How does Gordon survive at Xen without helmet?

[Jack Noir]

Wouldn't liquid oxygen freeze his veins?

[Alyxx Thorne]

It has to be liquid? XD

[Mr. Mister]

Probably redirects some of his blood into a container of some sort where there's a stick messing around with it, therefore oxygenating it. Moreorless. Prbab-WAIT!

That's right!

The reason the suit needs energy to provide him with oxygen is because it gets such a resource from water hydrolysis!

Ok, one mistery solved. Let's get back to the no-elmet in Xen thinguie.

 

Honestly: Why keep wandering around when suchj a fact can give Gordon half an episode of jokes?

[Jack Noir]

It has to be liquid? XD

I heard that having bubbles in your blood will kill you. And well, solid oxygen would be even colder than the liquid.

[danielsangeo]

Forcefield generators in the suit provide a bubble of breathable air in environments where ambient air (or lack thereof) is deleterious to human health.

 

Yeah.

 

And these generators are powered by the bio electrical activity in the human body. Yeah, yeah. And the beating of one's heart turns a rotor that, combined with one's body heat, helps to power the generator. Yeah, that's the ticket.

 

Screw helmets, man! I've got Science!

[Connectamabob]

Serious answer: He just holds his breath underwater. Only reason the suit appears to use power when swimming and running is because the devs either didn't want or to couldn't code an extra bar for stamina. As for Xen, it obviously has a compatible atmosphere if the Xen life can breath okay on Earth.

 

For a long time I thought Gordon's suit did have a helmet. I never suspected otherwise 'till I saw a pic of the multiplayer Gordon model years later. I still think it's better to assume he has a helmet than to try and explain the lack of one. Either way you end up having to fudge or ignore something, so the assumption that demands less wins.

 

Fun answer: first time he went under, he accidentally inhaled a little Xen fish, which just happens to excrete oxygen bubbles when it breathes. He's had it stuck in his throat ever since. Only reason he doesn't choke on it is because he's effectively breathing through it. It gives him a little extra oxygen underwater, filters out the bad gasses from the Xen atmosphere, and prevents his voice from working.

[Mr. Mister]

I insist: just hydrolisys. The suit takes two molecules of water (H2O) and uses energy to turn them into two molecules of hydrogen (H2) and one of oxygen (O2).

[Connectamabob]

I like to imagine that Xen isn't so much a proper universe itself as a geometrically defined void between universes. It has its own spacetime, but its form is dictated by the geometric relationships of the the larger universes that make up its "walls", rather than by its own internal forces. Imagine a bunch of soap bubbles crowed up together, then imagine a long, narrow, winding void formed by edges where multiple bubbles meet, but surface tension and pressure imbalances prevent them from fully sharing a single vertex.

 

Obviously that requires taking critical liberties with the way soap bubbles work, but it is only a metaphor after all. Besides, if not all universes share the same constants, that might make it hard for them to tessellate properly even if they do have squishy mergeable boundaries.

 

Anyway, the spacetime inside Xen is all torqued and folded and compressed according to the forces defined by the boundaries of the universes that form the boundaries if the Xen universe. So space inside Xen has hard little knots and twisted creases/ribbons in spacetime running it's length that act like singularities, ether drawing mass like a gravity well, or repelling it, causing what little mass there is in Xen to collect as strings of little "islands" at wells and equilibrium points. This is why the "islands" Gordan visits appear to have a strong, consistent directional gravity while also being tiny and apparently suspended in mid space.

 

The constants of Xen spacetime are the same as our universe's, but there are many different universes making up Xens "walls", with several different stable arrangements of constants. There are only a handful of such stable constant arrangements though, so they repeat along Xen's length. Only mass and creatures from universes that share the same constants as Xen can exist inside Xen and use it as a "border world" universe.

[Pinkie Pie]

Isn't Xen supposed to be like a world between worlds? I mean it's called the `borderworld'.

[scott155]

I insist: just hydrolisys. The suit takes two molecules of water (H2O) and uses energy to turn them into two molecules of hydrogen (H2) and one of oxygen (O2).

I'm pretty sure that's what his beard does.

[Alyxx Thorne]

My theory, since both Adrian Shepherd and Barney Calhoun can breathe on Xen just fine without a helmet, is that the atmosphere on Xen is breathable by humans, and this would also explain why the aliens can invade earth the same way without need for any suits.

 

Most likely the team was sent in with helmets to protect their heads, not to breathe. Or just for simple security measures.

[Kaito Kid]

Well, it is right that valve didnt have anything to do with opposing force and blue shift, therefore making those not proven to be canon, but valve did develop half-life one but they didnt officially publish it, that is what sierra did. This means since gearbox developped op4 and bshift but valve officially accepts them as expansions (and I have no idea where to place decay in this theory), we can say they are as much official as the original game and are more than probably canon. Since Valve loves to taunt us with news, maybe they will not ever refer to those storylines, but wont ever contradict them either to make sure we never know the truth, just like they are gonna do with gman (seriously? you still hope knowing who he is?) and they may not even have any explanation for gman, but they want us to think they have one and that they dont wanna tell us, they want us to turn crazy.

[Scorpia]

My theory, since both Adrian Shepherd and Barney Calhoun can breathe on Xen just fine without a helmet, is that the atmosphere on Xen is breathable by humans, and this would also explain why the aliens can invade earth the same way without need for any suits.

 

Most likely the team was sent in with helmets to protect their heads, not to breathe. Or just for simple security measures.

 

I gotta say it Alyxx, Adrian Shepherd wears a face mask. he's exempt from that. your point is valid still.

 

and also Xen creatures can breathe on earth just fine. (assuming they have a system that requires an intake/outtake of air to function.)

[Pinkie Pie]

Well yeah but it's not a diving mask that divers wear underwater with the air tanks on their backs, it's more of a gas mask suited to filter out Earth gas. It might not even have been able to handle whatever Xen threw at him.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Guest (see edit history)

[Scorpia]

yea, i didn't really think of that, i just thought mask = O2.

[Alyxx Thorne]

Exactly, and my point, and I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned it before, is that the aliens are able to breathe on Earth, and IF Xen hypothetically did have a different atmosphere, they wouldn't have been able to as our atmosphere would probably be as toxic to them as theirs would be to ours.

 

So it's very likely they have a similar atmosphere.

[Scorpia]

Do you mean that no one in this thread mentioned it? because i did in that post above pinkie's. i just didn't really expand on it like you did. :/

[Alyxx Thorne]

Do you mean that no one in this thread mentioned it? because i did in that post above pinkie's. i just didn't really expand on it like you did. :/

Oh bullocks, I screwed up again.

 

Credit to you then.

[Ray]

If Blue Shift was made by Valve my respect for them would be greatly lowered.

As I said, Valve had nothing to do with the expansions, Gearbox was tasked with making them, hence why you don't see any of the Gearbox stuff in HL2.

 

This is correct, which is why I'm afraid for all of those who hope to see Adrian Shephard in future Half Lifes will be sadly disappointed.

[Delta 757]

Isn't Xen supposed to be like a world between worlds? I mean it's called the `borderworld'.

I'm pretty sure Dr. Breen was referencing Xen at the end of Half-Life 2 with "Worlds, stretched thin across the membrane where the dimensions...intersect..." So yeah, it's something weird.

 

This is correct, which is why I'm afraid for all of those who hope to see Adrian Shephard in future Half Lifes will be sadly disappointed.

Well, that's what mods are for.