Imagining the Combine version of Reddit where one of them posts "The humans should be thanking us for giving them teleporters but they're too savage to appreciate it" and gets a million upvotes

  • Wheaties [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    So much of early science fiction was Victorians and Yanks cluching their pearls and bolo ties while fretting, "but what if we become the colonized?"

    It's fitting that Half-Life continues that trend. Also, police radio-chatter sounds just like Combine Overwatch audio.

    • jack [he/him, comrade/them]M
      ·
      3 years ago

      Isn't it possible that the sci fi trope is actually being deployed as a critique of colonialism?

      • Wheaties [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I'd definitely say that's the case with Half-Life. Depends on the execution and, unfortunately, what the audience actually picks up on. A lot of g*mers would be frothing at the mouth to see an even vaguely leftist read of HL.

      • BeamBrain [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        This is the case in War of the Worlds, and Wells does not beat around the bush about it (very unfortunate bit of wording aside):

        And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?