Who are the Black-Ops?

[pasta864]

Who are the Black-Ops, and why do they want to kill the H.E.C.U. soldiers too? I looked up Black-Ops on Google and I found out that the term "Black Operations" (Black-Ops for short) is used to refer to illegal/unethical government operations, but nothing about an actual military faction. Can someone explain better?

[PsyWarVeteran]

Made up nonsense by Gearbox. In Opposing Force you play as a soldier, so there were no soldier enemies for you to fight. They invented "Black Ops" to act like main human enemies to replace grunts.

Story-wise the grunts are the silencers, now Black Ops are the silencers of the silencers.

[hoaxey]

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

Made up nonsense by Gearbox. In Opposing Force you play as a soldier, so there were no soldier enemies for you to fight. They invented "Black Ops" to act like main human enemies to replace grunts.

Story-wise the grunts are the silencers, now Black Ops are the silencers of the silencers.

Black Ops were in this game, made by Valve, not Gearbox. They are the female assassins. Excuse me if I have misunderstood your post.

[PsyWarVeteran]

Originally posted by hoaxey:

Black Ops were in this game, made by Valve, not Gearbox. They are the female assassins. Excuse me if I have misunderstood your post.

No. Female assassins were always part of the grunts. Gearbox retconned that and made them "Black Ops".

[Sunk Cost Fallacy]

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

Originally posted by hoaxey:

Black Ops were in this game, made by Valve, not Gearbox. They are the female assassins. Excuse me if I have misunderstood your post.

No. Female assassins were always part of the grunts. Gearbox retconned that and made them "Black Ops".

Technically speaking, the Female Assassins that Valve made never interacted with the HECU grunts in HL1. So you never knew if they were passive or hostile to them.

But since they had the same goal (cover up the BM incident and silence everyone) and were sent by the same contractor (US government), it was safe to assume they were allies on the same side.

...Until Gearbox came and retconned that with Opposing Force, just so the player can have some human enemies to fight for the sake of gameplay variety.

[PsyWarVeteran]

Originally posted by Sunk Cost Fallacy:

Technically speaking, the Female Assassins that Valve made never interacted with the HECU grunts in HL1. So you never knew if they were passive or hostile to them.

But since they had the same goal (cover up the BM incident and silence everyone) and were sent by the same contractor (US government), it was safe to assume they were allies on the same side.

...Until Gearbox came and retconned that with Opposing Force, just so the player can have some human enemies to fight for the sake of gameplay variety.

We're saying the exact same thing.

[pasta864]

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

Made up nonsense by Gearbox. In Opposing Force you play as a soldier, so there were no soldier enemies for you to fight. They invented "Black Ops" to act like main human enemies to replace grunts.

Story-wise the grunts are the silencers, now Black Ops are the silencers of the silencers.

I see. Thanks for the clarification.

[hoaxey]

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

Originally posted by hoaxey:

Black Ops were in this game, made by Valve, not Gearbox. They are the female assassins. Excuse me if I have misunderstood your post.

No. Female assassins were always part of the grunts. Gearbox retconned that and made them "Black Ops".

Oh, it's just that on the Half-Life wiki that's how they are described. Black Ops: Female Assassins. I didn't know Gearbox had changed it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

Made up nonsense by Gearbox.

What constitutes is a "nonsense"? Let's not forget that the government literally has sent soldiers to kill the scientists on top of the Xen aliens so what could prevent them from doing the same with their own soldiers?

Cleaning up the mess after the HECU was losing the battle against the Xen forces is expected as a Plan B (then Plan C is to nuke the entire facility, Raccoon City style).

Even if Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Decay are semi-canon (until told otherwise) there's no 0% chances the Black Ops would let the soldiers alive.

Even if it's to give Shepard human foes game design-wise.

[PsyWarVeteran]

Originally posted by pasta864:

I see. Thanks for the clarification.

Originally posted by hoaxey:

Oh, it's just that on the Half-Life wiki that's how they are described. Black Ops: Female Assassins. I didn't know Gearbox had changed it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

My pleasure guys.

[Ffabbia]

My initial understanding is that the female 'Black Ops' were covert specialists (generally referred to as 'assets'), who were outside the normal command chain, sent in to ensure that the clean up was successful after reports came through that the HECU were being overtaxed and in a situation beyond their ability to manage.

Being outside the normal military structure, and officially 'not existing' they'd be under covert orders to eliminate any and all who represented a potential security threat, and this included the HECU marines, as the mere sight of a Black Ops (who officially do not exist) is, in itself, a security threat.

Gearbox simply expanded upon this concept.

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by Ffabbia:

My initial understanding is that the female 'Black Ops' were covert specialists (generally referred to as 'assets'), who were outside the normal command chain, sent in to ensure that the clean up was successful after reports came through that the HECU were being overtaxed and in a situation beyond their ability to manage.

Being outside the normal military structure, and officially 'not existing' they'd be under covert orders to eliminate any and all who represented a potential security threat, and this included the HECU marines, as the mere sight of a Black Ops (who officially do not exist) is, in itself, a security threat.

Gearbox simply expanded upon this concept.

Thanks for the explanation. I think that Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid is also himself a Black Op since he has no weapon and the state will renounce his existence if he ever get captured (similar to Snake Plissken in the Escape series).

Anyway, even nuking Black Mesa won't do anything considering the portal storms shortly followed by the Seven Hours War basically destroying any governmental entity aside from the Earth Administrator, Breen.

[Cat]

Wrong game. They were never trying to kill the grunts in this game. There was no Hecu in this game.

The black ops assassins were part of the military cover up alongside the soldiers to silence witnesses but gearbox decided to make a game with a marine protagonist (a great idea) and decided to throw in human enemies in it. So, they retconned the assassins to be part of a black ops organization they fleshed out who wants to kill marines (now called the Hecu) after the marines were ordered to pull out so they considered the grunts as civilians in the way who they need to kill.

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by Cat:

Wrong game. They were never trying to kill the grunts in this game. There was no Hecu in this game.

Opposing Force is still part of Half-Life.

Originally posted by Cat:

The black ops assassins were part of the military cover up alongside the soldiers to silence witnesses but gearbox decided to make a game with a marine protagonist (a great idea) and decided to throw in human enemies in it. So, they retconned the assassins to be part of a black ops organization they fleshed out who wants to kill marines (now called the Hecu) after the marines were ordered to pull out so they considered the grunts as civilians in the way who they need to kill.

They were called the HECU from the start though.

[PsyWarVeteran]

Originally posted by Ikagura:

They were called the HECU from the start though.

???

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

Originally posted by Ikagura:

They were called the HECU from the start though.

???

They said

Originally posted by Cat:

So, they retconned the assassins to be part of a black ops organization they fleshed out who wants to kill marines (now called the Hecu)

But I told them that they were called H.E.C.U. since the original Half-Life, as simple as that.