What even happened in Half-Life 1? 

I cant help but notice man's hesitation when he says employers, like he's struggling to find an English equivalent of a much more complex concept. In fact, it seems like most of his lines of dialogue is him struggling to talk in metaphors, because humans would not understand what's really going on.

I forget how scary gman canonically is after playing gmod and sfm for a decade

My favorite take on G-man is the meta narrative one : his "employers" are valve devs, his job is to set in-game events into motion so that the game can happen, and when it ends, he puts the playable character into stasis for the eventual next game.

I like how most all the creatures and beings in the "Half-Life" universe, from the tripods to the bullsquids to the Nihilanth, all have three legs - yet a "three" is something we've yet to see in the series.

I want to make a band purely so I can call it Resonance Cascade .

Blaming gordon for the incident is like blaming the first fish to step on land for ruining your life.

one of my favorite things in any game that does it is baddies fighting baddies. If a group of raiders run into a pack of wolves, i expect the raiders and the wolves to fight. Not for them to join forces against me. Something about enemies of my enemies being enemies adds a sense of realism and satisfaction that I can not under-emphasize.

Fun fact: when playing custom levels in portal 2, you may hear cave Johnson talking about the universe you are currently in. In one universe Aperture buys out Black Mesa and Cave stops the experiment that causes the resonance cascade.

Game intro: you are a M.I.T. graduated scientist just going to his job very late Game ending: You ended an entire alien race and potentially doomed humanity's hope of freedom

G-man is gonna be a lot more relatable when *Half-Life: Taxes,* where you help g-man fill in his tax report, drops.

When I first played Half-Life, I thought the Hound Eyes were cute the way they prance around and bark, and I didn't want to kill them until they started attacking and forced me. As it turns out, they were originally intended to be non-hostile, but in early play testing players mowed them down, so the devs decided to make them aggressive. I think that's a shame.

I always assumed the scars on the Nihilanth were more of an autopsy/vivisection scar left when they stuffed it full of machinery. The classic Y shape of it and all. If it was just to craft on the arm, you'd expect the stitching to be around the arm, rather than just the bottom portion of it and then going down the torso. I also assumed the cuffs on him was to signify it, despite being the "mastermind," was also a slave. Like how Breen was in 2. It had will and mind, like the Vortigaunts, so needed shackles to enslave it. The Grunts (and likely the Controllers) didn't need them because, like the combine troopers in 2, they were bred to be subservient.

I stick to the theory that G-Mans ''employers'' are actually Valve Software.

Maybe the real Half-life 1 was the friends we made along the way

to address the "leaps in logic" to the beginning, in the recent 25th anniversary documentary laidlaw even said that part of the joy of writing half life 1 is the whole "there's something bigger than you going on here" that makes the story not only easier to write but also more fun for both him and the player, so that is definitely the intention of half life

Marc Laidlaw had fully thought out the entire Half-Life plot in every detail, but then he went into the toolshed. A crowbar dropped on his head. After he woke up, all he could remember is that there was a big research complex, a creepy man in a blue suit and a crowbar.

Half Life 9 better have Gordon beating the shit out of the main god of the whole multiverse with his barehands as a grand finale.

Thing is, it makes sense when you play it

Didn’t Gordon just do as he was told, with the experiment? And therefore, if not him, someone else would have done so? In subsequent “Gordon caused people to die” instances, did he have any other choice?

I think the G-Man deserves a much closer look, especially from a perspective that's entirely focused on the first game. We see him when Gordon first arrives at Black Mesa and he's conversing and shaking hands with various scientists at the facility. They know him. They're friendly with him. And, considering his main power seems to be teleportation (quite evident at the end of the game), it's very likely he offered the basics of teleportation tech to the scientists at Black Mesa. He may be a "seeder", teleporting to various inhabited worlds, offering teleportation tech, then forcing an invasion. I don't know who he works for but it doesn't seem to be the Combine. Nor do I think he has any permanent allegiances and, in fact, I suspect his "employers" quite often end up his victims.

My favorite description of gman I've heard is "a creature doing an only adequate job of pretending to be human"

I always found it interesting that the crystals in the Nihilanth's chamber seem to be of the same substance as the sample that was in the cart at the Cascade.

Taking "I am the last" and "We are their slaves" almost could imply that it is suggesting to you that if you kill it off, you'll win the fight. Like encouraging you to win rather than being all in on ending you. Slaves do what they're commanded to do, not necessarily what they want to do. What made Half-Life one of the greatest games and indeed stories of all time is that it DOESN'T answer the big questions. You're forever left wondering just wtf happened. Sometimes, mysteries are best left unsolved and I'm eternally grateful to Valve for understanding that and giving us such a great experience.

