May 31, 2014 It is also the chapter in which the Black Ops are first introduced. Shephard comes across them in a hangar where they are loading a nuclear warhead into the back of a truck. Half-Life - Female. The Combine Assassin, also known as Female Assassin or simply Assassin, is a female transhuman enemy cut from Half-Life 2, the successor of Half-Life’s female assassin and a predecessor of the Overwatch Elite, who inherited her helmet. The Combine Assassin is mostly a slimmer and female version of the Overwatch Elite, with an almost identical helmet. Nov 29, 2010 Ths is a fast-black zombie, a zombie conversion of a Black ops women. Half-Life - Female Assassin Overview - Duration: 5:38. MarphitimusBlackimus 1,440,080 views.
- Half-life Black Ops Assassin Female
- See Full List On Half-life.fandom.com
- Half Life Black Ops Assassin
- Half Life Black Ops Mod
- Half Life Black Ops Redux
- Black Ops Half Life Wiki
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/HalfLifeOpposingForce
Go To
'Government cover ups werenotin my job description!'
Advertisement:
Half-Life: Opposing Force is the first Expansion Pack to Valve'sHalf Life 1 developed by Gearbox Software.
Taking place during shortly after the Resonance Cascade at the Black Mesa Research Facility, Opposing Forcefollows the perspective of Corporal Adrian Shephard, a member of the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit that Gordon Freeman fought during the events of the first game. When his squad is set to contain the alien outbreak at Black Mesa, Shephard ends up separated from the rest of his team when their Osprey is shot down. Upon learning that the military is ordering a complete evacuation of the facility, Shephard attempts to reach the extraction point while shooting any alien that crosses his path. However, he soon learns that Black Ops, another military unit sent into Black Mesa to contain the aliens, has different ideas on how to handle the remaining soldiers..
Advertisement:
Half-life Black Ops Assassin Female
Opposing Force featured several new weapons for the player to use, as well as the ability for the player to control A.I. squad members to aid them during certain set pieces. A new faction of aliens, referred to as 'Race X', appear as enemies hostile to both Shephard and the aliens from Xen, forcing the player to figure out new strategies in how to deal with these beings.
Half-Life: Opposing Force contains examples of:
- Admiring the Abomination: Shephard seems weirdly affectionate towards the spore launcher, even petting the thing when you have it equipped and he's left idle.
- Anti-Villain: Many of the HECU personnel are of the well-intentioned variety. This game makes it clear that, while they indeed performed less-than-desirable actions against the Black Mesa personnel, it turns out that they're just as in the dark as the former are with regards to what is actually happening. They're all in for stopping the Alien Invasion, but unfortunately, they have little idea on how to actually stop the aliens from pouring in aside from shooting whatever creatures they come across. By the time Shephard receives the order to pull out, many of the HECU just want to get out of Black Mesa alive and in one piece together, rather than indiscriminately slaughter the scientists and security personnel for no gain.
- Armies Are Evil:
- Zig-zagged with the HECU. While they are ordered to and do silence witnesses like in Half-Life, they are also shown to genuinely care for one another, won't back down in the face of hostile aliens or traitorous Black Ops, and will make it a point to escape Black Mesa together or die trying.
- The Black Ops play this trope straight to a T. They have none of the HECU's redeeming qualities, and are established to be cold-blooded killers whose only concern is killing as many aliens and remaining witnesses as possible.
Advertisement:
- Artificial Stupidity: Friendly NPCs tend to get lost, stuck in rooms, refuse to follow you after a while and shoot you in the back. HECU Marines, in particular, suffer from this quite badly at times, forcing you to double back if you need them.
- Ascended Extra:
- The HECU. They go from generic antagonists to being the main focus of the expansion, down to the Player Character playing as one. For starters, they're now known as the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit, while in Half-Life they were known only as 'The Military'.
- The Black Ops. In the original game, they only came in female variants, and only a handful of personnel was fought, with no explanations to their presence in Black Mesa. Come to this expansion, they now get a male variant, additional equipment in the form of unmarked black trucks and Apache attack helicopters, are encountered much more frequently, and the details of their presence are now revealed.
- Attack Its Weak Point: The Gene Worm's weak point is a portal contained in its belly. When shot, the Worm retaliates by summoning a Shock Trooper from this portal.
- Badass Army:
- The HECU. Even after their commanders abandon them, many remaining HECU units, in sheer desperation and bravery, continue to fight the invading Xen and later Race X aliens while trying to make it out of Black Mesa alive.
- The Black Ops. Compared to the HECU, they have access to the same equipment but are also far better trained and specialized. And they do a much better job at handling both the Xen and Race X invasions, managing to be on equal footing with them for a while longer. Like the HECU, however, they're eventually overwhelmed as well and resort to nuking the facility.
- Race X's aliens. Their Shock Troopers are arguably tougher to take down than the Alien Grunts, and their Pit Worms and Gene Worms are shown to be just as tough, if not tougher, than the Gargantuas.
- BFG:
- The Displacer Cannon is very obviously inspired by the trope namer.
- In terms of conventional firearms, the M249 SAW is this, being able to rip apart even the largest Race X aliens with a burst.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Aside from the HECU and Xen Aliens in the first part, there's now the additional problem of the Black Ops, whose Fiery Coverup mission now involves silencing the HECU, and Race X, another alien race taking advantage of the Resonance Cascade for its purposes.
- Black Helicopter: The Black Ops, fittingly enough, field all-black AH-64 Apache helicopters against the Race X invasion, in contrast to the green ones fielded by the HECU.
- Book Ends: The game begins and ends in a military transport aircraft.
