Just finished Half Life Alyx, what's his goal in all this?

t. hasn't played a Half-Life game

> Cigarette Smoking Man of Half-Life
idk

He clearly let himself be captured, and tricked Alyx into being hired to replace Gordon, but he is still in the hanger watching Gordon in the post credits. Stating the obvious but he isn't telling everything, plus how would you even chase G Man, you can only reach him if he wants to speak to you.

Never was a character. Always was a plot device.

You mean Gordon or G-man?

G-Man was always a plot/mysterious device. And with each new game he was more and more like that.
What goal can he have when in hl1 he speaks about having xen in control, showing human tanks and speaking about government property. At this point he definitely was meant to be a person on government payroll. And hl2 contradicts to what he said.
It's just a mystery guy for confusing players and making them think of a deeper lore

Just pretend the Combine is America, Earth is some shit hole imperialist target like Africa, and GMAN is someone like Dick Cheney.

he just wants some eternal black pussy

>combat encounters all too simple because they wanted to play it safe with the difficulty
At worst they have three combines at once sitting still firing with the odd decision to want to approach or toss a grenade, while others sit back.

>voice actor admits he knows more about his character g-man than he's legally allowed to reveal
at least we know they're not just winging it

So will HL3 be a VR game, a desktop game, or some hybrid to allow for both?

to have a 19 year old Alyx Vance locked in a room

Probably some hybrid. I upped my rig and did all of the vr stuff for Alyx so I'm VR ready, but I'd rather play Half Life 3 on my desktop.

VR stops you from being Freeman tier one man army so VR for characters canonically worse in combat.

Serious Sam has no issue letting you go ham as a one man army in VR dual wielding any damn weapon combo you please. Just need to replace crosshair with laser sights to allow for speed, vs. Alyx's slow manual aim.

Gman, often when interacting with the player, is about giving the illusion of choice, he says so much to Gordon at the end of 2. From Gordon choosing to step into the portal on the tram, to Alyx zapping the advisor. All these actions are things gman wanted, veiled as voluntarily decisions. Gman wanted Gordon as a tool, and gman wanted that advisor dead, Eli alive, and Alyx kidnapped.

The question remains, why does/did gman want these things? Gman, in Alyx, says that it's in his employers interest to not remove the combine from Earth, but through gman's actions, (Destruction of the citadel,) the combine's hold on Earth is extremely hampered.

There are two solutions that come to my mind, one, that gman, and subsequently his employers, are interested not in the outright destruction of the combine, but in its perpetuation and the perpetuation of its many conflicts. Perhaps, and this is hinted at, at the end of 2 by the mentioning of employment offers, gman and his employers are mercenary contractors of a sort, and outright destroying one of their biggest possible contract buyers would be bad for business, or maybe the decrease of conflict that comes along with their destruction would decrease business. So not only does destroying the citadel help lengthen the Earth conflict, but it also helps advertise their new asset of Gordon to the world by using him to injure a big dog like the combine. This is also reinforced by the fact that the super portal containing combine reinforcements would have been opened without Gordon's help. Help of which wouldn't have been available without the intervention of vortigaunts.

Two, gman and his employers don't want to perpetuate the war on Earth any longer than they have to in the long term, and they want to destroy the combine at least eventually. The combine are obviously not completely allied with gman or don't see him as a legitimate third party representative. This is evident from that fact they imprison him. Perhaps gman and his

interdimensional glownigger

employers are less like indifferent mercenary contractors, but a whole independent faction that is working towards the combine's downfall. Why don't they remove combine from Earth then? Perhaps it wasn't in the employer's interest to remove the combine from Earth in a time frame that Alyx could appreciate? Perhaps the combine's presence on Earth is a part of a bigger plan? Possibly a trap is being laid there, or the employers plan to create as many situations like Earth as possible, (Cut off and bleeding,) in order to slowly destroy the combine from attrition? Perhaps weaken it, take over, and change it to their liking?

In all honesty, I don't think speculation on gman is worth it anymore with the release of Alyx. There are just far too many plot holes now without explanation. If gman can travel through time at will, why does any of it matter? How does he not see the many betrayals coming? If the vortigaunts can likewise see into the future and know of the gman's existence, why did they let Alyx release him? Why allow Eli to die at all if he's just going to undo it? If killing the advisor and saving Eli was a favor for releasing him, why did he kidnap Alyx?

