Half-Life Fallout: The Complete Unifying Theory of the G-Man - Half-Life Fallout

suicide_mission, on 29 April 2011 - 02:08 PM, said:

Or Cave Johnson is the G-Man acting out his revenge on Black Mesa by himself.

I really like this theory btw, good job Vercengetrix! It sounds quite believable and not that far fetched at all, so it might turn out being the truth.
Also, yay for Portal 2 at least generating a little bit of HL speculation.

I had to make an account just because I found this thread. First, I'm all for speculation, just not wild speculative claims. Take a good, unbiased look at this entire thread. Well obviously that's kind of hard. But my point is, coming in here... this is just crazy. I was looking at a whole bunch of stuff last night, and I wish I could cite sources.

Valve said in an interview (To game informer? can't remember) that they certainly wanted to keep Portal-Half-Life connections light in Portal 2. That was early on, but it was also well after the Cave Johnson script leak. Now they could have made changes before the realease, which essentially they did by reducing his role, but I find it highly unlikely.

Ok... Magic powers from Moon rocks? Come on, that's just plain dumb, and ridiculous for Valve. Can you imagine Valve essentially saying, "Yeah um Cave Johnson got his powers from Moon rocks, and became G-Man. Valve always trys to include a scientific basis for their ideas, even if the science isn't quite proven, but it's never something that science knows to be not true.

While the hole from your explanation of his powers should automatically void the rest of the story, I'll make my english teacher proud, and invalidate the rest of the points.

You made a comment about Cave Johnson's obsession with testing, and not wanting to invalidate a test. That's not really evident in Portal 2's dialouge. He even tells you about the control group, then comes back to tell you "the boys in the lab" said he shouldn't talk about the control group, for risk of invalidating the experiment. Cave is certainly a "do it his own way" kind of boss, not the member of some higher organization who forces him to "abide by certain restrictions."

Now the jumping through portals till he dies is a good point. When I had heard that I had interpreted it as one of Aperatures "test variables" like the postcard microchip, and the coffee that might solidify in your brain. I figured Cave was putting moon rock poisoning into test subjects, and seeing if they could be cured. But it's unlikely that he accomplished anything from jumping through portals himself. If that message was his last, it would seem more likely because of the ambiguity. But he is heard further along, and in worse condition.

If you're looking for an explanation into G-Man's speech, it's most likely because it's not a human voice recording, but a text-to-speech program/device.

Now I do feel bad for doing my best to smash your theory, and I do welcome any retorts. I feel bad because, like you, I love connections in the Half-Life universe, and scoured Portal 2 for them. I didn't even come to this theory in my own thought, and was ultimately disappointed to find that Valve did their best to keep it as unrelated as possible. The surface is care-free, the picture of Earth shows no destruction or wastelands, And Black Mesa is only referenced to make the competition between them and Aperature still evident in Aperature's past. This game is pretty free of any reveals or big game changing connection (Though I still search, and you should too), but do try to apply speculation to the larger picture, because in this case, this kind of connection goes completely against Valve and their plan for this game. Doing an epic connection like this would only serve to diminish the work they put into fully fleshing out this universe and making the Portal storyline stand on its own. I really do love the speculation though, much appreciated.

Martian712, on 29 April 2011 - 07:34 PM, said:

Valve pretty much messed the 'trying to be serious' or 'realistic' part when they invoked the crossing of both universes together through the borealis. Ep3 will have to center around Aperture Science in some way, definitely not in a dark humour kind of way, but certainly its essence of a competitive company that took science to the extreme and built incredible, incredibly powerful machines.

Valve didnt reduce this role, it actually expanded it in hopes of hyping ep3 desire by including the Borealis easter egg, the comics with the gravity/portal gun model and cave johnson's disdain for Black Mesa. If anything, I would expect Valve to reduce the impact of any of these since its already in the past and ignorable for Chell (but not for us!)

Quote

Its not unlikely, the Xen portals were obviously built upon the foundation of the portal gun; And the portal gun used 'moon rocks' whatever that means. (substance found in the moon?) Cave Johnson inst a scientist, and he doesnt need to give you some fancy sciency explanation for what he does.

I am unsure, but I believe the BM portals are really self contained portals that use Xen as a stabilizing container, possibly energy source. The jumping through portals for a cure could very well mean that they built some portal within portal to create time dilation or access another dimension like Black Mesa did, even time travel could be very well possible. Death of Cave Johnson wasnt proven, and if you consider the mercury poisoning to be canon, then they obviously altered information they released to the public in order to trick others of their operations.

