>mops up all of Earth's militaries in 7 hours like it's nothing >proceeds to job to a resistance movement of malnourished civilians armed with light SMGs and buggies wtf is their problem?
The bulk of their invasion forces left after the war. The combine you fight in game are a small token force they left behind.
>>747557970The main army went back home. All that's left is a police force, which mainly consists of the experimental transhumans.
>>747558040More than that: the "combine" you fight in HL2 are all humans. Meaning you never fight the real invaders.The combine colonized earth and then left a puppet human government behind in the game that acts as the antagonist. You never fight the actual combine. HL2 is humans fighting humans in a civil war, with one side defending their alien oppressors.If the real combine were on earth, there would be no resistance. They are letting their left behind human administration do their work.
>>747558040>hey X'Zzululathoi>yeah?>see this planet that holds the secret portal travel technology that could make us unstoppable?>yeah?>let's just pull our forces off it and entrust this human grandpa with finding it >okBoggles the mind
>>747557970Same as what happened IRL, too costly to keep the bigass army around.>>747558040>>747558160/threadI don't know why I bothered
>>747558338bit mental that
>>747558338What exactly is the downside to it? If they can't force science niggas to work on it, having them work it out themselves is really the only way. It doesn't really matter what happens on Earth. The resistance is a bunch of beaten down, half starved people that live in an old leaking silo, what can they possibly do?Even if there was a worldwide uprising that somehow managed to destroy the paltry Combine garrison left behind there's nothing stopping them from phoning HQ and reconquering the planet again.Humanity is fucked in the HL verse and there's no way to unfuck the situation.
>>747558527>Humanity is fucked in the HL verse and there's no way to unfuck the situation.You forget the indomitable human spirit.
>>747557970>>747558040>This + It's explained in the literal first minute of the game how Gordon made a difference + OP is brown
>>747558338You're assuming they didn't already get the portal technology. Once they got it, why would they give a fuck about keeping Earth? You take a planet for resources or strategic reasons, fine, that's a residual thing.They took the planet, tech tree pops, and then they leave. Ezpz
>>747558660>how Gordon made a differencehe made a difference against Xen, not Combine. what could he even do? the whole planet is conquered. people can't breed. he could single handedly take down all combine forces in city 17 and i don't think anything would change.
>>747558338>>see this planet that holds the secret portal travel technology that could make us unstoppable?Since when is portal travel unknown to the Combine? They use it, just not everywhere.If you wanted depth you could argue the laws of physics of each universe is different so our Universe portal only work here.It could be an interesting basis for a plot.>reality (A) is invaded by reality (B) using an unbeatable army>every molecule from another reality is converted, sometime in a way that is technologically impossible>(A) doesn't know that (B) silly weapons were severely unadapted yet also greatly overperforming>(A) manage to force (B) out>revenge time, (A) send micro strike force in (B) universe, discovers that weapon made for reality (A) perform incredibly well in reality (B), a simple pistol can punch through their best armor>(B) silly energy weapons suddenly make sense, they are weaker but have infinite ammo
>>747558798Aren't like they like explicitly still searching for it in HL2? They still haven't found Aperture Labs.
>>747558905I mean, they directly invaded black mesa where all the tech was. They couldn't kill gordon but they took literally the entire facility, all their records, everything, and they had Breen who they allowed to join the combine, which they wouldn't do for nothing.I haven't read that guy's writing on it but maybe?
>>747558527>Humanity is fucked in the HL verse and there's no way to unfuck the situation.
>>747558527>no way to unfuck the situationDidn't they have some scheme to stop the combine from being able to portal in? I thought that's why you launch the rocket in one of the episodes. Some kind of counterattack against combine tech.
>>747558826>what could he even do?You know that Half life 2 had been out for 21 years right? You can just play that game and see yourself.
>>747558905>Aren't like they like explicitly still searching for it in HL2?Combine is deliberately rather unclear in its aims, goals and actions. They're good at inter-dimensional teleportation but bad at intra-dimensional teleportation. Humans figuring out a superior way for intra-dimensional teleportation is why they bother at all, but it's unclear how much data they already have on the project.They likely already got the data that existed before, from black mesa etc, but are deliberately allowing Eli and the rest of the resistance to keep working on it, hoping they'll cough up more of the goods.