- Boss Battle: The Pit Worm and the Gene Worm.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Voltigores. They're fought semi-regularly by the last few levels, have massive HP pools, and have attacks that potentially One-Hit Kill Shephard and other allied NPCs should it connect.
- Captain Obvious: In the training level, Shephard gets shot point-blank with a shotgun to demonstrate the effectiveness of the PCV armor vest.'As you can see, you areNOT dead!'
- Cavalry Betrayal:
- Shephard discovers that the HECU aren't in Black Mesa to rescue the personnel there, but to silence them, no thanks to a surviving scientist telling him. Fortunately for them, Shephard himself can be played as a subversion.
- Shephard, and by extension several other HECU Marines find out that the Black Ops aren't there to help them get out of Black Mesa, but to silence them.
- Combat Medic: One of two new HECU classes introduced. His task is mainly to heal you and your fellow Marines when they're injured via syringes. Downplayed in that, while he does have a handgun for combat and can gun down the more lightly-armed enemies, he's still highly vulnerable to enemy fire due to his mediocre health.
- Continuity Nod: Opposing Force is full of them, being an Interquel, starting from the opening chopper ride (where you see the mountain pass Freeman navigates) to witnessing Freeman enter the Xen portal!
- Creator Cameo:
- In 'Pit Worm's Lair' where you have to press a button to eliminate a boss, you need to first enable a valve and a gearbox.
- In the 'Friendly Fire' two scientists are lying dead near their desks, which carry the name-tags 'S. Reardon' and 'S. Jones', referencing Gearbox Software developers Sean Reardon and Steven Jones.
- Cut-and-Paste Environments: When using the Displacer Cannon's alt-fire, you can teleport to a random location somewhere in the Half-Life universe, and these locations are different any time you load into a new story map. However, after discovering the first five or six maps, you come to realize that the later maps will reuse the previous locations with a slight variation on the items in the area. If they don't spawn you over a bottomless pit, that is.
- Darker and Edgier: This expansion is notably more bleak than Half-Life. For one, the game starts as the Xen invasion overwhelms the HECU's hold on Black Mesa, and by the time the first level proper starts, most of the facilities that Shephard treks through are already overrun with aliens, heavily damaged by the fighting and subsequent bombings, and many HECU units are dead or dying by the time Shephard makes contact with them.
- Deus ex Nukina: Happens to Black Mesa at the end of the game, when the Black Ops and later the G-Man successfully activate a Mk. IV Thermonuclear Device.
- Developers' Foresight:
- The ammo belt feeding the M249 is fully animated, being properly removed when reloading while there's still ammo and the belt running dry. This is as opposed to other games when the belt is infinitely long and mysteriously disappears when reloading. Most games, even modern ones, don't even do this.
- One part has Shephard finally catching up to Freeman and seeing him just as he jumps into the Xen portal (which the player does in the main game). Should the player manage to kill Freeman in the very small time window he is visible, the game grants a Non Standard Game Over for breaking story canon:SUBJECT: SHEPHARD
STATUS: EVALUATION TERMINATED
POST MORTEM:Subject attempted to create a temporal paradox. - The player can also follow Freeman through the portal, resulting in them coming out in the same area as Gordon, albeit several feet away and over a bottomless pit. There's just enough time for the player to catch another glimpse of Freeman (and maybe take a shot at him) before falling and getting the same Non Standard Game Over as the previous example.
- Downer Ending: Adrian is placed into stasis as a detainee, with the G-Man implying he'll be frozen for a very, very long time. Also, Black Mesa is destroyed, and practically all of Shephard's fellow Marines are killed trying to escape.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Drill Instructors Barnes and Sharpe play this straight to a T, constantly belittling and berating Shephard until he can prove himself in the various obstacle courses and shooting ranges.
- Drought Level of Doom: The entire second half of the game is really stingy with health and armor. It's not uncommon to be at half or less of both for most of your playthrough. The displacer can be used to find additional health, armor, and ammo, but it uses up a lot of relatively rare ammo, and has a chance of teleporting you into a bottomless pit.
- Earth Is a Battlefield: On top of the already large conflict between Black Mesa staff, HECU, and Xen, two other factions are showcased in this expansion: a more elaborate Black Ops. team (which, while featured in the original Half-Life, are given a greater degree of precedence) and the opportunistic Race X.
- Elite Mooks:
- The Alien Grunts and Alien Controllers from Half-Life return. And unlike in Half-Life, here they're fought only a handful of times.
- The Black Ops as a whole are this, being much tougher to take down than the HECU Marines, while also coming in a stealthy female variant.
- Race X gets the Shock Troopers, their equivalent of the Xen Alien Grunt, which hits just as hard, if not harder, and is just as tough to take down.
- The Engineer: One of two new HECU classes introduced here. His job is to destroy barricades hindering the HECU's progress, such as locked doors or steel bars. For combat, he has a Desert Eagle to protect himself.
- Evil vs. Evil: The encounters between the Black Ops and Race X aliens later in the Black Mesa incident. One are an elite US military unit tasked to Leave No Witnesses behind, human or alien, while the other are Planet Looters intent on exploiting Black Mesa's and later Earth's resources for their own needs.
- Eviler Than Thou: The Black Ops to the HECU. They look down on the latter as 'grunts' doing dirty work, and silence any Marines they encounter, apparently because they now know too much to be left alive.
- Expansion Pack: The first of two that Half-Life would receive, in fact.
- Eye Beam: The Pit Worm shoots one from its sole eye. Players who Go for the Eye can cause it to flinch, but won't otherwise harm it.
- Fluffy Tamer: Shephard can use weaponized Barnacles and the Spore Launcher, essentially an infant version of the Shock Trooper being captured and studied by Black Mesa Scientists. And then there's the Snarks from the original game, which Shephard gets access to later on.
