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

    • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yeah its not exclusively easteuro but at least from what I recall its a lot more eastern than western inspired, IIRC the art director was from Bulgaria and took inspiration from his hometown, plus theres all the cyrillic text on signs and stuff like that.

      Its probably mostly meant as a generic amalgam of "Europe" than a specific place, though that brings up the question of why everyone who survived Black Mesa went from like Nevada to Europe? That would honestly have been a cooler journey to base a game on than the Alyx story IMO, the Black Mesa crew banding together and escaping.

      • NPa [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I always got the impression that people got shuffled around based on the whims of the combine and the breen administration, lots of citizens mentioning stuff like that in the train station.

        • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yeah, its just odd that apparently every surviving member seems to have gathered in the vicinity of city 17, I dont remember that being a specific plotpoint or anything so its probably just narrative convenience.

          It would still be a cool part of the story to explore somehow, setting up the resistance and all that.

          • NPa [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yeah it's probably just for the plot, but one could imagine that the Vortigaunts or G-Man helped things along, guiding people to the location where they could help Gordon the most.

        • BeamBrain [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I somehow missed that during all my playthroughs. Guess that's another point for the "the Combine are European colonizers" pile.

          • NPa [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            To add to my speculation, likely the Portal generated by the resonance cascade meant that the Black Mesa area became prime real estate for the fatcat slugs and they moved the riff raff out. Gentrification strikes again :kitty-cri: