>Have to wear the same clothes as everyone else
>No privacy
>No rights
>No hygiene
>forced to do slave labor
>Shit and polluted landscape
>Only food and drink is spiked water and apparently chinese take out
>cant have sex
>No entertainment what so ever other than hearing Breen
>chance to be a fucking zombie
So how the fuck did humanity not willingly commit mass suicide? Not even 1984s government was this deprived.
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people are resilient and adaptable like that la
>being this much of a zoomer
The worst part of this is the Combine is draining oceans via their portals. So basically the Earth biosphere is pretty much doomed in like 50 years.
Yeah but you get 1000 bucks a moth
Thanks to hl2rp on gmod and years of valve workers having open emails, a lot of these questions have been 'answered' by the hl2 writer
Food isn't 'spiked' but it is generic. Imagine all water you taste having a slight chlorine to it, almost survival-tier purification thanks to heavy pollution.
Sex is (i think) possible, but procreation is blocked at the cell-stage.
Entertainment does exist in the form of stuff. I really don't have an answer in this as we can only assume that citizens are allowed to do some basic republic-type stuff in terms of worker groups and parties of some variation - moreso a pseudo-freedom instead of just being every man for himself on each street, being unallowed to speak more than a whisper. To elaborate, many hl2rp servers have modified canon slightly to allow for these 'worker' parties to exist as well as several sectors of worker to exist, as well. None if it is really needed when you consider an all-powerful omniscient AI exists, but players having fun is more important to overall game/server health.
Slave labor no, forced yes. 8 hours of factory work each day, or more. I forget how much exactly.
Hygiene, yes. Inside most of your daily ration packs (enough to get through each month) are your usual basic hygienic supplies - toothpaste, pads/tampons for women, etc.
Privacy exists, just because they took doors off a lot of things doesn't mean you can't have a conversation with someone. Or own a door, for that matter.
Wearing the same clothes is also pretty okay in my book because it's not overtly autistic and you still have a t-shirt underneath
Still better than Trump's America
Chinese are still kicking and conquering the west, i don't get your point
This, even if Gordon managed to drive the combine off of Earth, what good would it do? The combine fucked Earth's biosphere sideways, it would never recover.
Informative post thank you
Unironically the only choice for humanity js to BE the Combine. Aka use the teleportation technology to go to places like Xen and drain its resources.
Kek deep down I'd be like all things considered this is pretty fucking cool
Carbon stars with ancient satellites colonized by sentient fungi. Gas giants inhabited by vast meteorological intelligences. Worlds stretched thin across the membranes where dimensions intersect... Impossible to describe with our limited vocabulary!
You can have sex, the suppression field doesn't do anything about libido/sexual function
All it does is disrupt embryonic protein chains, so babies can't form
Essentially you just don't have to wear a condom
you unironically have more sex now though
How? Just look at modern day America, it's pretty much the same thing right down to the cant have sex. You realize the majority of mutts who post here dont even know what sexual pleasure feels like, right? They literally were born into a country where it was acceptable and encouraged for a doctor to rip off the most sensitive parts of their cocks. That, in conjunction with every other atrocity that goes on in that God forsaken hellhole, makes it as close as an example as you're going to get.
So basically the Combine has made Sex have no consequences. And the only thing to really do is fuck to pass the time or listen to Breen?
But why would CP be awarded with non mechanical sexual stimulation if thats the case?
Because if you would have to choose between ending your life or fighting back, you would fight back.
And if you would find it hopeless, you would kys.
Have you heard about a guy called Freeman?
>But why would CP be awarded with non mechanical sexual stimulation if thats the case?
Because HL2 in its final stage is a lot less thought-out than the initial concepts and betas
True, dont come here to many people already
Communism sounds great.
>someone wrote this in earnest
Sodom and Gomorrah
>biosphere is pretty much doomed
Goldblum: Life, ah umm, finds, ah umm, a way.
Like almost all games.
what's the source on all that ? About what the author said, not the hl2rp stuff
you would still get STDs I gues
What's with the circumcision obsession I've been seeing more recently
It's a cultural thing.
You're the only first world nation that willingly practices genital mutilation. The world looks at you like the Brazilian monkey soup or China eating dogs.
Portal 2 proves Earth is fine
god damn you gabe, why'd you have to kill it off? I wanna see more of combine-controlled space
>no wars on Earth
>all political issues forcibly solved
>humanity's immortality and outliving the death of the sun basically ensured
>police force and military at practically 100% efficiency, violent crime all but nonexistent
>get to become a cyborg supersoldier and fight spacebattles while getting mechanical reproduction simulation sex with robowaifus
>humanity now actually has a purpose beyond fucking around on a rock and fighting itself
Is it just me, or are the Combine unironically based?
>people are resilient and adaptable like that la
are you malaysian?
they did, canonically
>cant have sex
Hmm I recall them not being able to give birth, but I don't recall anything about not being able to have sex, or maybe was it that the suppression field prevented them to have sexual drive?
Pick up that can.
no im scouse la
>Cyborg supersoldiers are wiped of their memories just to keep them loyal
>police force also raids non-stop and will arrest your ass if you make the slightest peep
>Plenty of people are turned into Stalkers or outright executed
>Politics devolve into "do what we say or you die"
The combine are fucks that seek to turn Humanity into another Slave Race. Fuck the Advisors and fuck the Universal Union.
yeah, but like, muh freedoms and stuff
>ridiculous rebel propaganda-level "abloo bloo bloo they replace the Overwatch soldier's memories ;_;" nonsense
>implying those raids weren't on known contraband smugglers
>not supporting our boys in blue
>implying stalkers aren't fine and productive citizens of the Universal Union
>being a freewillfag and caring about Earth-level politics
Cannot believe that filthy Freeman sympathizers exist in [current year] desu
Honestly, it sounds like paradise.
daily reminder that compared to aperture science, the combine are techlets.
aperture, in addition to making a machine that teleports people, literally made a machine that tunnels into alternate realities, which they use to steal shit from other realities and use it in their test chambers.
>satisfying their cuckhold fetish by getting pegged in the ass by Savage and Sword
>Thinking stalkers are productive by becoming husks and non-sentient
>Letting Breen keep his memories but not you
Combine did nothing wrong
Might makes right
Unfortunately Aperture is first run by a retard and later on by a bimbo AI.
the GLADoS reality isnt the real aperture. the real one is the one where Cave transplants his brain into the machine.
