Lore:
-
What G-Man did to the Combine soldier is a similar thing to what Dusk did to the bullsquid in chapter 2; except Dusk made the creature explode instantly so it didn’t suffer… G-Man made it a slightly slow process here because… well he’s just like that.
-
A large creature such a strider would be quite difficult to kill via this method for a regular agent like Dusk, hence why she blasted the crap out of it instead. Not typically something they do as it expends energy and they usually prefer to be more subtle, but she wanted to make sure those particular rebels survived. If G-Man had performed the same attack the shockwave would have been a lot more powerful being an elite agent.
Behind The Scenes:
-
Writing the death sound of a strider was random…
-
The guys shouting ‘strider’ all the time drive me crazy in HL2…