One thing most people miss about the final boss is how human he looks compared to literally everything else. It's as if he is from earth or a species eerily similar to humans.

I never really fully realised that half life is actually some pretty chilling cosmic horror

There's a part in the lambda complex just before teleporting to xen where a scientist outright says that the portals are being held open by the Nihilanth at that point.

I actually knew of the third arm of the nihilanth. Really cool detail. Also, why do I never see anyone taking about the UNBELIEVABLY SCARY "WE ARE THEIR SLAVES". why does nobody ever mention that.

I feel like the larger story is happening around Gordon and as one man, he is only peripherally aware of it. You are just trying to survive, you don't get all the answers. It's unsatisfying but it's realistic.

The line "Their slaves, We are Their slaves'' is just really rare and heard it once in game so it is canon :)

Half-Life raises questions that cannot be answered because it tells a story about mankind uncovering things that could never be understood. I love it.

HL1s story may not have many characters, as the only notable ones are the Gman and Nihilanth, but it tells a story through subtle worldbuilding through gameplay. Most games that have vague stories use mountains of reading documents and voice recordings to convey much of their stories. But Half Life lays it out entirely organically. It’s why it’s vague story is so remembered, and other like Outlasts aren’t.

Half Life 1 is my favorite video game story. Such an intricate narrative, that is never actually narrated to the player. It truly feels like you're living a story rather than having it be told to you. No other art medium could have pulled this off. The feeling I get from this game, its atmosphere, its plot, has not been replicated by any other artwork.

There's an interesting thing I discovered replaying the beginning of half life recently. At one point, right after entering black mesa, you can find a scientist arguing with the gman behind a glass window. You can't properly make out anything they are saying. However, in the italian version of the game (I was playing that one, I don't know if this happens in any other language as well) that scientist is actually dubbed and you can clearly hear him saying stuff along the lines of: "I already told you I'm not going to allow this equipment to be pushed beyond it's limits" or something like that. I found that exact audio file in the game's folder. It's called "c1a0_sci_mumble". In the folder for the english audio files, it's a mubled, incomprehensible voice, but in the italian version it's a clear speech behind a subdle filter. Idk, just thought I'd share some localization-exclusive lore. PS: the same does not apply to the gman, you can't hear what he's saying in either version.

Fun fact about the combine being planned thing: Mark Laidlaw (lead writer for Half-Life) released two companion writings for Half-Life shortly before release in mid-1998. In the one talking about the Nihilanth, it mentioned a group of super intelligent aliens enslaving other races and exploiting the worlds they control. "Teleportation has been mastered by a chain of superintelligent (compared to us) aliens. Mainly, they use it to exploit and enslave the races they encounter; their exploitation may be open or it may be extremely covert, involving political manipulation of the worlds they control. It all depends on what they want out of the species they intend to dominate. The civilizations which are potentially the most dangerous-and also the most useful-to them are those which have independently arrived at the creation of a teleport technology which could surpass their own…for as in all things, even advanced alien superscience is bound to become obsolete, and the drive for a more powerful technology is unending." So even before Half-Life 1 was released, Marc Laidlaw was thinking about the entity that would become the Combine, even to the point of mentioning that this entity's main interest in Earth was their supperior means of interdimensional teleportation, which is a plot point in retail HL2.

The "slaves" quote from the Nihilanth was originally gonna be used in HL1 but was cut and later used in HLS replacing the "Not you alone" quote.

The unused Nihilanth line was used in Half Life Source, according to the wiki. It replaced a line of his that goes "Alone... not you alone... not you alone...".

The way you depict the scale of the enemies makes it truly horrifying. It reminds me of how in the leaked half life 3 plot there's that similar concept of futility where all of humanity's efforts were meaningless because the Combine had a Dyson sphere. Anyways, great analysis Leadhead

You're only sure about 2 things in life: death, taxes and the endless speculations about G-man. Wait, that's 3...

Imagine how different things would be if Nihilanth decided to do this stuff peacefully and have an alliance with humanity

The rocket you launch contains a satellite loaded with a Xenium Resonator, which uses Xenium, the same crystal you light poorly aimed lasers at during the beginning of the game. This was meant to close the portals being opened, and Xenium Resonators were used to close the Combine Superportal powered by The Citadel in City 17 during Half-Life 2. The rocket didn't work due to the fact that the Nihilanth - The boss you fight at the end of Half-Life - was holding it open.