I like to think the combine has ships as big as planets.
so the combine are the necrons?
>not just glassing their planet and conscripting the survivors
weak
HL should have a tragic ending
WHAT THE FUCK
it did.
More like a cross between the necrons, the borg, INGSOC. Though I also like to think the combine needs a different type of FTL for every universe they control.
>8 hours of factory work each day
Wow where can I find this job?
>Technically described Soviet Russia's communist state outside of having sex and hygiene
>Still better than Trump's America
how canon is aperture in the HL universe?
so the combine endgame is pedagogic and not genericaly "end humanity"
We only saw a brown field and nothing else.
who knows.
Given that they are a multi universal empire, I'd say their ships can be a lot bigger than planets. They can probably move galaxies if they want.
he's not worthy of ascension brother.
this is false
hl2 at the beta stage was even worse thought out and made pretty much no sense logically
for example the conscripts
>Wearing the same clothes is also pretty okay in my book because it's not overtly autistic and you still have a t-shirt underneath
Most valuable goy.
glados was partialy that secretary,no?
They can have sex, just not reproduce.
This is probably the most sought after job in my area, all there is available are retail wagie jobs. I like factory jobs, they don't degrade my self esteem with "How would you like that, sir? Would you like fries with that, sir?"
I bet aliens ate all the moths at this point
Uh, anywhere. 8 hours a day 5 days a week is normal factory work.
portal 2 isnt cannon to the HL universe.
yes. thats why she went crazy, because she was angry at the scientists for putting her in GLADoS.
Turns out the advisors are nowhere near the top of the combine hierarchy. So I wonder what leads the combine.
Maybe the combine leaders are just a bunch of uncaring sadists
Also their FTL is most likely dark energy based.
>tailor made E-girlfriend is gone
good ending actually
I thought it was a libido suppression field
if you look at the earth from the moon you can see its fine
the combine are like a more goal oriented version of the covenant. they want to add humanity to their ranks but they want to erase everything that makes them different.
do we know if that's the same earth and not an alternate reality earth?
Ross knew what was up
youtube.com
There was some water left in that boat level. It'll be enough, right?
Why would the combine even make the civil protection?
why not just use soldiers specifically trained to do policing stuff?
unmodified humons can desert and do bad stuff
why keep them
But portal has many earths and the HL one is most likely the one that has the Cave Johnson you are helping to same the other aperture sciences.
what we are essentially swimming on in that level is literally the waterbed
so uh, i doubt it
Don't worry, guys. Portal 2, which takes place over 100 years after HL2, shows that Earth's oceans are perfectly fine and intact when you're on the moon looking down
We don't know how, but Gordon does it.
it would be hilarious if the combine was the result of one of apertures alternate reality shenanigans.
The entirety of the lore of Half Life 2 is just pointlessly depressing.
It's just, the Earth is fucked over and there's literally no one in reality who could have even the slightest hope of stopping it. How is that even remotely interesting?
In Half Life it at least just felt like a series of strange, mysterious circumstances, not a 100% guaranteed extinction event for all of humanity.
it's cheaper and more efficient to just brainwash the local populace into enforcing your will. It's implied that this is a relatively small combine operation so they're only operating on like 0.01% operational force.
>The combine fucked Earth's biosphere sideways, it would never recover.
Not to mention they can just keep coming back.
>They can probably move galaxies if they want.
That line made me think of TTGL.
Wrong, in Portal 1, glados references the combine. There's supplemental stuff that says the scientists were locked down in aperture because of the combine.
Don't forget the borealis.
>anywhere
Not in Burgerland.
Never heared about the lock down. Source?
>((((they))))
what did glados mena by this?
You know with the combine being a multiversal empire means HL has a lot of crossover fanfic potential.
This right here always bothered me.
Even if humans managed to fight off the Combine menace, what would stop them from coming back?
They already know that earth exists, they learned that from the black mesa incident.
There is literally nothing stopping them from coming back to earth the same way they came originally.
Science fiction is hopelessly depressing in general, unless it's Star Trek or something.
>Maybe the combine leaders are just a bunch of uncaring sadists
Just like jews.
Reminder that Gordon will die for nothing and G-man will dance on his grave.
Pull a Vietnam and hope Humanity is enough of a pain in the ass to for them to say fuck it.
The off world reassignment threat thats given to Overwatch makes me think they are probably fighting bigger and more important fronts out there in the universe.
Anyone else think Valve kinda wrote themselves into a corner with Portal? Portal is so tonally different compared to half life it feels weird that they both are in the same universe.
youtu.be
Mark's ending to Epistle3 just copying notes from shadow raider's ending
Can you imagine how horrifying it would be going through the Combine Synth procedure? I bet they are awake when it happens like Stroggification.
nice bait.
This is probably my biggest gripe with the vast majority of scifi. People feel like being pessimistic about the future is just inherently smarter, nevermind if it's insanely generic and unentertaining. You don't look like a cool pessimistic supergenius if you say "The future might not be so bad and technological advancement isn't inherently evil".
they put inhibitors in the water so people don't kill themselves and stop thinking hard
It was part of the ARG. It says they were stuck working on "twenty year old equipment" because obviously, they can't go out and get more.
What if episode 2 ended with Gordon breaking his neck after falling from the wall.
Like there isn't an episode 3 because it's already fucking over
>The off world reassignment threat thats given to Overwatch makes me think they are probably fighting bigger and more important fronts out there in the universe
While that may be true, you must also remember that humanity is a very important resource to the combine.
The Combine still doesn't know how to teleport inside a dimension or something among those lines.
Meanwhile, humanity managed to do that back in Black Mesa.
Or hell the combine could just invade the universe from ANOTHER planet, not to mention they might actually have many overworlds and no true leadership with the main race acting like a single-individual-type hive mind.
The combine can't come back without a portal.
I mean, most of sci-fi is just metaphorical representations of modern society but turned up to the nth degree and with gizmos.
>So basically the Earth biosphere is pretty much doomed in like 50 years.
Just eat antillions bruh
there was no portal after hl1 unless you count the tiny portal storms as portals
I have a feeling their normal type of FTL most likely sucks as well.
I hear headcrabs taste like chicken.
The problem with that is that it's both been done to death, and rarely produces any sort of novel ideas.