As for the everything turned out ok, we dont know that, white forest was pretty nice, anyone stepping out of a hole without seeing the outside for 100 years pretty much wouldnt think anything bad about the place.

I still hold my theory to be potential: Cave Johnson accessed a dimension were he was able to make a deal with the G-man for Black Mesa's downfall & of the earth.

suicide_mission, on 01 May 2011 - 04:50 PM, said:

Well to be honest Half-Life 2 is more serious than Portal and it's clear that they want to keep the tones of both games distant. That doesn't mean both games can't draw story points from one and other, but it doesn't throw the "realism" of Half-Life (2) out of the window.

Quote

The moonrocks just proved to be very conductive to portals. They discovered that after they made a portal gun. That doesn't mean the portal gun works on moon rocks.

Quote

The BM portals use Xen as a relay. There is no way you can go directly from point A to point B with your teleporter, but you can go to point C' which lies outside your dimension and travel on to B from there.
Overall I doubt the jumping through portals was meant as more than a desperate grab to stave of his death. And later on he refocuses that on personality uploading, making it his number one priority, which probably means the portal thing didn't turn out as well as he had hoped.

Quote

From a story-telling point of view that sounds horrible.
The Xanatos chess game the G-man and his employers are playing with the humans as pawns (probably vs. the Combine) turns out to be nothing more than the revenge of a human who jumped into a portal and got the G-Man to do it.
That like having this entire complex and very intriguing back-story to a murder victim and in the end his girlfriends kills him in a crime-of-passion. It's certainly a twist, but you'd probably end up pissing people of by making the mysterious and interesting back-story play second fiddle to a more mundane thing coming from left field.

Berrie, on 01 May 2011 - 01:55 PM, said:

You are right, from rechecking, its just a conductive element, all the white walls are based on the moon rock itself, rather than the portal device. 70 million dollars worth. They seem to have achieved a portal capable device by the end of tier 3, 1981-85

Quote

The g-man does not care for humanity, all the actions between humans & the combine are inconsequential to him. g-man is nothing more than a business man, pimping out subjects he finds to be worthy of appropriating, even Breen was involved in the attempted acquisition of Gordon Greeman, so given that both were administrators of their respective facilities then it isnt soo far of a stretch.

Wait, is this a gman theory thread that has survived for more than a day on HLF? Holy shit...

suicide_mission, on 01 May 2011 - 09:19 PM, said:

I don't think all the walls are based of moon rocks. You can place portals on the early test-chambers. It just so happens that moon-rocks(gel) is a surface which you can easily use to create portals on. It's (I think) implied they used portals before the moon-rock thing.

Quote

Yes but Breen wasn't acquiring Gordon Freeman as BM-administrator, but as a pawn/figurehead of the Combine. This position obviously allows him that information and is actually quite a difference from stumbling upon the G-Man and asking him to screw your competitor over after your death.
Furthermore the G-Man talks more in terms of employers/bosses rather than clients as you put it.

It's clear that humanity isn't really important in the long run and perhaps the Combine are just a small part in the game that's being played, but I seriously don't think that this entire thing can be put down squarly at this dying man screwing over his competitor. That would just be a complete waste of potential.

Berrie, on 01 May 2011 - 05:12 PM, said:

It doesnt matter what status Breen had, it only matters that Breen was aware of g-man's existence, or atleast the universe in which he can be accessed, and that Gordon Freeman was up for grabs to "the highest bidder"

Quote

Whatever his position was, it was obvious that he was there to fulfill contractual obligations, nothing for himself, or atleast that is what I presume.

Quote

It all comes down to Gordon Freeman's role in the whole big thing, its not clear to me what that is, but what is clear is that it is serving the purpose of a higher being.

suicide_mission, on 02 May 2011 - 12:18 AM, said:

Or so he said. I'm not to sure whether that is true or some mind-game he played on Gordon, like all other speeches up until that point.
And it shows that the Combine are aware of the G-Man's existence. As dimension hoping post-singularity slugs that seems likely. A dying CEO, whose portal technology seems to remain in it's own worldline, that comes across a whole lot less likely.

Quote

I agree he's not his own boss. But if someone is renting out your services it's not him.

Quote

I don't think Gordon's position isn't really all that important to the matter whether everything is Cave Johnson's revenge or an inter-dimensional power play.
The way the Half-Life story has been set-up so far makes the latter more likely. The former makes the events of Half-Life 1 a prank gone way bad.

I think the G-Man's name is Ronald

hawkesnightmare, on 09 July 2011 - 05:18 AM, said:

That's an interesting theory!

I too had to make an account to comment on this.