- From Bad to Worse: You'd think that with Gordon dealing with the Nihilanth on Xen, things in Black Mesa would improve, right? Wrong. In fact, it gets much worse. Race X, a new alien faction, begins their own invasion once the Xen invasion begins to peter out. They promptly fight not only the HECU and the Black Mesa Science team but also the Xen aliens AND the newly-arrived Black Ops. The latter are continuing to cover-up the disaster by killing any more witnesses they come across, which now include the HECU stragglers left behind in Black Mesa. By the final chapters of the game, it gets so bad that even the better-trained Black Ops are being overwhelmed, so they resort to setting off a nuclear warhead in an attempt to stop the invasion for good.
- Go for the Eye: The Pit Worm can be briefly stunned this way, and the key to destroying the Gene Worm involves shooting its eyes repeatedly.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: The third-to-last chapter of the game is titled Foxtrot Uniform, which will look innocent enough to those without any knowledge of the NATO phonetic alphabet. Doubles as a Meaningful Name when taking typical military jargon into account, given that the chapter involves Shephard and his HECU comrades attempting to navigate and survive the absolute chaos of a four-way warzone that the surface of Black Mesa has transformed into.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: The detached Barnacle, but only to biological matter. It also doubles as a lethal weapon, heavily damaging organic enemies (or in the case of headcrabs, reeling them in and instantly killing them).
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Exaggerated; Race X as a whole gets little elaboration, and they're unlikely to get more due to Valve discontinuing their use. All that is known about them is that they're an alien faction separate from Xen, and they want to capitalize on the Resonance Cascade for their purposes.
- He Knows Too Much:
- Many HECU stragglers trapped in Black Mesa become targets for the Black Ops, probably because now they're viewed as liabilities.
- Shephard is detained by the G-Man thanks to knowing about too many details regarding the Black Mesa Incident. It was either being detained, or being killed on the G-Man's employers' orders.
- Hellish Copter: Shephard's Osprey, as well as another Osprey in their flight at the start of the game, are shot down by Xen alien craft not long after arriving over Black Mesa, resulting in the former crashing down and the latter exploding mid-air.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: Adrian Shephard has a Pipe Wrench, Combat Knife, a weaponized Barnacle Grapple, Glock-17 (Beretta 92FS in the HD Pack), Desert Eagle, MP5 (M4 in the HD Pack), SPAS-12, a guided Rocket Launcher, Grenades, Satchel Charges, Laser Tripmines, Snarks, M249 SAW, the Displacement Cannon, an M40A1 Sniper Rifle, Spore Launcher, and a Shock Roach. Plus with a certain cheat code, he can also equip the unused weapons from Gordon's arsenal (Crowbar, Colt Python, Crossbow, Tau Cannon, Gluon Gun and Hivehand) from the main game.
- Justified Tutorial: Because it's set at base camp, and Shephard has just been accepted into the specialized training course.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Happens to the HECU as a whole. Many of those left behind during the evacuation of Black Mesa slowly come to realize that they are now no different from the Black Mesa personnel when the Black Ops begin killing them for knowing about the disaster.
- Late to the Tragedy: By the time Shephard's team arrives over Black Mesa, the Xen invasion is apparently already trampling the military hold over the facility, given that there are no fighters to cover the Ospreys, and that there's no other HECU units near the crash site to back Shephard's squad up. And by the time Shephard wakes up and recovers from his injuries at the crash, his superiors are already giving out orders to pull out of the facility entirely.
- Leave No Witnesses: The Black Ops, aside from continuing the HECU's Fiery Cover Up mission, are also tasked with silencing any HECU stragglers left behind.
- Lightning Gun: The Shock Roach is a living version of this trope.
- Living Weapon: The Spore Launcher, Shock Roach and Barnacle Grapple. All three are, in reality, living alien organisms that can either fire projectiles capable of killing enemies or in the case of the last one, pull its user closer to living matter (or, in the case of smaller enemies like Headcrabs, the other way around).
- Loose Canon: The franchise was licensed to Gearbox for this installment, who opted to invent their own enemy faction, Race X, so as to not interfere with whatever Valve's intended cosmology for the game was. This faction has not appeared or been mentioned in the franchise since, as Marc Laidlaw has stated that they don't fit into his vision for the half-life multiverse, and thus Valve decided to leave Race X alone in case Gearbox ever decided to make more half life games. It would seem that Gearbox wound up contradicting valve's intended ideas anyway, though, as they included in this game a creature called the gonome, which appears to be a further-mutated version of the headcrab zombie, none of which appear in Ravenholm in Half life 2. Black Mesa getting nuked, at least, has however been declared canon.
- Manual Leader, A.I. Party: You're regularly teamed up with a squad of AI Marines which you can direct, and use to perform certain functions (but you can't directly play as one of them).
- Mêlée à Trois: In total, there are five separate factions fighting each other in the Black Mesa incident. There's Gordon Freeman and the Black Mesa staff, the Xen aliens, the HECU marines, the Black Ops, and Race X.
- Not So Different: Invoked by the G-Man towards Adrian Shephard.G-Man: I admit, I have a fascination with those who adapt and survive against all odds.. they rather remind me of myself.
- Planet Looters: Race X, who are clearly shown capturing humans for experimentation and taking as much of Earth's resources as they can, in addition to terraforming several areas to suit their physiology. Ironically Race X seems to be Not So Different from The Combine, if less militarily and technologically advanced, and heavily organic life forms instead of synthetic.
- Powered Armor: The HECU's Powered Combat Vests serve as these, being functionally similar to the HEV suit used by the Black Mesa Science Team (minus the High-Jump Module). In addition to providing protection against bullets and explosives, they also allow their soldiers to operate in the hazardous environments they were meant to operate in, such as radiation-filled areas or burning buildings.