Apparently every Xeno is edible and they seem to have no trouble reproducing even on the most toxic wastelands so I wouldnt worry about it
>Slave labor no, forced yes.
whats the difference?
they definetly dont taste like crabs
Oh I don't disagree with you, speculative Sci-fi can actually be interesting and explore actual science and the effects of it, I'm just stating that most sci-fi has science as the window dressing rather than the focus.
Literally PR marketing and in the long run it'll be much cheaper.
Though it would be interesting if the combine ends up having a civil war over the borealis because the true combine leaders are very power hungry control freaks.
The half life 3 story leak was depressing guys.
I feel sad, for what could have been and what that mute retarded called gordon freeman would have witnessed in his last seconds.
The only factory work I've found in my area consists of 12 hour shifts. I'm not dead enough inside to work that 5 days a week.
I still wish that we got an actual game or canon story that takes place during the seven hour war that isnt hdtf
its such an interesting topic
>12 hour shifts
what kind of third world country do you live in?
From what the breen grub talked about, it seems the "true" combine are just an amalgamation of consciousness of conquered species that use advisors to transfer some of the consciousness into a physical form to carry out their plans or to travel around. I'd like to imagine them like the Sphere from Prey: A living bio-machine which has the sole goal of expanding itself.
Everything else about it seems ok but the final shot staring at the Dyson Sphere would've been the most kino game moment.
>eating headcrabs
Fucking vortagont savages.
It's literally communism.
>it seems the "true" combine are just an amalgamation of consciousness of conquered species that use advisors to transfer some of the consciousness into a physical form to carry out their plans or to travel around.
I actually do like the idea of the combine being a hive mind acting as a single individual which each advisor acting like a brain cell.
>there are no portals unless you count the portals
how would you even describe having front row seats on a relativistic object slamming into a solar system sized object?
This. Americans are literally subhuman savages.
if all of the citizens of th earth look the same, why do the zombies all look like this?
It's the opposite of communism. The workers have no control over the means of production.
They have a device that can tunnel through the multiverse which is why the rebels needed to launch a rocket into the portal.
The means of productions have control over the workers.
read a book nigger
>portal 2 takes place in the far future
Wrong, only stupid assumptions.
This
Combine is completely ridiculous in scale. They literally control multiple entire universes in alternate time lines.
Why don't games do body horror anymore? The technology is there to do really fucked up things. Mortal Kombat kinda counts, but the violence is played up for laughs and not to make your stomach churn.
the regular citizen with a white sweater model was cut for some reason
the rebel medics have one however
well at least we have manners
Exactly how communism has turned out in every instance.
If it doesn't turn out to be Communism, then how is it Communism?
Will we ever be able to save him from xen?
Did breen deserve it?
>Americans
>manners
I highly doubt you're actually American of been their for longer than a week
Whoa, it's almost as though..Communism doesn't work...
What are you on about? All of those things were said by Breen, not by rebels.
>fast food the country
>manners
no
I always assumed that things got progressively worse over the years. What you see in HL2 is nearing the end.
The ocean or sea outside C17 has dropped by a few meters. That is not enough for a total extinction event. As seen in Epi2, the forests are still lush.
And this is also what makes the combine so horrifying is that they a multiversal version of Ingsoc, not to mention we know almost nothing of the combine and probably have weapons that could beat any fictional setting which they probably can do with just a zerg rush.
So you didn't play HK2? Because Combine travels is armies between different realities. They open portals between timelines and conquer alternate ones.
>become a higher lifeform with great power and intellect, even if brainwashed or enslaved
>won't be destroyed with the rest of your race, or turned into a literal mindless zombie or soldier
The best result of an abysmal situation.
Holy shit, this butthurt is incalculable.
user the oceans are full of leaches.
all the combine lack that humans have are localised portals
>Because Combine travels is armies between different realities. They open portals between timelines and conquer alternate ones.
We don't know about their space assets though, their ship are probably terrifying, hell the 7 hour would could of just been the combine bombarding the Earth with some kind of starship.
>a few meters
a few meters of water world wide is a actually a fuckload of water, and we already now that pressure on tectonic plates from ice plates,etc... can lower entire continents.
Not that this is important because its a world were portal guns are a thing.
nah they somehow won a ground war, i assume they just sent in all their weird biomech shit all over the world
Leeches are a delicacy in some universes.
The conquest of earth is a minor job the combine does on a daily basis
its implyed that earths army's where defeated in 7 hours, taking shots from orbit would mean no current army have any way to fight back so it means the combine went down to earth to fight our army's.
Oh that's right. Well, not entirely.
If we just use HL2 canon here, the leeches don't exist everywhere. There are sections of the coastline where you wont get nibbled to death by leeches. Besides, you encounter an Ichtyosaur during the teleportation experiment. Aquatic fauna has probably suffered the worst though of all animals, but who knows what the rest of the worlds oceans are like.
Sure, but it is survivable I reckon. Earth has gone through worse levels of water reduction. Problem is, the water is gone from Earth. Perhaps the scientists can find a way to refill the oceans (counter-teleporation?)
user the oceans are full of delicacies.
Considering how even their basic bitch gunship synths can dodge guided missiles, I'd say any ground invasion would be accomplished with guaranteed air and water superiority.
find a planet with water, teleport there and back, ez
Who knows, I still would really like to see a combine starship though and what kind of FTL they use.
People will do anything to live.
They probably just dropped down a Citadel 0 through their portal, and then used that as the base to launch airstrikes and shoot down incoming nukes as the striders and gunships can just get pumped out through the portal or manufactured in the citadel and distributed throughout the earth.
>all the cut biomech shit like the scarab tank walker and synth scanners
>the soldiers literally being alien races from previously conquered civilizations but modded up with some cybernetics
>literally drop them on top of you
no chance, the 7 hours was them just murdering most of the populace and rounding up the stragglers
Also I wonder they only just invaded Earth or have they started invading other worlds now.
It's expensive. Bing bing wahoos are cheap.
