watch closely what happens when Dr Kleiner first tries to teleport
Gordon. The first place you land in is somewhere out in a desert, with
a flock of ravens nearby. If you watch carefully, Kleiner's pet
headcrab jumps out of the field to chase one of the ravens and gets
left behind, but another of the ravens flies into the field and gets
teleported back to Kleiner's lab with you. Just before you disappear
again (for Breen's office), it flies out of the field and is last seen
flying around the lab.

I'm probably stretching here, but I wonder if there's any connection
between that and the raven seen perched on the G-Man's shoulder in
"Anti-Citizen One"? (It also occurs to me to wonder how Kleiner got the
headcrab back -- it's seen briefly at the end of "Entanglement".)

There are several places in "Water Hazard" where it's possible, if you
put a bit of effort into collecting crates and barrels, to climb out of
the canal into areas you're not supposed to be able to reach. The
landscape tends to have large holes in it. (Many such places have
invisible walls to stop ingenious players, but there are some they
missed.)

When you reach the resistance base where the vortigaunt attaches the gun
to your boat, park the boat well away from the dock where it's supposed
to be. When you're not looking, it will magically teleport to the right
place. If you time it right, you can look out the office window and see
the vortigaunt welding the gun onto thin air :-)

Take a really careful look at the newspaper clippings pinned up in Dr
Vance's lab. On the left, partly obscured by the "Earth Surrenders"
clipping, there's a clipping with a blurred headline that, if you look
carefully (take a screenshot), says "Learning about 9/11..." (there's
more, but the rest of the headline is covered up). The accompanying
photo looks like some kind of spaceship. Did the Combine have something
to do with 9/11? Is this perhaps a hint about the plot of HL3?

Why don't the buggy's headlights work? (The airboat's do.)

In "Sandtraps", after the bull antlion is dead and the vortigaunt leads
you into the resistance base, stop and talk to the two vortigaunts who
are talking in an alien language. The resulting conversation cracked me
up :-)

How many antlion followers is it possible to have at a time? Usually you
get four, but sometimes the game seems to randomly give you more. The
most I've ever had is seven.

Even after you leave the antlions behind, the stinkbombs can
occasionally come in useful as stun grenades.

In honour of the superb job they do of demonstrating the truth of the
old saying about military intelligence, I've taken to referring to the
little troop of soldiers that follow Gordon as the King's Own Terminal
Morons.

--
Ross Smith ......... r-smith@ihug.co.nz ......... Auckland, New Zealand
"The current crop of compilers are pretty lousy -- they always
do what I say, and never what I mean." -- James Kanze