The combine defeats all military forces on earth in seven hours

Not much he could do. He already had them breathing down his neck in the first place as he mentions in one of his comms to the nova prospekt forces.

Humanity would die under Breen anyway, remember the combine used some bullshit technology to prevent human reproduction

>I can still deliver Earth

What did he mean by this?

This is WW1, “just walk towards the machine guns like a man!” Logic

Hell yeah, you take that bullet to the head and drop dead to show em who's boss. Your act of "defiance" won't even be remembered if humanity manages to successfully break free from combine control. You contributed nothing to their rebellion and eventual new world.

That he could deliver a compliant and willing earth as part of the combine empire, rather than one where it’s full of rebellion and insurrection wasting precious combine resources

Remember he wanted to get Gordon to tell the rebels to lay down their arms, probably tell them they have amnesty if they give up or something

I mean yeah, I think most people would probably choose enslavement. If I was promised just a regular civilian life with some work duties that would be alright, but as soon as they start talking about rounding people up that would be game over. I feel like once you're on a Civil Protection truck that's pretty much the end for you

There’s no reason to believe the combine wanted to end humanity with that, it’d be a waste of billions of potential workers and soldiers for their empire.

The real question is what is the rebellion planning to do even if they win?
Real combines could just show up again and it's not a bunch of rag tag rebels who'll be able to stop them this time, it would end in 7 seconds.
There's borealis time fuckery but even then what are you supposed to do?
The only possible solution is going back to black mesa and stop the crystal from being used, but would the gman's employer even allow that to happen? We still don't really know how powerful they are. And with Alyx showing the gman can travel in time and "nudge" events, it's not impossible for him to prevent that.
Really their only hope of winning is hoping to god the combine don't notice they won.

Just join civil protection so you can have your pick of the rape slaves

Their only real hope is to either

A) manage to spur many other rebellions across other combine occupied worlds simultaneously to the point where the Combine cannot respond with meaningful force

B) invent some kind of super weapon to make it so the risk of the combine attempting to reconquer or wipe out earth is too dangerous, because earth could easily launch something that devastates the combine home world. Enacting a Cold War style scenario where neither can attack the other

Breen was privy to the Combine leadership, he no doubt saw their homeworld, their full military strength. He understood that humanity had zero chance. Scientist Man who somehow survived Black Mesa might pull off a miracle, but there would be no way he could stop the entire force.

Cutting off contact with the proper combine was the recurring thing in HL2/episode 2. There's no chance of beating the actual combine but they could have their tiny earth force beaten.

If your empire can build an installation across a sun, I imagine you have the firepower to destroy entire planets at the push of a button. Any widespread rebellion would be put down without mercy. Earth was lucky it wasn't just popped like a balloon.

That's true, but wouldn't cutting contact off make the combine think something is wrong and just send over even the tiniest amount of troops over to check what's going on?

>Humanity disappears due to assimilation
Got humanity some time at least

>half shite
who cares

I thought that was the problem with Combines — their dimensions travelling technology is shit and it requires someone on the inside to turn in on properly.

He's responsible for the Combine invasion in the first place, and he did not "negotiate" fucking anything. Another person would have been the Combine's mouthpiece if he didn't selfishly step forward to take the spot to begin with. The Combine are all about expanding and absorbing other races in order to technologically augment them for their military force. It would be a total waste to wipe out humanity if they make for good assets in their military arm.

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Oh yeah I forgot about that detail, it makes more sense.
Well better hope people can build some superweapon in the time that remains though!

So are the Advisors the things that control the Combine as a whole, or is there a bigger boss in charge

Breen gon give it to ya, fuck waitin for you to get it on your own Breen gonna deliver to ya

the breengrub twitter posts by laidlaw imply breen was a good guy, even the majority of the grubs were good guys, and many of the grubs, including breengrub, were covertly trying to find a weakness in the combine.

basically this, they were able to get to earth the first time by exploiting the portal storms created by the resonance cascade
the Combine's last hope to establish a contact with their home world at this point is the Borealis, considering the superportal created by the Citadel's explosion is closed at the end of Ep2 and the other citadels' reactors were somehow linked and had been "disabled" when the one in City 17 blew up according to Kleiner

The advisors are tip top combine.
However Gman and his employers seem to be a third party that has influence over even the advisors

It is never revealed, although it is likely not the case since the Combine forces dealing with the rebellion on Earth are very small if we are going by Laidlaw's writing. The advisors are probably just beings designated to oversee different conquests for the greater empire.

What could Gman's employees possibly be?

>implying eli, with the help of gman, wasn't trying to take out breen via gordon as the hitman, because his solution of "wait and find the weakness" was too slow and eli was getting impatient.
>implying breen couldn't have taken down the secret research labs and resistance at literally any time, and simply chose not to do so because he supported them
>implying he still isn't supporting them as a grub in space.