- Press X to Die: You can get an electricity-firing weapon called the Shock Roach. You're fully capable of firing it underwater, even though doing so kills you immediately.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: Shephard briefly witnesses Gordon Freeman jumping into the portal to Xen when the latter attempts to escape through the Lambda complex.
- Puzzle Boss: The Pit Worm. It's defeated by activating the surrounding machinery to flood its nest with harmful chemicals, which requires the player to sneak or run past the boss several times to reach the necessary switches.
- Radio Voice: Averted and Played Straight. When Shephard is talking with other HECU Marines in person, they talk to him in normal, human voices. When using an actual radio to communicate with them, however, their voices are overlapped with static.
- Replacement Flat Character: The Black Ops fill the void that the HECU played in the first game: Human enemies that use squad tactics. While the main Mooks use only MP5s as opposed to the occasional HECU Shotgunner (in addition to the Sniper Rifle that one time), they have a lot more health. Their motives are also sinister and are never portrayed sympathetically.
- Retcon: In the original game, the assassins seem to be on the side of the marines, as Gordon first gets attacked by them right before getting ambushed by marines and left to die in a trash compactor. In this game they are clearly working for the black ops and hate the marines (which makes more sense, as both the black ops and assassins wear all-black ninja like clothing, but is still a retcon.)
- Semper Fi: The HECU, who are explicitly stated to be members of the US Marine Corps. They are the protagonists of this game, are given a sympathetic perspective and are shown to be a Badass Army and a Band of Brothers despite the situation in Black Mesa going From Bad to Worse with each passing hour.
- Scenic Tour Level: Shephard takes a ride aboard an Osprey (Goose 7, to be specific) with his squad at the beginning of the game.
- Sniper Rifle: Replacing the crossbow of Half-Life is the M40a1 Sniper rifle, which previously appeared there as an unusable weapon used solely by HECU snipers. Here, Shephard is given training on how to use one during Boot Camp, and later obtains one after killing a Black Ops sniper in Foxtrot Uniform.
- Shark Tunnel: 'Crush Depth', where a few of the lovely Ichthyosaurs have broken out of.
- Stealthy Mook: As with Half-Life, female Black Ops are this. They use silenced weapons, never speak like their male counterparts, and on Hard Difficulty, use an Invisibility Cloak that the Male variants lack.
- Too Dumb to Live: In Welcome to Black Mesa, a security guard Shephard meets tries to open a steel gate, which is currently electrified thanks to a broken generator behind him. Unsurprisingly, the guard is shocked and dies instantly, forcing Shephard to shut down the generator himself.
- Unique Enemy:
- There is only one Black Ops soldier that uses the M40A1 Sniper Rifle; every other one uses the M4/MP5.
- The Alien Controllers only appear once here, despite being common endgame enemies in the original game.
- A total of less than three or so Alien Grunts are fought, with the later levels instead having you fight the Race X equivalent in the Shock Trooper.
- Vader Breath: The 'Gonomes', the final evolution of the Headcrab Zombies, could easily be identified by a rattling noise.
- Van in Black: The Black Ops use unmarked black M35 trucks as transports. While lacking surveillance equipment, they still possess the ominousness part.
- Vengeful Vending Machine: Early on, Shephard encounters a fat security guard named Otis with his hand stuck in a vending machine. The guard curses, with lines like 'Stupid machine!' and asks the player for a quarter. It's possible to operate the machine with the Use key, and this makes a candy bar pop out. However, the guard does nothing if you do so.
- Visual Pun: To defeat the Pit Worm, you have to first reactivate a Gear Box, and open a pressure Valve. Hmm.. For a bonus, before activating the valve you have to use a Steam Vent. Since Opposing Force came out years before Steam, it's coincidental, but still pretty funny.
- Weaponized Offspring: According to Word of God, the Spore Launcher is an infant Shock Trooper.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Race X and poor Adrian Shephard. Marc Laidlaw has said that he doesn't want to develop further on Race X, saying that they were only experiments by Gearbox for future games and that Gearbox would have developed them further if they were still doing expansions for Half-Life. He has also jokingly called Adrian a case of Schrödinger's cat, as he is in a state of being both canonical and non-canonical at the same time. His ultimate fate depends on what Valve wants to do with him in the future. Gabe Newell has reportedly been wanting to incorporate him in the canon for some time.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: Here, you play as Corporal Shephard, a newly-inducted HECU Marine who's part of the military task force sent to silence all those involved in the Black Mesa Incident. While Shephard arrives and barely recovers from unconsciousness just as the military begins pulling out, your allies are all trying to work together to pull out.
Index
This is a list of characters in the Half-Lifevideo game series, which comprises Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and their respective expansion packs and episodes.
Introduced in Half-Life and expansion packs[edit]
This section deals with characters that appear in Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay.
Gordon Freeman[edit]
Gordon Freeman, Ph.D., is the silent protagonist of the Half-Life series and the playable character in Half-Life and all games in the Half-Life 2 series. He is a theoretical physicist and holds a Ph.D. from MIT in that field. At the time of Half-Life, he works at Black Mesa Research Facility, a facility in New Mexico, conducting nuclear and subatomic research.
The G-Man[edit]
The G-Man (voiced by Michael Shapiro) is a mysterious recurring character in the Half-Life series of first-person shooter computer games. He is known to display peculiar behavior and capabilities beyond that of a normal human, and his identity and motives remain almost completely unexplained. He plays the role of an overseer and employer, both observing the player as the games progress and pulling strings to control the outcome of specific events throughout the Half-Life saga. The G-Man's constant appearances in the Half-Life games, as well as his revealing monologues with series protagonist Gordon Freeman, imply that he is of great importance and somewhat anchors the endeavors of the player. His mysterious nature has made him an icon of the Half-Life series.