It's all so silly. The introduction of time travel ruined the series.

A fun theory though is that gman is a vortigaunt or perhaps a manifestation of the vortessence, and his employers are the vortigaunts. I mean, through his actions the vortigaunts are freed from the nihilanth, and the vortigaunts, definitely knowing what's in the vault in Alyx, say they will free all their kin... Gman is their fucking kin.

Well, the vortigaunts seemingly intervene in the gman's plans, but this could all be a ruse... But it is certainly interesting that they are seemingly aware of one another, and vortigaunt energy directly counters gman... Almost like their destruction, enslavement, or scattering would be beneficial to gman... Something that could have been achieved with additional combine troops to Earth.

just buy the laser sight upgrade nerd

>contrarian shitposter who’s never played any half life game

>g-man
>grey man
>Grey Mann
Tf2 is in the half life universe

Gman was a play on a then popular conspiracy theory about aliens/reptilians working with the government disguised as humans.

This characterization is consistent in all the games in the series, he's just no longer pretending to work for a government because that deal died with the government.

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I mean giving it to you from the get go to put a VR play session of HL3 on more equal grounds with a desktop user (minus being unable to 360 noscope in VR). Alyx's combat pacing was built around VR noobies not having the (expensive) sight upgrade.

its not really that expensive, you can get it by the second upgrade terminal, was the first upgrade I got
>Alyx's combat pacing was built around VR noobies
And the game suffers because of it, felt like it never got going I was surprised when it ended as It never felt like it got past any kind of introductory phase

Is he really that bad of a guy?

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Nope. He's a good guy, just with a different agenda than the player. His only bad trait is that's he's opportunistic.

G-Man works for VALVe. His benefactors are the game's creators and his actions are literally the writer making events that produce a story for you to play through.

You know how he's usually just in the distance, watching and how VAVLe does so much play testing they've dropped multiple builds of their games? He's the embodiment of that.

Hm, good though.
But he knew the government will die eventually, no? And he continues to speak like government will persist.
Maybe the original idea was that BM incident was like state-wide, so government will keep it in secret and further games were Roadside Picnic (Stalker) themed, with New Mexico filled with aliens (lol) and closed off from the public. And Xen somewhat conquered by humans. But then devs went to planet-wide cataclysm and introduced combine. Actually, if the world wasn't that fucked up, there would be more space for new games. And by making events global and almost finishing combine in ep2, devs led themselves to this 13yo dead end.

Shit, now I can't stop thinking about Roadside picnic styled sequel for HL1, what could be done there

the current narrative about internal Valve mentality is that the mainline HL games (where the player controls Gordon) should be kept as keyboard+mouse

Good theory.

but she disappeared from the Ep2 ending, wouldn't that mean he took her 24yo self?

Don't know, too scared to get past chapter 3. Poison headcrabs and only a flashlight in the dark are my triggers

the beta footage is interesting: streamable.com/c8d3zf

>who the hell are you?
>that is a question with a multitude-
an odd answer. It's like he's not even a single entity. More like a living concept or something.

Also what's with his multiplying? Does that imply that he's at least partially omnipresent? That he's performing "nudges" on a vast scale? To what end?

Valve even said during development they had to tone down the difficulty levels. How hard is it to just make an extra Easier tier instead of dumbing them all down?

Those screaming retcon, are technically true but I want to look at Ep2's ending from the perspective of it all being part of G Mans plan.

So Ep2s ending of Eli dying HAPPENED, it needed to happen so G Man could show 19 year old Alyx her dad's corpse. He probably could lie or something but showing the actual corpse and the actual future is much more impactful for Alyx and for the audience. It wasn't time travel, 19 year old Alyx saw the future and nudged it, went through the next 5 years and then disappeared just before Eli was originally killed. The only thing that's got me wondering is why G Man was in the hanger of the post credits? As of Alyx's disappearance wouldn't Gordon be out of his 'employment'?

>He clearly let himself be captured, and tricked Alyx into being hired to replace Gordon
He's mentioned before that he had agreed to abide by certain "restrictions". Along those lines maybe in order for him to "hire" (abduct) someone certain requirements must be met. For instance, the subject in question must be indebted to him, which was accomplished when his meddling saved Alyx's father.