Advisors are just another specie that combie enslaved.

Literally no idea
They COULD have something to do with the Nihilanths but that's complete speculation

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Absolutely false. Nobody listen to this

>Half-Life lore
Is there anything more cringe and inconsequential than debating about the plot of games that exist to serve as tech demos for whatever engine they're on? It's not like the writing is that interesting or even consistent between games since every game just retcons the events of the previous one.

That would be one hell of a twist

No way though. Aperture isn't that competent

I mean it's never revealed one way or the other if they are the leaders or just another enslaved species.

Is retcon the new buzzword for everything we want to dismiss without an actual argument? I've been seeing it a lot these past couple days

Breen just convinced them that humans had value as slaves like the vortigaunt. The combine made it so humans can't reproduce so all they are living out is a few years of terror and enslavement while Breen saves his own skin trying to "ascend," which is probably bullshit to make him follow whatever shit the combine wants him to.

bro.. dude.. what if.. the lemons...? XD

We see Breen answering to them. I seriously doubt they are an enslaved species

poor dragon fly

No it is quite literally what happens between every HL game, shit is retconned constantly. Breen is literally a character that exists because they couldn't figure out how to the plot continue or make sense if they stuck with G-Man being the black mesa administrator.

The players

>advisors are tip top combine

nope. they're actually slaves who were used for their ability to communicate telepathically. the actual founding combine race, or at least what the advisors THINK is the founding combine race, is some sickening thing that makes scraping and clacking sounds when it moves, that they liken to a parasite. the implied weakness of the combine, as per breengrub, is that it is comprised and maintained almost entirely of slaves, most notably their bureaucracy being maintained almost solely by advisors. an advisor revolution, even if it failed, would completely gridlock the combine conglomerate and cause it to balkanize.

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The worst direction they could possibly take the series. Meta stuff if fun for some franchises, but not for half Life

I mean these are pretty good points. But how are you so sure that they couldn't have won the 7 hours war if Breen helped instead of betrayed mankind?

This post if fucking retarded. Do you know how fucking bad the quality of life was for your average joe in hl2?

The combine only reach earth through a tear caused by black mesa, stopping that would make earth to hard to reasonably reach. That is the hope, anyway.

So what? Combine is an interdimensional empire, and judging by Epistle 3 it's pretty evident that Earth was nothing more than a drop of water in an endless ocean for them. It's akin to comparing an ambassador to a president in real life. Plus in Alyx it's revealed that Advisors don't even have a set-in-stone rank since some of them answer to other ones.

Goddamn dude I fucking love how starship troopersy the advisors look.

Do you have a source for this? I was positive the advisors WERE the parasites but it's been about a decade since I played either Episode 1 or 2

I might not remember this correctly because its been years since i last searched the lore, but i think the combine were already leaving earth, they drained most of our oceans, enslaved a bunch of people and turned them in to soldiers/those workers with the laser eyes and they never found Gordon again, so there was no reason to stay on earth anymore.

It would be unlikely for them to invade earth after the portal was closed, keep in mind they only discovered earth because of the resonance cascade, which means theyre probably too far away to even notice earth's existence in the first place. Also we were only attacking the combine to drive them away from earth, not to overcome their empire (i think.)

>since some of them answer to other ones
When did we see this?

you mean "employers" not "employees"

and here, if you have the patience to watch. This seems pretty well thought out of a theory here

youtube.com/watch?v=W1eQSN6_AMk

Doesn't the combine defeat civilizations and then keep them around for servitude? I didn't think they would destroy all of humanity anyway.

It's a joke. Though you could make the argument because muh PPTI multiverse but I don't think Aperture is going to play any role outside of the Borealis. I do wish they weren't so afraid crossing Portal and Half Life over though (namely Chell).

Yeah, brainfart.

well the combine are a stand in for communist russia
gman is a stand in for american letter agencies and/or arms dealers (they're basically both the same thing tbqhwy)
earth is the middle-east during the cold war

so, basically, gman represents an unknown shadowy figure from a distance power that rivals the combine, who promises freedom from combinism but in reality just wants to maintain ownership of xen and superior portal technology that the combine don't have.

The collaborator you spy on in Alyx keeps asking to see the advisor's supervisor, which is another advisor.

there is only two options:
mcguffin
or
mcguffin
half life confirmed summer block buster tier

bro if gman goes back in time and hires these 2 i would LITERALLY COOM

>It's a joke.
I mean, it IS possible. Nothing directly contridicts the possibility.

>I do wish they weren't so afraid crossing Portal and Half Life over though
The Borealis will finally change that I think

THE COMBINE TURNED ME INTO A GRUB, GORDON
I'M GRUB BREEN