Barney Calhoun[edit]
Barney Calhoun is the playable character in Half-Life: Blue Shift and a major character in Half-Life 2 as well as Half-Life 2: Episode One. Michael Shapiro provided Barney's voice in the games of the Half-Life series. Scott Lynch, Valve's Chief Operating Officer, lent his face to the game for use in-game as Barney in Half-Life 2.
Barney's name stemmed from the earlier alpha versions of Half-Life in which the model for the security guards held a resemblance to actor Don Knotts, inspiring comparisons with Knotts's character Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show, which in the United States has long been a disparaging term for an inept policeman or security guard. Initially, the 'Barneys' were intended to be hostile NPCs who would attack the player.
In Half-Life: Blue Shift, the playable Barney progresses through Black Mesa to escape the events of the Resonance Cascade and is able to do so, in contrast to Gordon Freeman and Adrian Shephard, who are held in stasis. In Half-Life 2, Barney works as a mole for the Lambda Resistance in the Combine Civil Protection Forces. He provides the player information in the first chapter, leading him to Kleiner and Vance, and in the end of the second chapter, he provides the player with his crowbar. The fact that Barney owes Gordon Freeman a beer is a running gag in the series.
Adrian Shephard[edit]
Adrian Shephard, a 22-year-old U.S. Marine Corporal, is the playable character in Half-Life: Opposing Force. Assigned to the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit (HECU) from the fictional Santego Military Base in Arizona, he is one of the personnel sent into the Black Mesa Research Facility to kill the aliens and silence the witnesses, especially a scientist named Gordon Freeman, the player character in the original game. However, during the events subsequent to the Resonance Cascade, Shephard finds himself separated from his unit and fighting for his life.
Unlike the other Marines, he works with the increasingly distrustful scientists and guards in order to make it out of Black Mesa alive. He and Gordon Freeman do cross paths during the game, but at that point, Shephard is merely an observer to a climactic event from the original game: the time when Freeman jumps into the portal that leads to Xen; however, if players tried to follow Freeman, they would appear in Xen but subsequently fall to their deaths. Shephard never fights alongside or against Gordon Freeman.
The G-Man appears to take an interest in his movements, even before the Black Mesa Incident. As early as three months prior, Shephard spots the G-Man during the boot camp training mission. Later on, as he makes his escape from Black Mesa, he comes across a thermonuclear warhead brought in by the Black Ops and deactivates it, but the G-Man later reactivates it, leading to the eventual destruction of Black Mesa. In the end, the G-Man reveals that he has successfully argued for Shephard's life, detaining him in some unknown void. The G-Man expresses a degree of respect for Shephard, offering praise for his ability to 'adapt and survive against all odds' which 'rather reminds [the G-Man] of [himself]'.
Shephard is briefly mentioned in Half-Life: Blue Shift, where a soldier grumbles about taking over some of Shephard's squad's duties.
Shephard was planned to be the player character of Arkane Studios' Ravenholm spinoff game, developed around 2007 to 2008, a project which Valve later cancelled.[1] Valve also affirmed that Shephard had no connection to Portal after players found that the keyboard images in game showed the lit characters 'ASHPD' and believed that hinted at Shephard's return; the letters instead referred to the long name of the 'Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device' a.k.a. the 'portal gun', with the nearness to Shephard's name a 'total freak coincidence' according to Valve's Doug Lombardi.[2]
Rosenberg[edit]
Dr. Rosenberg (voiced by Jon St. John) is a scientist and a survivor of the Black Mesa incident. He first appears in Half-Life: Decay. When Gina Cross and Colette Green first arrive at the test chamber's control room and are receiving instructions from Dr. Keller, Rosenberg interrupts and voices his concern to Keller over having the anti-mass spectrometer run above 90% capacity, which is past the safety buffer zone for the equipment. Dr. Keller, however, dismisses his concern and states that the administrator's orders for this were clear. He tells Rosenberg that he can either stay and watch the experiment or return to his labs by the train yards. Rosenberg remains, and shortly thereafter the Resonance Cascade occurs.
Immediately after the disaster, Rosenberg converses with Dr. Keller and makes it clear that he believes their greatest responsibility should be the safety of the people at Black Mesa. Although Keller thinks that they should attempt to reset the displacement fields first, he eventually agrees with Rosenberg, and they come up with a plan to contact the military, so that they can help and evacuate the facility as soon as possible. Gina and Colette escort Rosenberg through the Hazard Course to a satellite communications center on the surface, where he is able to transmit a distress signal. Dr. Rosenberg decides to wait there for the military, and this is the last time he is seen in Decay as Gina and Colette return below to assist Dr. Keller. However, his voice is heard once more in the game later on.
In Half-Life: Blue Shift, Rosenberg makes his first appearance during the Hazard Course tutorial, long before Calhoun encounters him in the train yards. He can be seen behind the observer's window during the duck-jump portion of the training.
Some time between Gina and Colette's last sight of Rosenberg in Decay and Calhoun's eventual rescue of the scientist in Blue Shift, he tries to enact an escape plan to get out of Black Mesa with the help of several other scientists. During this time, he is captured by soldiers and held captive in a freight car for questioning, while a colleague, Harold, is cornered and fatally wounded. Before Harold dies, Barney Calhoun discovers him, and he instructs Calhoun to find Dr. Rosenberg to help him with his plan. Calhoun is able to reach the train yards and free Dr. Rosenberg. Rosenberg informs him that their plan is to use the equipment in the prototype labs to teleport to safety.
