Forum:The Nihilanth
So, especially since the mind-blowing introduction to Half-Life 2, when you learn Earth has been overthrown by a seemingly infinite, terrifying enemy, I've always wondered what part the creatures of Xen played in this ongoing saga. We know bits and pieces, such as they were possibly running from a greater enemy (the Combine) and that the Nihilanth itself controlled the creatures of Xen, but where did they originally come from? Was the Nihilanth a type of leader-race to the Vortiguants and others, or was it genetically altered like the synths? If so, how did it come to revolt, and why to the Vortiguants never speak of their servitude to the Universal Union, while they DO speak about their slavery to the Nihilanth AND their cultures focus on Antlion husbandry?
If the creature WERE aware of the Combine, why would it risk leaving the safety of Xen, which we assume the Combine could not or would not go, in order to attack humanity? Even more confusing, both Vortiguants and the Nihilanth are aware of the Gman, who is apparently NOT human, and despite the fact that humanity is responsible for stealing from Xen it is the Nihilanth who chooses to keep the portal into our world open even while knowing the Gman steers Gordon for his own goals, which appears the capture of Xen.
I suppose it is possible the Gman swaps sides depending on the paycheck, using Gordon to flush out the creatures of Xen and deal with them for the Combine, then using the one Free Man to clean up the mess he made by revealing humanity to the Combine and handing over Earth in the process.
So many questions when you look back, and my biggest one currently is; will we go back? I would love to see Xen with this new, shiny Source technology, and I bet there's a lot of advantages Xen has when dealing with the Combine, seeing as how it introduced us to this story, it gave us our allies, the Vortiguants, trained Gordon as an inter-dimensional badass, and lets not forget, it was a Xenian emitter that allowed Magnusson and Kleiner to destroy the brewing super-portal after they launched their rocket!I am the Alpha and the LAMBDA 06:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Very good points! I think its safe to say that your a bigger fan than I. I would love it if Valve took us back to Xen. It could really give Humanity some more allies (Grunts, Gargantua, another Nihilanth {although unlikely} maybe even the headcrabs). There are a few possibilities that can occur is Valve decides to bring Gordon back to Xen...not to mention, as Lambda said, how it pwetty it would look! Prospektor 15:32, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree, I'd love to see Xen revisited. A lot of people hated that part of the first game because of the jumping puzzles but honestly, I've always enjoyed it because of the atmosphere. After all the frantic combat back at Black Mesa it was mindblowing to explore a new world and see all the creatures you'd encountered up until that point in their natural environment (or, at least, an environment they'd adapted to), and displaying quite different behaviour in many cases. I'm sure if they did do Xen again, they could take more care with the gameplay to keep the naysayers happy. --MattyDienhoff 15:37, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I think the question of why the nihilanth would risk leaving xen (or at least sending parties out of xen) is quite an obvious one. Having seen much of xen, I would suggest that it is hardly brimming with resources. Likely an invasion of earth is similar to the race x reasoning, or even the combines' very own motivation, to pilfer resources from earth. Considering this, it would seem earth is likely one of the best stocked planets available, otherwise we certainly wouldn't be getting so much attention. One of the reasons I'm so looking forward to the release of black mesa source is the re-visiting of xen, not only with prettier skins, but with real physics. I can imagine going there with the gravity gun, either in episode three, or perhaps in a later game, would offer a lot of new and exciting challenges, too. And dare I mention, with respects to xen, the ASPHD? Or would that just be too exciting a suggestion for mere mortals to handle? Your question about the nihilanth, although unanswerable by myself, does remind me of a similar thought I had come up with. More about headcrabs, but along the whole telepathic instruction theme. I think you can guess where this is going, but I'll continue anyway. We always presume that headcrabs, like the flood in halo, take control of the central nervus system by burrowing through the skin into the top of the spine, or somewhere in the "primative" section of the brain. Yet we can see that other creatures the reside largely in xen use telepathic communication (and in some cases maybe even telepathic control), so why not headcrabs? An interesting premise that, perhaps, that headcrabs may not need dirrect contact to start to gain control over people? This would explain, to some extent, the scene at station 6, where a resistance member is seen struggling to fight off a headcrab which was attempting to latch onto his head, and failing. It either suggests the headcrab taking some slight control of its' victim at close range, or that headcrabs are much stronger than a creature of that size should be.Dylan Bobson 09:29, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
