G-Man (Half-Life)

G-Man
Half-Life character
Left: The G-Man, as he appears in Half-Life. Right: His appearance in and after Half-Life 2
First game	Half-Life (1998)
Voiced by	Michael Shapiro

The G-Man, voiced by Michael Shapiro, is a mysterious recurring character in the Half-Life series of first-person shooter video games. Described as a 'sinister interdimensional bureaucrat', he is known to display peculiar behavior and capabilities beyond those of normal humans. Throughout the story of the Half-Life series, the G-Man plays the role of an overseer and employer - he controls player-character Gordon Freeman's insertion to or extraction from the game world on several occasions, and his monologues with Freeman reveal his importance in the series' overall narrative. He claims to answer to some unseen higher authority which he refers to simply as his 'employers'. His mysterious nature has made him an icon of the Half-Life series, with his identity and motives remaining almost completely unexplained.

The G-Man's name comes from "G-Man", an American colloquialism meaning "Government Man". However, within the Half-Life games, he is identified by this name only in the program code and the multiplayer profile menu as a default name option, not within the story itself; his name is derived from his Half-Life model and entity name and has since been reused in subsequent games of the series. His name has been confirmed and he has been referred to by it in documentaries featuring Valve employees, as well as in the voice actor credits for Half-Life 2 and in the book about game development Raising the Bar.

A description of the G-Man's nature is given in the comment section of the file "npc_gman.cpp" in the Source SDK file "sourcesdk.gcf": "// Purpose: The G-Man, misunderstood servant of the people." In the official Half-Life audio script, the G-Man is referred to as "Administrator", suggesting he is the one overseeing experiments. This title was later retconned to refer to Wallace Breen.

Frank Sheldon, the person on whom the G-Man's Half-Life 2 model is based, was originally slated to be the model for Dr. Breen. It was chosen for the G-Man's appearance after Bill Van Buren created a modified image of Sheldon, with chopped-off hair and a scaled down face shape. Doug Wood, who designed the facial expressions of the Half-Life 2 G-Man model, wanted the player to never quite know what side the G-Man was on by giving him ambiguous facial expressions.