So what ARE they making in this factory? (ep. 37-38)

B

Bugthing

Well-known member
Rewind. So it's.. chemical processing? Into what?

Meat (?) gets dumped into water in the meat dumping room. There's no real current, so it just float around and rot, mostly. I imagine there some sort of layer of goo starts to form on top of the wayer. It gets sprayed by some sort of yellow stuff, I guess to make the goo sink and not build up against the wall at the end. It goes underneath the rotating thing and ends up into another basin. Three conveyor belts stick into it, but not far. So only things that float up from this basin are likely to get caught into it and then flattened by those crushes. Flat, rotten goo. Then there is a set of pistons which kind of push things off the conveyor belt. Which is weird, but I guess that too builds up over time until it ends up on the conveyor belt again. And then those last three crushes. And a chemical vat of some sort. It doesn't connect to it, but in the same room are more conveyor belts and.. furnaces? It's either biological goo or burned goo that they are making. But it all ends up in similar looking chemical vats nonetheless.

Ideas? I am thinking.. I don't know what I am thinking. I just needed an excuse to look busy and write for five minutes. Cheetos. What is up with this level design, seriously. And why did it take 25 years for me to notice the senselessness of it?

 
...why did it take 25 years for me to notice the senselessness of it?
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Because as a game-play element, it makes sense. You were probably thinking, "Oh, the people that made this game want me do dodge these crushers." and not "Wait... what do the people that made this factory need with all these crushers?"

But judging by the acid, the crushers, explosives, and other such things designed to smash things to itty-bitty pieces, they're probably making individual atoms. Or they discovered that the aliens love to ride conveyor belts and all of that is an elaborate trap to kill any aliens escaping from the "Questionable Ethics" lab.

Or maybe they're making Soylent Green

 
I've always understood that this part of the facility was your first inclination that the aliens that you're attacking might not be 100% bad and that what you're seeing with the conveyor belts, tanks of acid, and so on are actually testing various things such as how Xenian meat ("residue processing") reacts to acid, heat, and pulverization. If the area was populated with workers, the things like what Gordon thinks is a "shrine" that "breaks down forever" would actually make sense.

Then, when you get out of the "meat processing ride" area and into "Questionable Ethics", you realize that the aliens you've been fighting might also be victims of scientific experiments (though I love pulling headcrabs out of the cage and then flipping on the electrical table thing and gibbing everything in the room....though to be fair, I also pull HECU into the room, so I guess you could call me sadistic. But, that's not me. That's Gordon! He HAS to blow everything up! It's the only way to prove he's not crazy!).

I'm thinking that, once the Xenians are killed by the scientific experiments, their chunks are sent down to the residue processing facility where they're experimented on (heat, crushers, etc). Gordon asks why the pistons would just push everything to the side. Perhaps the wall that the crushers are pushing stuff against is porous and things seep through to a collection bin somewhere.

 
Makes sense, but they use the human-gib model, not alien. A design flaw? Theory flaw? Explanation as to why the workers aren't there anymore?

 
They are not making anything. This is waste disposal. Hence all the crushers, incinerators and toxic waste containers.

 
Well, the trip mines are just random stuff left behind by the HECUs. Remember they are also all over the place fighting the aliens and killing black mesa staff.

 
Which raises the question, why there? How would they know Freeman or ANYBODY would be there? In fact, how did THEY get there? And it obviously wasn't a structural weakpoint that would cause the building to collapse.

 
Makes sense, but they use the human-gib model, not alien. A design flaw? Theory flaw? Explanation as to why the workers aren't there anymore?
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Well, that may be what it was designed for but now it's been repurposed...
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Which raises the question, why there? How would they know Freeman or ANYBODY would be there? In fact, how did THEY get there? And it obviously wasn't a structural weakpoint that would cause the building to collapse.
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The tripmines are for anyone still alive in the Residue Processing Facility. Just as a precaution. Remember, the HECU was there to "kill anyone associated with the project".

 
Good point about the trip mines and the other this is sort of what I was implying with the "Explanation as to why the workers aren't there"

 
But the machine could've been originally been used on aliens and is now used for disposing of workers and those associated with the project. "Body? What body? Hehehehe"

 
Yeah it's waste disposal, but remember this was before Valve put logic behind their level design. Hopefully the Black Mesa mod will explain better.

 
"This section made no sense what-so-f***ing-ever, so we trashed in favor of being electrocuted by vortigaunts and having the player stripped of their weapons and imprisoned on Xen. Since we wanted to ad some stealth elements, once they escape the cell, they will have to sneak un-detected past some Alien Grunts and working vortigaunts until they get to a table with a knife on it. They will then have to silently kill or sneak past all of the aliens until they reach a teleporter/portal that will take them to the beginning of 'Questionable Ethics'"

 
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