Not canon, that's the beta storyline, the oceans dropped a few meters likely because of the portals during the original attack draining a ton of water
The combine don't need earth's resources because they are a vast empire that can colonise countless planets
You sound incredibly boring. Hl2 really has some of the most interesting scifi lore ever.
they had been chasing the vortigaunts through what the humans call 'xen borderworld', it literally is a borderworld, there is no star or main planet, just a collection of platforms and teleporting balls
>be at a high technology research lab way out in the middle of nowhere
>major shit starts happening because an experiment went wrong
>enemies start appearing from nowhere
>fight my way through the compound
>find out where the enemies are coming from
>able to get to where they came from
>fight my way through
>defeat the big boss
>doesn't matter, civilization has been taken over and I have to fight the enemies off
>sure does suck being DOOMGUY
HL stole Doom's story and went full cinematic bullshit with it. Fuck HL.
Why the fuck do you think they're colonising planets, dude? They're harvesting raw materials from them in massive quantities.
You know what would imagine if at some point in HL3 a combine ship the size of a planet appears behind the moon.
The incident with Xen allowed them to follow the residents of Xen into our reality. That and they discovered that we have the means of doing in universe teleportation. They only have interdimensional teleportation.
>Sure, but it is survivable I reckon. Earth has gone through worse levels of water reduction. Problem is, the water is gone from Earth. Perhaps the scientists can find a way to refill the oceans (counter-teleporation?)
Maybe, we already now that resistance scientist can build portal machines in occupied combine earth with scavenged parts so it's probably not that hard to get in to portal tech.
I'm not sure but it think it was already poijnted out in half life 1 that the combine who invaded xen where not from that universe.
probably some kind of ship made out of enslaved species.
They have food so it can't be communism
>probably some kind of ship made out of enslaved species.
So like the reapers.
Difference being that the enemies that took over in Half Life 2 is not the same enemies as the ones that appeared in Half Life. That and contextually it's different since Doomguy was always a marine, Gordon was just a scientist.
there is giant moons & shit for that, plus combine likely have renewable energy anyway
i havent played mass efect so i dont know?
>semantics and minor differences in something that is exactly the same outline of a story
Why do people defend fucking HL like it's some sort of shining example of a game? It was a cinematic shitfest with mediocre controls, terrible weapons, enemy camp "encounters" that made it feel like a cheap rollercoaster ride, all with a story basically lifted from Doom.
Does Civil Protection have any implants or are they pure? I mean, yeah Barney is a secret Civil protection, but there has got to be something the combine puts into them.
>Politics devolve into "do what we say or you die"
Finally politicians I can follow without them trying to lie to me.
>The incident with Xen allowed them to follow the residents of Xen into our reality.
Imagine if it turns out that the combine isn't just from another universe but from another multiverse and xen was the border between multiverses.
If it doesn't take place in the future why are the oceans fine then
I wonder what the relation between the combine and race x are.
They wouldn't need earth's resources if they were capable of space travel. Been a long time since I played through HL2 but I vaguely
remember getting the impression that the combine were played up as interdimensional parasites that can't build anything themselves
without proxies like humans they can also steal tech from. Everything I'm reading here seems to tell a different tale but also sounds sorta like
embarrassing fanfic. I dunno, it's whatever.
Depends how far up the chain you go I think. Rookies are pure human.
they're colonizing earth for the people and localized teleporters so they don't have to use their shitty tech
I'm just saying that there is a different context to it all. While in Doom 2 Doomguy managed to save everyone from the demon invasion, in Half Life 2 Gordon is already too late, the Combine already took over the planet and started their procedure. Even in the first game, the differences between why everything is happening makes it different enough to give a different reaction.
Besides that point about story, the fuck you mean terrible weapons? Most of the original Half Life weapons pack a punch. Not as much as doom mind you but god damn you are a fucking liar if you say you don't get any reaction out of some of the Xen weapons or even the MP5. There is also the attention to detail with the enemy AI that people love to bring up.
>Food isn't 'spiked' but it is generic. Imagine all water you taste having a slight chlorine to it, almost survival-tier purification thanks to heavy pollution.
Yea, thats the hormone supressors your tasting
>Sex is (i think) possible, but procreation is blocked at the cell-stage.
Possible in the sense you can insert something into a woman, but no one experiences arousal or pleasure from sex due to the hormone suppressant, and I believe men are sterile, but I could be wrong..
>Entertainment does exist in the form of stuff. I really don't have an answer in this as we can only assume that citizens are allowed to do some basic republic-type stuff in terms of worker groups and parties of some variation - moreso a pseudo-freedom instead of just being every man for himself on each street, being unallowed to speak more than a whisper. To elaborate, many hl2rp servers have modified canon slightly to allow for these 'worker' parties to exist as well as several sectors of worker to exist, as well. None if it is really needed when you consider an all-powerful omniscient AI exists, but players having fun is more important to overall game/server health.
Completely false headcanon
> Slave labor no, forced yes. 8 hours of factory work each day, or more. I forget how much exactly.
It's fucking way longer than that, especially if you get sent to Nova Prospekt.
The rest of your rant is headcannon and autism.
f they made a game of take your daughter to work day, when glados first came online and killed everyone, and you played as a scientist trying to survive, or as Rattman, it'd feel like HL1.
>embarrassing fanfic
thats always the problem with mutliple writers trying to fill in the holes for each other.
I sometimes wonder what some of the synth species looked like before they got combined. Striders would look terrifying even before they get the big fuck off canon.
I don't have words for what I'm reading. Jesus Christ.
>They wouldn't need earth's resources if they were capable of space travel. Been a long time since I played through HL2 but I vaguely
>remember getting the impression that the combine were played up as interdimensional parasites that can't build anything themselves
>without proxies like humans they can also steal tech from.
I never got that impression and sounds just as much fanfic as the rest of these posts.
It isn't communism tho
I guess so. I'm not a hardcore HL2 fan but I found the villains compelling in a 'I can't believe earth was conquered by these lame as fuck
Alex Jones bad guys I need to liberate it ASAP' kind of way which was a new feeling to me.
Hella epic.
So you mean just like in communism.
>I'm not a hardcore HL2 fan but I found the villains compelling in a 'I can't believe earth was conquered by these lame as fuck
>Alex Jones bad guys I need to liberate it ASAP' kind of way which was a new feeling to me.
I pretty sure the combine are suppose to be a lovecraftian and orwellian type villains.
Clearly from Widnes finishing everything you say with "la" you massive wool
I have no idea what really is or wouldn't be fanfic. That's just the impression I got playing through it.
The influences are there, yes. The whole inspiration for the g-man and many other things have their roots in tin-foil hat town though.
Which is neat, I'm not trying criticize the game for that. Makes it a little more impactful and believable.