I just want to mention that in the Nihilanth's chamber, the 3 crystals are evenly placed around him like a ring, except if one was missing. Like there was supposed to be 4. The crystals in the chamber look exactly like the one in the test chamber in the beginning. Yes there are many other yellow crystals in Zen, but they're all of different sizes and shapes, except for in this chamber.

I think it's interesting how G-man is portrayed or portrayed himself in Half-Life 1 like he was a government agent, saying things like he is taking away Gordon's weapons because they are "Government Property". We saw some more insight into this with a cancelled expansion, which had something to do with a junior G-man working at a black mesa partner facility (obviously not cannon). If we wanted to fit this into the cannon after HL2, it is interesting to think of the potential implications of G-man possibly wanting to deceive Gordon into thinking he was trustworthy. or he just said that because he seems to have trouble speaking english normally

_"I have an infinite capacity for knowledge, and even I'm not sure what's going on outside."_

That ending was perfect. "Because the world of Half-Life is one in which humanity opened the door to questions that absolutely no human could ever answer." It's exactly why I hope Gman never gets explained by Valve and remains a mystery to us all. Love your content.

20 years later there still no one on earth that can describe HL1 lore, even tho it's regarded as one of the best games in the past decades

Half-Life's story is so purposefully crafted and meticulous despite being so vague. It's so well-done. But I wish the games came fast enough that we could actually get answers.

It always sounded to me like the rocket was just a prerequisite to get Gordon to Xen, not an absolute solution in itself, based on the security guard's wording. Cool observations on the Nihilanth's body; I never noticed those before. The structure at its bottom looks very similar to the appendages in the synths of HL2. That rare voice line you mentioned is indeed in the game. I heard it when I replayed the game today (Steam version).

Always loved the idea of G-man’s employers. The thought of humanity being the absolute lowest peg on an interdimensional system of beings is spooky.

I like the "is it freemans fault" bit cause when i was like 6-7 and playing this every new game i started my Father would poke fun at me and say "you pushed the cart to far in dude ahhh you killed everyone" made me irritated back when i was that age thinking it was true now i just get a laugh every time i watch something on Half Life 1 lol.

The combine taking over the vortigants makes sense, since in the half life 2 beta, when you go to the spot where you usually meet alyx in half life 2, you can see a metro cop leading vortigants into an alleyway at gun point

My top 3 Gordon Freeman one-liners: 1. 2. 3.

Wow, this actually put a lot of insight into things that I didn’t pick over my 15+ playthroughs!

If we are going to incorporate the Combine into our HL1 theories after all... then I'd put forward the idea that G-MAN isn't an agent of the Combine. To me it makes sense that he was probably present at Black Mesa to observe the unfolding events and then take counter measures to make sure the Combine didn't stumble upon human teleportation technology. We know that one weakness of the Combine is that they can't teleport once in another universe and so have to travel by conventional means. They are desperate to overcome this weakness and hence why they passively allow Eli and Kleiner and co to continue their research prior to HL2. So, I'd wager that in HL1 the G-MAN arranged the military clean-up to kill most all witnesses to Black Mesa's research, ensuring the Combine, which would inevitably invade, could not obtain them and grill them for information. It would make sense to kill the science team and scuttle the base and only spare a handful of researchers to keep knowledge of the tech alive, but also easy to safeguard. G-MAN then sends Gordon back when the research is nearing completion and ensures that the Combine is thwarted just before they can get their hands on the tech.

For me I always thought we accidentally cleaned up the signal like on old TVs and radios when you’re changing channels there’s a bit of static in between. the resonance cascade blurred the line between two dimensions and alerted the Nylanth to us but because of the accident it was shooting blind when teleporting its soldiers but once the satellite was launched in the resonance cascade was stopped it wasn’t going to ignore what was brought to his attention by us

What I like in not just HL, but HL2, after the initial shock of a situation subsides, you have a cast of very intelligent people who get together to get themselves out of it. There's never just one "command character" who makes all the calls, or the protagonist finding things themselves to do, or simply being given objectives at the start of the level. The scientists of Black Mesa have the composure to come up with methods on the fly to slow or halt the invasion, eventually realizing, "Hey, we were preparing to launch a satellite array to put out energies to help modulate displacement energy. Why don't we proceed with the launch and just use that to close the door?"

good shit. makes me want to buy you a beer

Thought: if the resonance cascade is the equivalent of blowing open a hole in the wall between universes, perhaps the rocket launch is the equivalent of putting a door over the hole. It doesn't completely seal off the hole, but it makes it hard enough that it requires conscious, intelligent action to move between them, which in this metaphor is somebody choosing to open the door.