He leads Calhoun to the unused part of the complex where two other scientists, Walter Bennett and Simmons, are already preparing the machine. Rosenberg instructs Calhoun that he must activate and align a relay device on Xen in order for them to be able to accurately set their destination. Calhoun travels to Xen and is successful in accomplishing this task, but after returning through the portal back to Earth (it is here that Gina and Colette in Decay, temporarily caught in a harmonic reflux, hear Rosenberg's voice calling Calhoun through the portal), they discover that they need another power cell to replenish the teleporter's power for their escape. Calhoun acquires a newly charged power cell from the lab's sub-basement and delivers it to Rosenberg and the others. Dr. Rosenberg then initiates the system and brings it online. They all narrowly avoid the military's invasion of the prototype labs, teleporting to the safety of an unnoticed access tunnel. They get into an SUV and leave Black Mesa.
Rosenberg's fate remains unknown.
Gina Cross[edit]
Dr. Gina Cross (voiced by Kathy Levin) is a Black Mesa scientist who first appears as the Holographic Assistant for Gordon Freeman in the Black Mesa's Hazard Course and then later as one half of the protagonists in Half-Life: Decay.
In Decay, Cross is the one who delivers the GG-3883 crystal sample to the delivery system and then heads to an area below the test chamber, where Dr. Colette Green is stationed, to fix a jam in the lift that allows the specimen to be delivered up to Gordon. After the Resonance Cascade occurs, Cross teams up with Dr. Green to battle their way through the now alien-infested facility. They first escort Rosenberg to the surface to contact the military, and then under the guidance of Dr. Richard Keller, they succeed in starting a resonance reversal to help lessen the effects of the dimensional rift.
In Half-Life: Blue Shift, Cross can briefly be seen on a security camera in the surveillance room, delivering the GG-3883 crystal. In Half-Life: Opposing Force, Adrian Shephard finds Cross's corpse in Xen after being teleported there by the Displacer Cannon, which implies that she died sometime after the events of Decay. Randy Pitchford, the president and CEO of Gearbox Software, has since confirmed this fate.[3]
Cross was originally planned to be Gordon Freeman's spouse as well as another playable character in the original Half-Life, but this idea was cut from the final game.[4]
Colette Green[edit]
Dr. Colette Green (voiced by Lani Minella) is a Black Mesa scientist and one half of the protagonist team in Half-Life: Decay.
In Decay, Dr. Green's role in the experiment is to make preparations in a room below the test chamber and initiate the Anti-Mass Spectrometer to run at 105%. Dr. Gina Cross also enters the same room to fix a jam in the specimen delivery system's lift mechanism, meaning they are both in the same place when the Resonance Cascade finally occurs. Following the disaster, the two team up to fight their way through the facility for survival. They escort Dr. Rosenberg to the surface to call the military for help and then, with the help of Dr. Richard Keller, manage to start a resonance reversal to prevent the dimensional rift from becoming too large to be repaired.
The outcome for Dr. Green, along with the rest of the survivors in Decay (with the exception of Dr. Cross, who later died in Xen), is unknown to the other Black Mesa survivors.
Richard Keller[edit]
Dr. Richard Keller (voiced by Brice Armstrong) is a Black Mesa scientist, working with Colette and Gina. He appears in Half-Life: Decay. He is a 55-year-old, senior scientist in a wheel chair. He gives missions to Colette and Gina during the game. Keller also condemns Gordon Freeman and asks himself what Kleiner sees in him. His final fate is unknown.
Keller was originally going to be an antagonist, who lied about his ability not to walk, but the idea was scrapped.[citation needed]
Walter Bennet[edit]
![Ops Ops](/uploads/1/2/7/7/127719019/777528810.jpg)
Dr. Walter Bennet (voiced by Harry S. Robins) is a Black Mesa scientist. He is seen in Half-Life: Blue Shift.
In Blue Shift, Dr. Bennet is seen fixing a battery in Dr. Rosenberg's office, along with Dr. Simmons. The three scientists soon get it fixed with the help of Barney Calhoun, and they start their teleportation out of Black Mesa. The four successfully make it out the facility, making Dr. Bennet one of the few known survivors of the incident. They open the gates and start their journey to the outside world with an SUV.
Dr. Bennet is briefly mentioned in Half-Life: Opposing Force. As Adrian Shephard travels within Sector E of Black Mesa, he enters a testing laboratory where Xen specimens were being experimented on prior to the Resonance Cascade. He opens up a transmission intended for Dr. Bennet, revealing a hologram of a scientist talking about the results of an experiment conducted on a Barnacle, one of the Xen creatures being examined. Following the transmission, Shephard takes a nearby Barnacle specimen that was intended for Dr. Bennet to experiment on before the Resonance Cascade.
Dr. Bennet's final fate is unknown.
Simmons[edit]
Dr. Simmons is a Black Mesa scientist. He is seen in Half-Life: Blue Shift.
In Blue Shift, Dr. Simmons is seen fixing a battery in Dr. Rosenberg's office, along with Dr. Walter Bennet. The three scientists soon get it fixed with the help of Barney Calhoun, and they start their teleportation out of Black Mesa. The four successfully make it out the facility, making Dr. Simmons one of the few known survivors of the incident. They open the gates and start their journey to the outside world with an SUV.
Simmons does not talk at all in the game, and his first name is unknown. Furthermore, his final fate is unknown like all of his colleagues.
Introduced in Half-Life 2 and episodes[edit]
This section deals with characters that appear in Half-Life 2, Episode One, and Episode Two.