>en.wikipedia.org
>On the island there was a guard named Kostia Venikov, a young fellow. He fall in love with a girl who had been sent there and was courting her. He protected her. One day he had to be away for a while, and he told one of his comrades, "Take care of her," but with all the people there the comrade couldn't do much really.... People caught the girl, tied her to a poplar tree, cut off her breasts, her muscles, everything they could eat, everything, everything.... They were hungry, they had to eat. When Kostia came back, she was still alive. He tried to save her, but she had lost too much blood.
But the system that was described in this thread is patently not communism tho?
>People were forced to suffer through this living hell on earth, unspeakable horror and agony
>In 2019 you have anons bitching about their "depression" and "anxiety" when nothing nearly as bad has happened to them
Holy shit
It's pretty much identical.
It pretty much isn't at all
>you need trauma to have mental illness
burger intellect on display
The problem is that we know next to nothing about the combine, all we know is that they are a Orwellian multiversal empire, though it is Very probable they conquered a race with FTL travel (probably several) before and who knows maybe when they come to a new universe they attack every planet in that universe at once.
Yes it is, user
It's canon to portal 1 which is canon to half-life
Portal 2 mentions Black Mesa and Half-life 2 episode 2 mentions Aperture
Depression is not a rational or logical disease its the opposite, your outlook on life is fucked up because of a literal imbalance of chemicals in your brain.
Many people assume that sucking up the ocean is to be sent in their homeworld, but I don't think people remember how expensive it is to open a portal to their home: Just to open a temporary hole to let 3 shitty gunships goes through you need an entire citadel, to open a portal large enough for a fleet you need to nuke that citadel to the ground. 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters of water is definitely a lot to take in. I mostly think the ocean drain is for cooling local buildings.
As you mentioned, I don't think the combine are capable of space travel, why would they take a gamble with some local race to get their hand on local teleportation if they have FTL travellings?
Mentioned by Mossman is that they can go pretty much anywhere they want while crossing a dimensional rift, but once on spot, they are stranded with local transport, my guess is that they mostly just take over whatever planet they landed on, take whatever they need, and leave it to die, they don't go any further than that because they just aren't capable how doing so. And it fits with the idea they are an interdimensional empire: They don't expand through space but rather through dimensions.
Communism in action. Coming soon to a place near you!
Do you have "When you have to build a wall to keep people in"?
>change civilian model midway through development
>never bother changing zombified civilian model so they clash horribly
Shit like this drives me crazy.
shut up they're from animal crossing
That user is saying shit, the "white" shirt citizen is an alternate model class called refugee that is used for rebel citizen (before they use their rebel outfit) and the one used for the zombies.
imo the only mistake is that white shirt is the only available color for zombie since refugee use both (blue and white), having a blue zombie too would have made sense.
Not him, but I found it
pick up that can
By now Valve could have their own universe of characters, with different games set in the same world.
We could've seen Gordon meet GlaDOS.
They could've made a game where you play as Cave Johnson trying to set up Aperture.
They could've made a game where you play as an agent whose job is to steal the Borealis.
Or a game that you play as a Black Mesa spy that needs to infiltrate Aperture.
So many possibilities, all down the drain because Gabe doesn't care about making new games anymore
authoritarianism is actually good and freedom is one of the biggest memes to ever exist
t.somebody who thinks he would be the authority. Freedom still exists in an Authoritarian society, but only for the authoritarians and not the common folk.
>Just to open a temporary hole to let 3 shitty gunships goes through you need an entire citadel
that protal was opening for doctor breen to come through.
> to open a portal large enough for a fleet you need to nuke that citadel to the ground
after said citadel had it's teleported damaged by freeman
>As you mentioned, I don't think the combine are capable of space travel,
I have to disagree with this simply because I can't see them NOT being a space capable.
>I don't think the combine are capable of space travel, why would they take a gamble with some local race to get their hand on local teleportation if they have FTL travellings?
Teleportation is instant while with FTL would still require you to travel the distances which is not sufficient for a empire that control's entire universes.
the leaders died long ago
maybe the leaders are AIs?
Are you retarded? Do you think trees grow in a fucking day? Do you think apeture could really fall into that bad of disrepair in the span of less than a decade? Portal 1 takes place at least 10 to 12 years after HL1 (Chell was a small child when the combine first came because you find her potato project for take your daughter to work day.)
Portal 2 takes place far enough in the future for the entirety of the labs to become broken and overgrown.
>Portal 2 takes place far enough in the future for the entirety of the labs to become broken and overgrown.
Doesn't explain how the oceans returned to normal.
>100 years
Try at least 10,000 just from what the relaxation chamber announcer said before being cut off.
Gordon fixes it somehow. That's all we can assume. It certainly doesn't take place pre-combine.
Yeah, but I always assumed it was simply malfunctioning.
>tfw humanity's future under the Combine is to be grown in tanks or something and then have all free will removed and used as mindless drones like all the other synths.
I see my reputation precedes me. Now watch this bank shot from downtown
would the flood be able to win against the combine? seeing as how so much of humanity is grouped together in small overpopulated cities and how the combine has orbit capable transport, it seems like the combines empire would be an all you can eat buffet for them.
I think the combine might be on the on the same level as the precursors just with virgin FTL instead of chad teleporters.
Lmao not without water, Dr. Malcom
pretty much same outcome as forerunners
except the combine would probably never go back to that universe
Lmao underrated
I wonder what the combine does with the transhuman soldiers on other worlds. Kinda weird to think that somewhere some ayylium gordon has to deal with a similar situtaion as regular gordon
They are probably fighting another empire, possible race x or gman's employers.
>>cant have sex
so nothing changed for me
So it was China
When did Breen become an advisor?
the precursors (or what was left of them) got fucked by the flood too. the only one that was spared became the first gravemind.
Race X isn't canon. But yeah, they're probably used in some military niche like urban warfare, or whatever comes closest to that on some ayy world
Weirdly like the plot of the Phantasm series. Neat.
>the precursors (or what was left of them) got fucked by the flood too.
The flood WERE the remaining precursors though.
Why the fuck would they want earths water you brainlets, theres tons of ice asteroids floating around everywhere
only the primordial became the flood, the rest got dabbed on by him.
