Video Game Overanalysis: Half Life
ScrewedIn 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Monolith is a mysterious geometric form of alien origin--in Clarke's novel, a crystalline pyramid surrounded by a spherical force field; in Kubrick's film, a flat black rectangle. The Xen Artifact which triggers the Black Mesa incident is shown in forms similar to both of these descriptions during the first part of the original Half Life game.
In both cases, it is the unforeseen consequences of studying these artifacts which triggers the events of the story.
In 2001, the monolith is a testing and teaching tool used by an unknown higher intelligence to monitor mankind's progress and determine their worth (or at least their intelligence) as a species, and perhaps to influence their evolutionary progress. Exposure to the monolith (specifically, curious examination of the monolith) provides mankind with knowledge and triggers mankind's ascension to the next evolutionary stage, and in the end, actually functions as a dimensional gate to an unknown universe. The Xen Artifact most certainly does provide knowledge, and definitely facilitates dimensional travel--again, only for the protagonist and only at the end of the story. The Black Mesa incident also sets off the chain of events which lead to the Combine invasion of earth, and the Combine's experiments with "upgrading" humans (a concept deliberately compared to evolution within the game's subtext.)
If we are to take the Xen Artifact as a monolith, then the supplier of the monolith is the higher intelligence monitoring mankind. The supplier of the Xen Artifact was the G-Man, who continues to monitor Gordon Freeman--who is significant in this scenario, because he was the only person to touch the artifact directly--with much curiosity throughout the series. After the Black Mesa incident he places Freeman in stasis, suggestive of Dave Bowman's stasis during space travel and possibly his confinement in the victorian environment (which kubrick hints at being a "zoo") at the end of the film. This may suggest that Freeman's awakening at the beginning of Half Life 2 is his "rebirth" as an enlightened being after visiting the borderworld.
If we are to take the supplier of the monolith as the same force which influences mankind's evolution, this puts the G-Man in the service of the Combine.
Writing this shit down before I forget it. Not because it's valuable information, but because it will bug me when I'm trying to remember it later
Devious Comments
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"There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)
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"Would you kindly pick up that short-wave radio....
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.... No that's an empty can......Getting warmer...... Stop walking into the wall...
........ Its the bloody thing talking to you! Christ!"
I believe the "crystalline pyramid surrounded by a spherical force field" was only in "The Sentinel" - unless there are multiple published versions of 2001 which I am not aware of.
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It's unlikely the G-Man is a rogue element, because after the Black Mesa incident he says to Gordon that "I have recommended your services to my employers", who have in turn offered Gordon a job. (Is working for these employers an ascension to a higher plane of existence? The G-Man's abilities suggest so.)
This reinforces the idea that if nothing else, the attack on black mesa (like mankind's voyage to jupiter in 2001) was a test, perhaps to see which scientists made it through. The G-Man calls Black Mesa an embarassment, perhaps because most of the scientists failed to pass.
With 2001's space voyage--under the watch of a murderous A.I.--in mind, consider this:
In the spirit of competition with Black Mesa, was a survival test also administered to Aperture Laboratories, with even more disappointing results?
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I invited you to the OWN ZONE
WE HAVE T'CHANNNGE
TIME TO TURN THE PANNNGE
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I invited you to the OWN ZONE
WE HAVE T'CHANNNGE
TIME TO TURN THE PANNNGE
--
"[Insert Thoughtful Quote Here]" - [Guy Who Said It Here]
I'm not partisan, I disagree with everything.
Visit the ~laZardo-portfolio today!
If the G-Man has a star pupil from Aperture Science, I doubt it's Chell--only because he never communicates with Chell. But Chell's story does share many attributes with Gordon's. Either way, if there is a champion from Aperture labs, the next step would be to pit them against Black Mesa's champion, and it looks like it is headed that way.
I had thought that the disappearance of the Borealis was an act of desperation by GLaDOS to protect her backup... But it DOES seem like a G-Man kind of thing to do.
Incidentally, all of the G-Man's tests seem to involve deliberate risk. The Black Mesa incident happened because they knowingly ran their equipment at unsafe power levels. It was minutes after Eli Vance expressed regret over that incident, and decided to stop playing the G-Man's game, that he was forcibly disqualified. And we know from the end of HL1 that this is exactly how the G-Man responds to rejection.
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I invited you to the OWN ZONE
WE HAVE T'CHANNNGE
TIME TO TURN THE PANNNGE
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