I really like the idea of the Nihilinth needing that third arm to properly control the vortegaunts. To me it feels like a being with only two arms wouldn’t know how to properly control a third arm in a psychic link, until you graft on a new arm and connect it to the brain.

One thing I always wonder about, in Gman's ending speech, the dead soldiers are clearly in xen, not on Earth. If Black Mesa lore is taken, they probably got randomly pulled there by the Nihilanth, but I always wonder why they are actually there. Was there more going on than Gordon knows in xen? It seems likely that Gman provided the xen crystal that created the resonance cascade, how many other attempts did he make to kill the nihilanth before, or during, the events of Black Mesa?

Love that this guy keeps Half-Life spirit alive

Leadhead, I believe Marc Laidlaw said at one point during an interview that the Combine was not planned in HL1, per se, but that a force filling the same role in the story *was.* They knew vaguely that there was a force threatening the Xen aliens.

"What even happened in Half Life" Unforseen Consequences

I've definitely heard the "slave" quote in the game. It was triggered when I entered the huge factory with all of the vortigon slaves and I interpreted it to be them saying it somehow

you know it's gonna be good when Leadhead uploads

“Then, Gordon gets abducted by a space-god” *ad pops up* Neat!

such a great video, havent opened up half life yet in my library but you vid really got me excited to explore this marvelous world. thank you for this and all you do leadhead

Great video! I love how much you get into detail even about what command you used in console for the demonstration of some examples footage from the game...

*"You are man, he's not man. For you he waits, for you..." - Nihilanth*

A few other things I never see anyone talk about when it comes to Half-Life lore: 1. The Vortigaunts weird perception of time. It seems they at least partially see a lot more of time than the present at once, and several lines from both HL2 all the way up to ALYX hint at this. "We see you still at Black Mesa", the all-knowing Vortigaunt in the sewer, and the Vort you meet in ALYX that's been disconnected from the "vortesence" outright confusing the passage of time, not knowing whether Eli is alive or dead at the moment because he's seeing everything unfiltered right now since he's disconnected from the hive mind that'd usually help him interpret things. 2.The implied life cycle of the Headcrabs. Those things are fascinating. The way I see it, the baby crabs are born from the Gonarch, they mature into the typical crabs we all know and love and that's all fine but...what happens when they attach to a host? WHY do they attach to hosts? I fully believe that over time the mutation the host obviously suffers gets more and more severe as the headcrab continues to grow until they're finally large enough to become a Gonarch, at which point the host is COMPLETELY turned into the Gonarch's breeding sack. It's a truly horrific fate for the host, especially when you factor in the fact that HL2 implies they're still conscious... We also see species like the Lightning Dogs/Revivers seem to have evolved to mimic the Headcrab's zombification defense. They're clearly a different species, and unlike Headcrabs their hosts are deceased, but the fact they also take over a host body and move it around can't be coincidence.

This makes me think of Neon Genesis Evangelion, you get everything from the first person perspective without the lore getting spoon fed to you which allows you to share in with the experience of the characters who also don't yet know whats going on. I i think this is a big part of what makes them Great.

Fantastic video! You know, I've been playing Half-Life since 1999; I must've beat it 50 times by now - but in all those play-through, I never noticed that shift in teleportation patterns! That really just blew my mind dude! Actually, I think your entire take is very plausible!

This was a surprising nostalgic moment back to 2000 when I first played this game about how mysterious it was and the oddness of it all.

yeah a lot of marc laidlaw's writing is like that, I'm reading some of his books from the 90's and they are very vague and much deeper than you could ever imagine.

i've been a fan for about 2 years now and this video is super interesting and sick. its been on my watchlist for ages. the theories are super interesting and make a lot of sense. your my favourite youtuber and I love your content and hope to see more in future.

I just got done beating the game for the very first time and came to watch this video! I'm very appreciative that you only talk about the first one because I wanna avoid spoilers for 2 (which I will be playing soon). Thank you for the vid ❤😊

Have you ever wondered why there's a sepecies in Xen that seems like it was created specifically to take control over humans? (headcrabs)

This was great. Would love to see a "What even happened in Half-Life 2?"

This is a great concept to look at old games from that one game's perspective. Great video!

My guess is the gman is the one controlling the invasion force to find a suitable candidate for “his employers” to use against the combine. The nihilanth is being force to keep the gate open so that someone, Gordon, to kill him sense the he has some free will to defend himself.