Whatever it is it must really suck since getting transferred offworld is a threat mentioned at least once.
it's actually never been stated that they aren't, Laidlaw just said he didn't really consider them or care to write anything for them when it came to HL2
I bet the invasion of an entire universe would be a logistical nightmare as any form of non-teleportation FTL would take a VERY long time.
It might just be doublespeak for simply killing you.
you fight ((((their))) wars and if the earth is attack do you really think they will back you up>
combine are an incomprehensibly vast 'interdimensional' ('many worlds' alternate universes) empire likely including universes with entirely different physical laws. the 'combine' fought in the HL2 games are purely experimental earth-originated transhuman forces, supplemented by a paltry amount of some similar weak trans-xenos (striders and gunships).
there's a lot of confusion because the entirely different 'beta plot' had them explicitly stealing all liquid water and dumping enormous amounts of toxic waste. and there is still clear (but far less pronounced) water level drop in the final game as well (a couple meters versus most of the ocean being a desert).
this, canon/final combine are just the borg in a slightly harder scifi setting, without magic shit like FTL (or even easy FTL communication). they are most interested in finding new species with potential to strengthen the collective, by their integration.
I beat the combine just strip down a entire universe then return to the Overworld which is just a super massive flagship.
Breen does mention some crazy sounding shit when talking to Freeman. It may really suck having to deal with that shit. Also some of those worlds may be really inhospitable since it seemed Breen would have to upload his brain into one of those advisor maggots to go off world.
Well endless military engagement as expendeble fodder on a world that your body wasn't designed for does sound like ass
I guess they still work as a minor opportunistic faction then
>dystopia where you can’t have sex is better than dystopia where you can have sex.
This is how I know you’re not having sex.
are they Combine?
This
What you face in HL2 is their equivalent to mall security, if they ever truly gave a shit about earth we would be fucked beyond belief
>a supermassive flagship
that sounds cool
>this, canon/final combine are just the borg in a slightly harder scifi setting, without magic shit like FTL (or even easy FTL communication).
I don't know about that as they do have access to dark energy tech which probably can be used to make a form of FTL, though the combine probably just makes use of generation ships.
It's far enough in the future for Ratman to have lived out his life.
doesnt the combine lack some kind of technology that humans have? i dont remember what though
in-universe portal technology(the portal gun from portal)
>i dont remember what though
local teleportation
Instantaneous direct transportation
To put it in epic gamer terms, they have to make a portal to the nether, walk through the nether, and make another portal back to the overworld, but they want to just use the /tp command instead
the problem with that is that if the flood manages to get a hold of or even worse, figure out how to travel between universes like the combine, everyone is fucked. even when they infected a single galaxy they already had near prophetic powers thanks to having so many minds added to their hivemind, who knows what they could do if they got more galaxies to infect.
You get paid probably and can return to your home probably, but if you don't go they drag you out
why is going to the nether slower than what humans have
They probably want it so bad because their own form of FTL sucks balls.
Can't it do some pants on head retarded shit like infecting the laws of physics or something?
you literally find the borealis dock. They didn't want the game to be reliant on Half-Life to be good or successful, so they disconnected the games by a long period of time, but they're still in the same universe.
All they needed to do was patch in a cracking sound and some add some gasping while Alyx sobs over Eli and they would have at least given us a definitive ending, would even explain why Gordon is lying there while Alyx gets right up.
because traveling through the nether involves having to deal with pigmen, gasters, and lava, and have to build and fight around them, whereas if you can just teleport, you don't need to deal with all that
>tfw you played through the golden era of GoldSrc modding
>cant have sex
they CAN but the suppression field blocks fetus development and vastly reduces sex drive, so you dont really want to and even if you do you cant make a kid
Forget get about the flood imagine what the combine invaded the Earth during the human-covenant war.
Correct, local teleportation would, in fact, make space travel obsolete.
they don't have instant teleportation. That's why the Borealis is so important since it's the only known thing outside of the Aperture Science testing facility that has Portal Gun tech
i always thought it made it so they can't have sex ever.
And If Laidlaw's fanfic is anything to go by, that ship is a fucking proto-tardis.
that was only theorized by forerunners.
>Can't lock down an elevator in the most private part of my own citadel
>Guess I'll have to bodyswap into a giant mindraping maggot
Bravo Laidlaw.
lmao fuckin smod jesus
something tells me the flood is a bigger threat to the combine than the UNSC or the covenant.
when are we ever going to see this absolute chad of a protag again?
>i always thought it made it so they can't have sex ever
its not like it stops you from getting a boner
combine are weak and would get btfo by the covenant or even the pre-covvie invasion UNSC
>cant have sex
you can have sex
but you wont produce any children
I actually have idea for a crossover fic in which the black mesa indecent happened in the Macross universe and the combine invaded just as the SDF-1 got finished and that ship is the only thing left of the UN spacy. Also Fold-tech would be something the combine would want.
You forget, the combine you fight in HL2 are just a police force and not to mention they would be assimilating the tech and creatures of the worlds they invaded.
laff over before it even started
The covenant would definitely be able to wipe the floor with the Combine. The combine military operates interdimensionally and afaik have no effective means of large scale travel within any given universe.
so just like today then
it saves you the issue of buying condoms or contraceptive pills
People are retarded and only care about their needs, dumb pic.
t. commie hater
>The combine military operates interdimensionally and afaik have no effective means of large scale travel within any given universe.
As we know, for all we know they have supermassive doomships that that travel with dark energy based FTL that is inferior to teleportation, this is why the combine can't be used in a VS debate because we know too little about them.
Considering the Combine can manipulate portal storms and turn off all the enemies tech as well as zerg rush any location immediately. I doubt the covies could stand a chance.
As for the Flood, the Combine are so good at using other races and converting them to machines, the flood wouldn't actually be infecting anyone native to the combine. Just waves of canon fodder races that are so cyberneticaly enhanced their isnt enough flesh to even support the parasite.
Well if they really have Dyson spheres they're at above-Forerunner level.
If they do not, eh, who knows. We never really see anything close to their true might.
>Considering the Combine can manipulate portal storms and turn off all the enemies tech as well as zerg rush any location immediately
Don't forget the combine would at some point start turning covies soldiers into synths and using their own tech against them. the combine are basically just the machine version of the flood.
They're probably so far away from whatever originating world, that they sorta continue their mission without even knowing if the Universal Union even still exists.