Speaking of the beta, what is the symbol of the ash tray?
>Playing with Ash tray in beta
>First object to guide Alex in mirrior room are a bunch of Ash trays
>Wake up and smell the ashes

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Employment isn't necessary for gman stalling, see HL1 stalkings.

These things don't contradict themselves imo. I guess I'm just old but these conspiracy theories were basically mainstream, referenced in X-Files, Men in Black etc.

It's a theme, aliens pretending to be friendly with the government, on surface sharing technology in exchange of some favours, but in reality having their own agenda and own plans that only benefit themselves.

Just like Gman. I don't really think he was written as some omnipotent Eldritch horror. Half-Life's story was just conspiracy theories: the game. The only thing it lacked was a crashed UFO somewhere in Black Mesa.

Quit being a fucking pussy you fag

Trannies don't like feeling like they can't handle real difficulty so they dumb it down so any retard can breeze through the game and feel like a god.

>The only thing that's got me wondering is why G Man was in the hanger of the post credits? As of Alyx's disappearance wouldn't Gordon be out of his 'employment'?
he can clearly be in multiple places at once, so his presence somewhere doesn't carry the same cost that it does to regular humans/mortals. But still, his presence there does indicate that gordan, eli, or both are still on his radar, even if for a comparatively smaller reason. Who knows what he's planning. Maybe Gordon is still his primary tool and Alyx is a means to that end somehow. There's no telling what convoluted bullshit he has cooking up.

They can't afford VR with their monthly meds/surgeries needed.

I just figure it was a placeholder prop.

If that level filtered you there's no way you'd be capable of taking on the most infamous chapter that comes later.

but during HL1 Gordon was a prospective hire, and given that G Man has some level of future sight it'd make sense for him to be watching him in Gordon's present.

Not him, but that chapter broke on my first playthrough. After the initial section with Jeff he just fucked off and I never saw nor heard him again until the end of the chapter.

Its in the final game too. Its the only object in there besides himself.

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maybe the Gman (or his employers, I suppose) are after some sort of technology or event that the human could only create after being subjulgated by the Combine's invasion
>causes the event that eventually brings the Combine to Earth
>does nothing to stop them from taking over the planet
>eventually brings back Freeman to help the Resistance
this supposed piece of technology is not the Borealis; we know from Epistle 3 (even if it's not canon, it should still reflect the original ideas behind the character's motivation in previous games) that the Gman didn't care for it's destruction in the kamikaze plan and did nothing to stop it
basically what I'm trying to get at is that I believe the Gman doesn't particularly care about helping or deterring either the Combine or humanity, instead he wanted humans to have access to Combine technology and, while being backed into a corner, use it to create something or cause something that'd be beneficial to him

I'm aware of Jeff.

Spoilers don't bother me.

That was the only time I died to him. I genuinely thought he was out of the picture. The developers played me like a damn fiddle throughout that whole chapter and each time I realized what I had to do to progress made my gut sink. It was pretty well thought out.

Sofia = City 17 confirmed

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He has no goal since there is no plot. The Half-Life series is nothing more than a tech demo with a half-assed "story."

I just wish it didn't bust on my first run. It was one of the biggest non-gamebreaking bugs I had.

That's ignoring the four times I did have a game breaking bug where my offhand just disappeared and stopped functioning in the game, which forces you to reload an earlier save before it occurs, since that busted state gets saved otherwise. Lost a good hour of progress due to that over the course of the game.

>Wake up and smell the Ashes
That's the only thing I can think that would be relevant.

>tfw the load screen wasn't all glitched/fucky in the last chapter

Maybe I got lucky, I had no bugs except physic/tracking glitches. Sucks it fucked up Jeff for you, that was my favorite chapter of the game.

This is some grade A autism and I fucking love it.

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This could make sense, perpetually putting pressure on humans to push teleportation technology. Would also explain why he saved Eli, a major head of that research... But then again, gman sorta shoots back and forth in time for the ending of Alyx, so I'm not so sure if he even cares of the technology is developed more than once, and in his original timeline it seems to already have been developed, so I don't see why he cares anymore.

Come next month I'll replay it again to do the Gnome run (maybe on easy to speedrun it, not like that section of the game will be any different anyways), and hopefully see how that is when it doesn't break.