To me the alien invasion always seemed “desperate.” I think it’s pretty clear Nihilanth had been Eyeing up our world since the experiments begin. However I don’t get the impression it was his first choice for what he really wanted to do. He is basically a fugitive from a race of slave masters, who fled to Xen which seems to be very inhospitable to higher forms of life. The reason that his forces seems so miss matched with the US military is because humankind is in a much better position than he is. His troops are either blindly obedient due to mind control or slaves who really want no part in war and were also fleeing from the combine. His technology, while better than ours in a few areas, seems to be scraped together, probably from pieces of salvaged technology from the various species that use Xen essentially as a refugee camp. The only reason he’s taking this gambit is likely because he knows the combine will eventually find his operation and destroy everything. TL:DR A well-funded invasion of another planet doesn’t use wild animals as screening troops.

HL Alyx was also revealing, because it showed that even the combine shat it's pants with gman

I actually completely love this theory, especially the rocket/nihilanth/random v strategic teleportation aspect. Great vid.

I always thought that the rocket lauched was meant to stop the portal, but it failed somewhere in space and only to trigger the Nihilanth's wrath. 'Oh, wanna play huh? Alright, game on!' sort of thing

I played this game a quadrillion times and never noticed how teleports become more organized after the rocket launch. Interesting details you've got there!

For me G-man isn't good or evil, he's beyond space and time or human comprehension. He already knew what would happen at black mesa that day.

The Gman and his mystery is one of the greatest in all gaming and I wish I never know more about him.

God bless you. I've played through this game numerous times and I can't tell you one line of dialog, much less any sort of story. I guess I was more focused on the gameplay aspect.

How brilliant is this series that we're still discussing it over 20 years later.

gman has always reminded me of like a Greek god, on mount Olympus. In greek/roman myths, the gods will see some mortals doing something, take some angle, and then go in and just fuck with them. Blow that ship off course, seduce this person, curse that person, etc. He's just there to manipulate the narrative.

Even after almost 25 years, we all stand back to look at resonance cascade and realize what is about to happen.

1998 and we still have content like this being made and published on youtube. Incredible. They really did create a game that was ahead of it's time and it's own masterpiece. good job man

I love the little details in the game, like the "alien slaves" (vortigaunts) sometimes screams "DIE" while attacking you or the soldiers

gordon is too handsome to wear a helmet

Amazing video and very good analysis, i enjoyed the video throughly. Thank you.

About the Nihilanth, there's one detail that I believe is always being overlooked: the nipples (and the accompanying breast tissue). Might seem a trivial detail, but I don't think so. Nipples suggest mammaries which suggest mammals - a very specific theme in the evolution of earth life. That made me think of the rest of stuff: Nihilanth's skin is generally smooth like a human's vorts' skin isn't. It seems to have 2 main eyes arranged like a human's but also three "holes" (eyes?) above them' vorts have one main central eye and 5 smaller ones surrounding it - all bright red. Its mouth faces forward like a human's, whereas vorts' mouths are more towards where the human chin would have been plus pointed more downwards (and has protruding teeth).Nihilanth's third arm appears grafted, vorts' third arm isn't grafted. Its head texture also seems to include a pair of ears, or holes where they could/would have been? And its head is much rounder, again like a human's, while a vorts' head is not really so. It doesn't have extra appendages coming from its cheeks/jawline, whereas vorts do. And its hands - each hand has 3 digits, 1 of which is placed to function like an opposable thumb - but vorts' left and right hands only seem to have 2 digits each, though the third hand (middle) seems to have 3 digits (1 being opposable). Basically it bears characteristics between vortigaunt and human (no wonder it reminds us of a human fetus while we never thought of vorts as looking very humanlike), and coupled with what might be nipples (again hence suggesting mammary glands), my guess is it was, at a minimum, derived from human DNA. The specifics on that are anyone's guess - but I do think it was derived from humans, and incorporated into the authority's design/strategy. [All of this being said, when talking about the vortigaunts I'm really referring to how they look in original Half Life 1. Apparently they look different, gradually more humanlike actually, in subsequent Half Life games (2 and Alyx), including their skin textures appear smoother, they gained opposable digits on their left/right hands, etc.]

i wish i had friends that liked halflife as much as me

The resonance cascade was my fault. I threw a desk chair into the experiment in Half Life Black Mesa...

12:00 Has to thumb you up...your mastery and experience with this series just shows so clearly by this point.

Very cool video, really like how this interpretation feeds into the combine in the sequels. They always felt so very... Disconnected... From half life 1

That rare thing: a HL1 video that uses footage using the original models and not those terrible Gearbox ones