>As for the Flood, the Combine are so good at using other races and converting them to machines, the flood wouldn't actually be infecting anyone native to the combine. Just waves of canon fodder races that are so cyberneticaly enhanced their isnt enough flesh to even support the parasite.
The worst case scenario would be if the flood and combine decide to join forces.
oh boy it's the old "starving kids in Africa" argument
Honestly thats plausible. Gravemind would probably just want to be sent to a dimension thats huge to expand and with no threats of forerunner tech. The Combine would just use em as another scouting army.
Which is why I think the overworld is just a massive flagship the size of Jupiter in the shape of the combine "claw" logo.
do the Combine have any tanks or jets, what their military power like i know they have gunships?
We have know fucking idea to be honest.
then how did they take over the earth?
They just turn living things into equipment.
Probably. But its hidden beneath a fuck huge layer of slave races converted to suit whatever role.
>trees
Those aren't trees, they are ferns, and we don't know where Portal takes place, could be right when the resonance cascade happened. And Wheatley was in charge of taking care of the overgrown parts, and you know how he is.
The fucking plot of Half-Life is kino but I see no way for humans to counter-attack a galactic empire.
With synths will haven't seen before and most likely will never see because Valve doesn't know how to finish a game anymore.
>Half-Life is kino but I see no way for humans to counter-attack a galactic empire.
This empire is multiversal.
>he comes back
>but with modern gearbox writing
It's almost like there was a resistance group waging a gorilla war
Form their own.
>he comes back
>but as freeman's co-op partner for HL3.
We do know when portal 1 and the reasonance cascade takes place. Glados takes over in 1998, right before the resonance cascade. Chell was a little girl at the time (you can find her potato battery project) so it is logical enough to understand that since Chell is now at least an older teenager or a young adult, Portal 1 takes place after the resonance cascade. In Portal 2, the lab has taken a lot of structural damage that doesn't just happen overnight. There's also signs of Ratman living out his life over a long period of time.
>food makes you have manners
How FAT are you, bonger?
PORTAL 3
BUT IT'S IN THE RUINS OF BLACK MESA
OR ALTERNATIVELY A TEST WAS HAPPENING AT APERTURE THE EXACT SAME TIME THE RESONANCE CASCADE HAPPENED AND SOMEONE FROM APERTURE GOT FUCKED WITH AND PORTALED TO BLACK MESA
What if the combine is really at war with every pic of fiction.
Wait, Bob is in this game??
Unclear what they really have in store since most of the opposition you meet in the game are made locally. So far the only confirmed synth that aren't made on earth are the gunships as they show up at the end of HL2 coming from a portal to their home dimension.
So do humans still have acess to Black mesa or aperture technology or was all that shafted?Seems like the games are all about ''let's fuck human technology so that the combine benefit from it''
I wouldnt call it "war" desu. The linguo they use like "necrotic, amputate, steralize,antiseptic," makes me think of it as more like they're just a bunch of wondering bacteria in the body of the universe that gobbels up smaller organisms.
moth based economy?
silkworm$$$
Wouldn't that make them OP as fuck?
I think the only synths made locally are the combine overwatch.
Kind of if the combine was really just one eldritch abomination in the form of a multiversal empire.
Yes though they still don't have local teleportation. Also Gman's job is to stop the combine from getting into the real world.
Black Mesa was canonically nuked (at least Laidlaw said it), so the only remnant of BM are the scientists that survived it, that said it's also the only reason humans are even still alive since they still know how to make teleportation without having to go through Xen directly and without taking an entire fucking week, thing that the Combine don't know about.
Unclear about Aperture, but since it's a massive underground base that was never touched by outsiders in a long time, it's pretty clear nobody know where it is. The only thing about Aperture left known to few is the Borealis.
good morning user I find out you were talking shit about the Combine, looking for your gun i have it here.....get undressed NOW!
They are OP as fuck. Even if Gordon wiped the current group of people from Earth their power is so expansive they will win regardless. G-Man is the only key to him even maybe possibly killing them outright, and we will never know how that would work.
I like to imagine the combine as just one big ball of bureaucracy without even having a central goal, leader, dominant race, or ideology anymore that would fall apart if it didn't occupy itself with busywork like enslaving earth. Like the Vogons but less comic and more cruel.
That and we know so little about the combine that a fanfic writer can just asspull the combine winning in any crossover.
>you now realize the G is for Gabe and it actually happened.
G-man is not an ally.He is just from another faction that is opposing the Combine.the vortigaunts are slaves to the combine and that's why they keep saving you from him
I'm curious about something, considering that old Valve wasn't particulary known to leave details without purpose.
When you are with Alyx in episode 2, at some point a Portal Storm occur because of the citadel remain. Last time a portal storm occured, it teleported shit from Xen everywhere for several years on and attracted the combine on Earth, so the question is: What would happen this time?
When I was younger I though the combine were just an authoritarian 1984-like government.I had to idea they were actually alien.The fact that Half-Life ends in a very positive note also made me get catched by surprise
I do like to think their is a central council of god like AIs and one of them hired the gman to get all the others killed.
Imagine if the combine got a hold of the SDF1 macross.
He's right though. Illness comes from trauma. Not all trauma is surviving a hellish war in a sweltering jungle far from home while everyone you know dies around you in horrible ways. Trust breach, abuse, seeing accidents. Lots of people react to things differently.
Even just loneliness for an extended time can make you mentally ill. As user, you should know this.
Her project being there has no bearing on the timeline, Aperture shows that instead of reworking the current offices and workplaces they just build new ones.
Real question, what does combine porn looks like? Feels like?
YOU DON'T WHAT TO KNOW user
Wheatly said the projects were from the fateful 'take your daughter to work' day where Glados took over.
...
Wheatley never states that.
The G-Man is probably in service to some higher dimensional organisms that are preventing the secrets of teleportation and time travel from being spread across the multiverse, probably because they can be used against them
To that end, Gordon can go and destroy the Borealis and the Advisor who sucked Eli's brains out, and Shepard will clean out the Resistance base and their teleportation tech, and the secret will die with humanity.
Yes he does.
youtu.be
Man the Combine have some of the best aesthetic in fiction
Yeah that's cool and all but never forget that episode 2 ended on a fucking cliffhanger that Valve REFUSES to address
Question, why do people still refuse to join the Universal Union? I mean, just look at the advantage:
>never need to sleep because you are given drugs like candies
>free sex simulator
>beat up your bullies
>use guns without consequences because you are the law
>upgrade and become a superior human being with all those advantages and more
Oh shit!