Alyx Vance[edit]
Alyx Vance (voiced by Merle Dandridge in Half-Life 2 and its episodes and by Ozioma Akagha in the prequel Half-Life: Alyx[5]) is a prominent figure in the human resistance against the rule of the Combine over Earth and their human representative, Dr. Wallace Breen. Alyx is the daughter of Dr. Eli Vance and his deceased wife Azian, and she becomes a close friend and ally of Gordon Freeman over the course of Half-Life 2.
The 2020 VR title Half-Life: Alyx, which takes place between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2, focuses on Alyx and Eli Vance as they fight against the Combine's occupation of Earth.[6]
Isaac Kleiner[edit]
Dr. Isaac Kleiner (voiced by Harry S. Robins), a Black Mesa survivor, is one of the leading scientists in the human resistance to the Combine. His character design is based on the generic 'bald, glasses (Walter, as its model name suggests)' scientist model from the original Half-Life.
See Full List On Half-life.fandom.com
Dr. Kleiner was one of Gordon Freeman's professors at MIT, recommending him for employment at the Black Mesa to the Civilian Recruitment Division and working with him as part of the facility's Anomalous Materials team. He managed to survive the Resonance Cascade disaster of the first game with the aid of Eli Vance.
In Half-Life 2, he operates an underground lab in an abandoned Northern Petrol building. A teleportation system, developed jointly by Kleiner and Eli Vance, connects to Vance's facility, several miles away. As a pet, Dr. Kleiner keeps a debeaked headcrab he calls 'Lamarr' (after the 1930s actress and inventorHedy Lamarr).
In Episode One, Kleiner appears on the video screens previously reserved for Dr. Breen's propaganda and instructs survivors to evacuate City 17, also encouraging them to procreate. He rallies people to prepare for the Combine's retaliation, stating that several new technologies developed during their occupation would be deployed as soon as possible to help fight the Combine.
In Episode Two, Kleiner is working out of the White Forest Rocket Facility with Eli Vance and Arne Magnusson on a device intended to close the Combine superportal created by the Citadel's destruction. He mostly appears during radio transmissions while guiding Alyx and Gordon to White Forest, and argues bitterly with Magnusson, whom Vance states was Kleiner's rival for grant money at Black Mesa. Upon the discovery of the Borealis in Judith Mossman's decoded message, Kleiner expresses a wish to use the technology residing in the ship against the Combine, opposing Eli's vehement desire to destroy it in order to prevent 'another Black Mesa'.
Eli Vance[edit]
Dr. Eli Vance (voiced by Robert Guillaume in Half-Life 2 and its episodes and by James Moses Black in the prequel Half-Life: Alyx[5]) is a physicist, researcher, and Harvard University graduate who worked with Gordon Freeman at Black Mesa. He wears a prosthetic that replaces his left leg beneath the knee, which was lost when he was attacked by a Bullsquid while helping Dr. Isaac Kleiner climb over a wall into a Combine city. He is Alyx Vance's father; his late wife, Azian, died in the aftermath of the resonance cascade. The leader of the Lambda Resistance, Dr. Vance was the first human being to make peaceful contact with the Vortigaunt species and thus the 'first collaborator', quickly persuading the alien race to ally with humanity against the Combine invasion of Earth. In Episode Two, Eli Vance works at the White Forest base before being killed by a Combine Advisor.
The 2020 VR game Half-Life: Alyx, which takes place between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2, focuses on Eli and Alyx Vance as they fight against the Combine's occupation of Earth.[6] As a result of the events of the game, his death is prevented, albeit at the cost of his daughter Alyx becoming a willing agent of the G-Man. Upon learning the truth, Eli seeks to kill the G-Man to rescue her.
Arne Magnusson[edit]
In Episode Two, Dr. Arne Magnusson (voiced by John Aylward) runs the White Forest base and is described as a Black Mesa survivor. Postscript printers for mac. He gets on poorly with Dr. Kleiner due to their clashing personalities, as spelled out by their very names: 'Magnus' means 'great' in Latin, while 'klein' means 'small' in German and Dutch. Magnusson's peculiar personality seems to have gained him much respect from the Vortigaunts, such as his assistant Uriah, who makes awed references to him.
Magnusson also makes a remark to Freeman saying that if he successfully defends White Forest, then he will forgive Freeman for an earlier incident in Black Mesa, involving his 'Microwave Casserole', a reference to a scene in the first Half-Life.
Dog[edit]
![Half Life Black Ops Female Half Life Black Ops Female](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/half-life/images/3/36/Black_Ops_all.jpg/revision/latest/top-crop/width/360/height/360?cb=20090408011432&path-prefix=en)
Dog is a hulking robot belonging to Alyx Vance, built by her father Eli to provide both companionship and to protect her. Alyx subsequently upgraded the robot into its current form. Despite its name, Dog is anthropomorphic in appearance. Dog provides support to Freeman during training with the Gravity Gun, and makes appearances several times after.
Judith Mossman[edit]
Dr. Judith Mossman (voiced by Michelle Forbes) is introduced in Half-Life 2 as a physicist working with Eli Vance at the Black Mesa East Research Facility. Although she is apparently friendly with other scientists, her condescending attitude toward laypeople annoys Alyx. Over the course of the game, she is revealed as a double agent who betrays the resistance in an attempt to form an alliance with Dr. Breen, then betrays him in turn. In the follow-on episodes, she is again working for the resistance in a remote location.
Odessa Cubbage[edit]
Colonel Odessa Cubbage (voiced by John Patrick Lowrie) is a member of the Resistance against the Combine who speaks in distinct Received Pronunciation. He wears a jacket with emblems on it indicating that he was possibly once a security officer as part of the University of Rochester Security Services. According to Raising the Bar, his model was based on the martial arts instructor for one of the game's developers, and the name was found in a spam filter.
