Is the iconic character always in the wrong place at the right time… or is he there on purpose? That’s the question G-Man’s actor explored. 

As part of a documentary celebrating the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, Secret Tape (also behind the videos for NoClip) chatted with some of the game’s major character actors. Among them was Michael Shapiro, who not only voiced Barney Calhoun, but also G-Man. For him, too, it was a thrill to portray someone who transcends dimensions but somehow always follows us! 

“The moment you see him, you realize there must be a lot of moments where you don’t know he’s watching you. He’s not Big Brother – that doesn’t make sense to me, that he would be a Big Brother, because that’s kind of industrial and bureaucratic, and this is much more intimate. He’s always looking over your shoulder… watching, waiting for the moment to… speak. That’s where I think he lives. 

I always felt that G-Man knew a lot and cared about a lot that we didn’t quite understand, that he kind of enjoyed fucking with people and massaging reality in a way that he had a unique ability to do. There were also aspects of him that I knew early on, like his relationship to time is very different than you or I would think. In my mind, he could literally be in two places at once. And so sometimes there was kind of an implied hitch in his timing, or he’s experiencing two or three different moments at once, and that might be funny for a reason that you don’t know because you’re in one time with him at one moment,” Shapiro said. 

Only Valve knows the truth behind G-Man’s story. But what he did do is make him a really mysterious character from the beginning. He really seems to be able to be in several places at once, but he’s not just a simple character who’s part of a government conspiracy. 

It could be a lot more, but maybe it’s better that we never know exactly what! 

Source:PCGamer