The Dude didn't survive the 7 Hour War.
Maybe Gordon can go back in time and stop the half-life events from happening?not opening a portal to Xen would solve it right?the combine would still exist but humanity would have more time to perfect its technology
He fucking doesn't, "that did not end well" doesn't mean "Glados took over and killed everyone with neurotoxin". Stop spreading your fanfiction as fact.
What do they show you to erase your memory?
Then why the fuck are they on earth you fucking idiot. That's why they are an empire, they are able to support themselves by harvesting planets
The problem is that the G-Man intended for the Resonance Cascade to happen, so Gordon would have to deal with him first, and he's even more mysterious than the Combine.
Except it does. It was in the ARG, it was in Lab Rat. Learn your fucking lore before you try to talk with the big boys.
The Room on repeat.
Not him but the main reason the combines are on earth is for the teleportation technology.
>fanfiction
developer.valvesoftware.com
lmao
Look retard, I said Wheatley never says that and you posted a video claiming he does and he never says that, now you are saying it was in the ARG, and you don't post proof, and if you do it will be more stupid assumptions, stop spreading your bullshit as fact
>inb4 v-valve doesn't know what they're talking about!!
So I guess he saw that the humans were going to discover time travel and just made sure humans were fucked up by xen and combine so that never happens?But now he has to make sure combine don't time travel either?
It's also interesting that he dresses as a human being.To know that the humans invented time travel he must have felt the consequences of that(in his original future) and before anything else happened he went back in time to prevent it.
Xen's teleportation and vortigaunts's time travel
Why does everyone fellate Adrian
he's just generic military grunt #345
>turned on for the first time
>DUDES HE TOOK OVER APERTURE AND KILLED EVERYONE
Retard
I'm curious about Glados, did she followed the usual AI going crazy thing where she just slowly considered the idea of killing people fun, or was she murderous from the start for shit and giggles?
Or did it happened later because of the test addiction?
I think the G-Man's plan was to cause the Resonance cascade, then get the humans to destroy the lab, and have it be a lesson not to mess with teleportation technology for the time being.
However, Gordon's interference lead to the killing of the Nihilanth, one of the Combine's more important slaves, which drew the Combine's attention to the planet, so the G-Man has to clean up his own mess using Gordon and Alyx.
I doubt he's actually human, though. His weird way of speaking is a serious clue that speaking is a new thing for him.
She killed a bunch of people with neurotoxin, which is why the morality cores were made. Caroline didn't want to go into the robot in the first place.
Valve cut this dialogue because Cave Johnson's VA apparently refused to voice his lines for it. So the hate probably stems from multiple sources.
youtu.be
some of the concept art looks cool
But they do
Nova Prospekt
Damn,valve is kino as far as writting goes,this shit is even more interesting than anything from japanese video games like bloodborne or metal gear.
Xen is a border world, the teleportation events in it are most likely caused by the resonance cascade and vortigaunt time travel doesn't seem to be forceable (several dead and enslaved vortigaunts from the combines and they still aren't capable of doing it)
As mentioned by Judith Mossman, humans have a pretty advanced "slingshot" teleportation system that no longer require you to be present in the border world to teleport, and can be done quickly without massive charging time, while on the other end, since the combine arrived, the little information they manage to rip off only allowed them to have a "string based" which not only take fairly long time to charge up, take a week to move anything and can only move small amount of people, so not appropriate for the large scale teleportation they are aiming for.
This, Barney is the true chad protagonist.
Takes a long time to charge up, takes a week to go anywhere and you can move like 3 people at best. Going on foot sounds like a better idea in its current stage.
So? How does that mean that's the date when she TOOK OVER? Which is what I have been saying this whole time? You can't put Portal 2 in a timeline because it was most likely designed that way, to mislead stupid people into creating stupid fanfiction.
>Valve cut this dialogue because Cave Johnson's VA apparently refused to voice his lines for it.
That's definitely an unsubstantiated rumor. J. K. Simmons has acted in way worse roles, and I'd think it more likely they recorded Caroline's lines and thought "shit, we can't put this in the game, it's way too rapey" and dropped the plotline.
I know it's very hard to admit you're wrong, but you're wrong.
theportalwiki.com
>owes you a beer every he sees you
>10 times more deadly with a 9mm glock than trained military personnels using machine guns
>would give his life to defend you
>no HEV
>no Gman babysitting him
>no military training
>still prevails
What a chad
That's fanfic user, the official source keeps it vague.
This guys sees that the earth is getting fucked and enjoys it. This is the ultimate cuck.
>wipe HECU squad of 10 men with 9mm
>the offical wiki
>fanfic
lmao
>killing faggot ass invading aliens
>then invades them back to their faggot ass world and kills them there
Based
I don't understand why you keep trying to validate your fanfic with vague official sources, even worse, thinking you are right for spouting the most stupid fanfic ever.
Hello 2006
ahhHHHHHHHHHHH
PICK UP THAT CAN
Where is it confirmed that combine give you free sex simulations?
It would of been even more tragic if Freeman got saved by the combine instead and was forced to work for them.
I guess the combine used both 1984 and brave new world as instruction books.
This user is goy of the year
Gman is pissed that the vorts got Gordon off his leash and is going to use Shepard get rid of him once he gets too bothersome, mark my words
Imagine if this all ends with the combine actually winning?
Sounds like china
The Portal lore is gay shit that isn't even a step above shitty fanfiction
>dude we're totally super advanced but can't get money
>dude we could have fought off the entire combine with our super duper ai, too bad is went crazy and killed us all lol
>dude science lmao
The idea that any of that shit is even thought to be put in HL canon is disgusting
now you know how communism looks and what it does to people
I want to make a HL2 map this summer. Anyone have experience with Hammer/Source with tips? If not then what are your favourite HL locations or cool ideas you'd want to see in a map?
Just like in real life
That was the plan. Wipe humanity out and take all of earths earths resources. They already genocided every creature in the ocean and the coasts are uninhabitable. Sea levels dropped by several meters.
The moral of the game was that earth was fucked and only hyper advanced tech would save it.
Guess we will never know. Thanks gabe
I just read Epistle 3 for the first time and I'm experiencing strange feels