Odessa Cubbage leads a small Resistance base and town, dubbed 'New Little Odessa', in a coastal region outside City 17. Before arriving at New Little Odessa, the player can see Cubbage speaking with the G-Man by looking through a binocular spotting-scope device. When Gordon Freeman arrives at New Little Odessa en route to Nova Prospekt, Cubbage is briefing members on the use of the rocket launcher against Combine gunships. Cubbage entrusts the rocket launcher to Gordon and never turns up to fight himself, instead staying behind to attempt to contact another Resistance settlement.
Grigori[edit]
Father Grigori (voiced by Jim French) is an Eastern Orthodox-like priest who appears throughout the Ravenholm chapter of Half-Life 2. He is the only human survivor encountered in Ravenholm.
Half Life Black Ops Assassin
He speaks enthusiastically about 'tending to his flock', i.e. dispatching the remaining zombie inhabitants of the city with a hunting rifle and homemade traps while offering them consolatory words. He helps Gordon Freeman intermittently in Ravenholm, giving him a shotgun, combat tips and advice mingled with biblical quotations. Eventually, Grigori escorts Freeman through a cemetery infested with zombies to show him a hidden passage to the mines out of the haunted town. After waving Gordon off, Grigori continues fighting the hordes of enemies until he retreats into a nearby tomb, ignites a wall of fire around it and disappears, laughing maniacally.
Wallace Breen[edit]
Dr. Wallace Breen (voiced by Robert Culp) was the administrator of the Black Mesa Research Facility at the time of the 'Black Mesa Incident,' the events depicted in Half-Life, but he was neither seen nor mentioned by name (he was instead referred to always as 'the Administrator'). After the Seven Hour War, he 'negotiated' a peace agreement with the Combine that saved humanity at the cost of enslavement. Dr. Breen was appointed as ruler of Earth — a puppet of the Combine, who have little physical presence on the planet.
Apps for cleaning my mac. I’m so glad I did!! Before I committed, I figured I would give this app one more try. While that is a little pricey for this type of tool, I have paid more for apps that do less, if I want them bad enough. If you want to actually remove the files, you have to pay for the “pro” version.
The Half-Life 2 art book, Raising the Bar, has information that indicates Breen used, at least at one point of the planned story if not in the final version, a radio transmitter tower on the surface (i.e., not in Black Mesa) to communicate directly to the Combine and negotiate a surrender. Draft scripts for Half-Life 2 indicate that this would have been shown in an introductory segment to the game carried out through a series of projector slides. One of the slides would have shown Breen at the foot of a tower wearing a headset linked directly to it, with arms held wide and speaking to the skies.
Breen is alerted to the return of Gordon Freeman in Half-Life 2 when Gordon is temporarily teleported, by accident, to his office in the Citadel. Dr. Breen informs the Combine and immediately dispatches the forces at his disposal to capture Freeman and break the associated Resistance movement in City 17.
Half Life Black Ops Mod
During Gordon Freeman's raid on the Citadel, Freeman is temporarily in the custody of Breen, until Judith Mossman turns against the administrator. During this period, Breen makes a very notable statement while in the presence of Alyx Vance and her father, Eli (who are also in his custody). He claims that Gordon 'has proven a fine pawn to those who control him.' He also comments that Gordon's services are 'open to the highest bidder,' and says he would understand if Gordon doesn't want to discuss it in front of his friends. These remarks imply that Breen may be aware of the mysterious G-Man and his influence over Freeman. It was also mentioned in one of the 'Breencasts' to the Sector Seventeen Overwatch in Nova Prospekt; 'I have good reason to believe that in the intervening years, he was in a state that precluded further development of covert skills.'
When Judith Mossman frees Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance in his office, Dr. Breen attacks Gordon by firing at him with the supercharged Gravity Gun; however, the charge doesn't kill him, and Breen leaves it behind while escaping. Gordon manages to stop him by destroying the Citadel's dark fusion reactor, which destroys the teleporter Breen attempted to use to escape in a massive explosion; the platform Breen was standing on collapses, dropping Breen from the Citadel to his death.
Introduced in Half-Life: Alyx[edit]
Russell[edit]
Russell (voiced by Rhys Darby) is a member of the Resistance who serves as a mechanic.
Footnotes[edit]
Half Life Black Ops Redux
- ^Olsen, Mathew (May 26, 2020). 'The Abandoned Half-Life Project From Arkane Was Going to Star a Fan-Favorite Character'. USGamer. Retrieved May 26, 2020.
- ^Bramwell, Tom (September 8, 2007). 'Valve clears up Adrian Shephard Portal speculation'. Eurogamer. Retrieved May 26, 2020.
- ^'Randy Pitchford on Twitter: @SheathEntertain You've discovered Gina's fate. We do not know of Colette's. I think maybe she's in G-Man's freezer with Shephard.', Twitter
- ^'Interview with Gabe Newell', HalfLife.org, April 28, 1999, archived from the original on May 11, 2005
- ^ abMacgregor, Jody (November 21, 2019), Alyx Vance will be voiced by a new actor in Half-Life: Alyx, PCGamer, retrieved November 21, 2019
- ^ abIngraham, Nathan (November 21, 2019), 'Half-Life: Alyx' is a VR prequel set before the events of 'Half-Life 2', engadget, retrieved November 21, 2019
References[edit]
- Hodgson, David. Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar. Prima Games, 2004. ISBN0-7615-4364-3.
- Hodgson, David. Half-Life 2: Prima Official Game Guide. Prima Games, 2004. ISBN0-7615-4362-7.
- Commentaries for Half-Life 2: Episode One. Valve. 2006.
- Commentaries for Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Valve. 2007.
- Commentaries for Portal. Valve. 2007.
Black Ops Half Life Wiki
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Characters_of_Half-Life&oldid=974683998'