• Have none of you actually played Portal 2?! If you have then why are we saying the portal gun doesnt work on moon rocks? (Sorry Spoiler but its for a good cause). How does Chell defeat Wheatley at the end of the game? But shooting a portal at the moon and one at the floor and space essentially sucks Wheatley out and almost kills Chell. So why is that even a discussion? Its very plausible that Johnson could have shot a portal to the moon, whos to say Chell was the first to do that?
  
  
• A friend of mine came up with this theory that I believe makes much more sense.
  "Cave Johnson could have developed powers similar to the g-man due to the moon rocks and excessive portal hopping. G-manappears to have some respiratory abnormality which may remain from the moon rocks. However, the g-man has the same appearance at black mesa as he does throughout. Gman provides the crystal that launches the resonance cascaed. Breen knows the gman and was the boss at black mesa, cave may have been cured but gained a sickly look, found xen and the crystals through his portalling. Not having the facility to conduct the resonance cascade himself, he used black mesa. He wanted to bring the combine to earth or something similar. Also, the base that Judith Mossman is last seen at looks like Aperture's interior and the gman appears there. Also Gman's face is similar to Cave's.
  The only issue with that theory is what motivation would Cave for just bringing the combine to earth, seems kinda random. Then
  again so does changing to a science company from a shower curtain company overnight as well, which leads me to number 3.
  
  
• After playing through Portal 2 several times, I noticed that GLaDOS and Cave both share a hatred for Black Mesa. But this is more of a "Burn in Hell" feeling they have instead of a "They are business rivals we have to out compete". My theory about this, is that at one point Cave was not a scientist, but a salesman or someone in the hierarchy of Black Mesa during which he had a small side company "Aperture" that made shower curtains. Probably around 1943 or 44 we can assume that some sort of falling out took place between Cave and the current leader of Black Mesa. This would explain the random purchase of a salt mine in Upper Michigan and then converting his extremely profitable business into a Science company that ended up only ever living in the shadow of Black Mesa. Their scientific products where never purchased by the government, the only thing that they ever got from Aperture (much to the disdain of Cave) was shower curtains. This would therefore amplify his already hostile attitude towards Black Mesa.
  
  
• So if we take #2 and #3 and put them together we have some motive for (in the case that Cave Johnson is in fact the GMan) him bringing the Combine to Black Mesa. A means of revenge. Possibly he struck a deal with the aliens and thought that after they destroyed Black Mesa, they would leave but much to his chagrin they stayed and conquered the world... yeah. But this almost makes sense as well because we notice that in the Hal-Life 2 through Ep.2 story arc that the GMan appears to be working on his own in those. In the first he is a messenger but in the others he seems like he has gone rouge.
  
  
• Also does anyone remember GLaDOS saying that Mr. Johnson was beyond death or something to that extent?
  The more I read and play the games the more I am convinced that Cave is #1 Not dead, and quite possibly #2 The GMan

This post has been edited by Brumisator: 20 January 2012 - 01:56 PM
Reason for edit: This post is now paragraph-tastic

Wheatley, on 20 January 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

Hi There! Welcome to Half-Life Fallout, don't drink the water! or was it drink more water??... I keep forgetting, here, have a glass of water!


Now on to business:

Nobody said that moon rocks do not work on the portal gun, but I had mistakenly said that the portal device required the moon rocks to operate (ie, the moon rocks generated the portals), when it was confirmed that moon rocks provided a means to place portals onto surfaces (white paint)

I do like your theory that CJ was able to also discover that you could teleport to the moon, so he might be living there...

While I do believe Cavey Boy is out there, somewhere, I still dont think Valve wants to add any more of the whackyness of Portal into HL2, so, for all intents and purposes, he is likely dead and would not play any roll at all in ep3.

suicide_mission, on 20 January 2012 - 09:03 AM, said:

Haha btw sorry if I came on too strong for the first post lol. BUT if the theory stands that Cave Johnson is the GMan, then actually he has been in it from day one and has been a serious character with a time of being sarcastic way back in the day. Also idk how terrible itd be if HL had a dash of Portal humor thrown on top of it. I mean it might make the game just a bit easier to digest since it game be a little overbearing at times because of the gravity of the situation. Still we haven't seen the end of either Wheatley or Cave for that matter, weather we see them in the next Portal installment or in EP3. Nonetheless we can safely assume that since Cave was supposed to be the main character of P2 he isn't going to be a forgotten character.

They've stated they want to keep the two series fairly autonomous, so I doubt they're going to interlink the two more than they already have. I doubt CJ is the G-Man and I doubt any Portal characters are going to be appearing in the next installation of Half-Life.