>>747558040>>747557970Lore misalignment.The combine in the lore is hyped up to the sky compared to the combine forces in the game.Its sort of like when the USA invaded Afghanistan and then left behind an Afghan puppet government equipped with some of their tech and despite that they got overtaken by rebels.In the game though this doesnt make as much sense considering the combine is described as this vast multidimensional army so why wouldnt they leave some of their actual good troops behind?
>>747558858>Since when is portal travel unknown to the Combine?Isn't a major plot point that they want human portals because their portals suck ass as demonstrated in episode 1?
Listen, you ration-guzzling, Breen-licking motherfucker. I'm going to try to explain this slowly enough that even a Civil Protection washout can follow along.You cannot hold an entire planet and its people with Striders, gunships, dropships and Hunter-Choppers, or any of the other Synth hardware you seem to think makes citizen ownership of a pistol irrelevant.A Strider cannot stand at the Trainstation checkpoint and scan ID cards all day. A gunship cannot kick in an apartment door in Block C at 0300 and pull up the floorboards looking for contraband. A dropship cannot herd you into a ration line and club you for looking at the wrong poster.None of that hardware can maintain the police state required to subjugate an entire species. Those things exist to flatten districts and fight other militaries. They were for the Seven Hour War, not for a Tuesday. The Combine does not want to kill all of its labor force and level its own infrastructure. That infrastructure is the thing they came here to strip-mine in the first place. If the Citadel decided to dark-energy the planet, the Combine would be undisputed masters of a big, dead, boiled rock with no workforce, no reactors and nothing left to ship off-world.Boots on the ground are what maintain a police state. Human collaborators, men who sold out their own species for a protein ration and a bigger room. No matter how many of them you badge, they will always be outnumbered by the people they're standing on. Which is why it's vital that your metrocops get stunsticks and SMGs while the citizenry gets a jumpsuit, a curfew and their own limp dicks.BUT when every random pedestrian might have a 9mm under their coat and every squatter in the canals has an SMG under the floor, all of that goes straight out the fucking window, because now CP is outnumbered AND taking rounds back. The routine apartment sweep becomes a gunfight, and the guy who signed up for the extra rations starts reconsidering his career.Dumb. Fuck.
>>747559270They can come in from their universe but rely on local transport once here, so sayeth Kleiner. If they get human portal tech they have both kinds. Jump from universe to universe, and wherever you want within that, instantly.
>>747559114>You can just play that game and see yourself.Gordon managed to fuck up the citadel and prevent immediate reinforcements. Which leaves... well, the rest of the planet to somehow destroy striders and various transhuman forces with bricks and maybe pistols if they're lucky.And all combine needs to do is to build some sciencey gizmo that lets combine portal back to Earth.Like its not nothing, but let's be realistic lol
>>747559194Because... They are at war with an even more dangerous alien race and need every bit of available manpower on the frontlines. Earth was just a final hail-mary to try and find portal technology to give them an edge in the main war, but it failed and now they're going to lose to (((them))).
>>747559270>>747559361That's assuming the tech even work the same between universe, Xen had literally floating island.Anyway, Half-Life setting was never meant to be consistent enough for a story, HL2 was just a tech-demo for what was new technology at the time.Corridor game with seamless transition, gravity gun and all the physics behind.I'm told they even had very intelligent AI supporting each other with covering fire but they never shined because most of the game is just corridors
>>747559180>They likely already got the data that existed before, from black mesa etcThe place that the US military nukes?If the US military cares about keeping the technology, they wouldn't kill the scientists.
>>747558527>there's nothing stopping them from phoning HQ and reconquering the planet againThat's exactly what they try in Episode 2 and the resistance launches a rocket that turns off the portal they were making. That's also why everyone was about to rush out to the Borealis, with the Combine's "conventional" portal technology countered their next plan was to steal Aperture's tech and use that to phone home which the resistance obviously really doesn't want to happen.
