With its heavy 1984 allusions and authoritarian post-Soviet Eastern European dystopia setting, is Half-Life 2 devious anticommunist propaganda? Discuss
I can appreciate that while Freeman's reappearance is a spark for open resistance, most of what Gordon does through the game is aiding an existing rebel movement against the Combine, and the game makes sure to show how Gordon isn't some lone superhero by making the player fight alongside rebels to approach common objectives. The street fighting towards the end of the game is the most obvious example but right from the start Gordon's entire journey is massively reliant on the existing revolutionary infrastructure.
He was also sent to City 17 to undermine the Combine by another, perhaps rival, faction. And on a train no less
:lenin-laugh: parallels????
If anything it's supposed to be anti-imperialist, I guess. The Combine are an empire, after all.
While on a surface aesthetic level you've got a lot of 1984 stuff, I'd say the Combine could be interpreted as closer to a colonial empire, just on a cosmic scale - they're doing incredibly brutal and enviromentally-destructive resource extraction (like literally draining the oceans), and they're running a pretty cheap (by interstellar/interdimensional empire standards) operation, heavily relying on local forces and technology and only throwing in the high-tech alien assets when things get bad. Breen could essentially be viewed as something akin to a comprador (and there's presumably a lot more lower-ranked administrators managing the other cities).
I always liked Breen's character and how he's essentially just an impotent figurehead/middle manager.
While I'm sure he's managed on some level to convince himself of the same Neil DeGrasse Tyson Bazinga Epic Science shit he tries to sell to others (Just think of the sentient fungi and intelligent clouds we'll get to meet! Brain uploading! Immortality! Trust me, the Combine are totally going to reverse human extinction once they see how hard we've embraced Volcel Thought, Logic and Rationality :so-true: ), I'm sure deep down he fears the Combine and knows that humanity's days are numbered, that the Combine don't really give a shit about the transhuman Combine Overwatch beyond their usefulness in pacifying the local population and that there's certainly no glorious future awaiting him or the rest of humanity as part of the Universal Union.
Yeah, I always got the impression that the Combine were basically just going to use humanity up, just like how they're doing with the natural resources - extract whatever value they can, and leave behind a completely barren planet, kind of like Tyranids in a way.
Humans could be used as laborers (I'm assuming there must be some kind of industry running on Earth, someone's gotta make all those MP7s, although I don't know if there's any bits in the lore clarifying that, I feel like it'd be kind of weird if all the citizens were just sitting around doing nothing all day), or as bodies to "enhance" and turn into soldiers (just as how a bunch of their fancy tech, like the gunships and the striders, were originally actual aliens, which were subjugated and turned into half-machine tools of war). During Nova Prospekt, Breen threatens the troops with "off-world assignment", so it's possible Combine soldiers have already been used on other Combine planets (and since that's a threat, they probably weren't exactly some elite force, but cannon fodder sent in to die suppressing some rebellion).
They've blocked reproduction, so it seems like they're not even interested in breeding humans for some nefarious purpose (the way they presumably are for the species that serve as the basis for synths) - to them, we're just a resource that they might as well get some use out of, but not valuable enough to otherwise cultivate.
There is one specific thing that they want out of humanity, which is teleportation tech - that's why they capture Eli and Breen personally talks with him to try to convince him to join them. They want the secret to the tech, since their teleporters are fucking trash. But beyond the few surviving Black Mesa scientists who were involved with that, they probably don't consider any other humans particularly relevant.
Not sure how the plot will develop if Half-Life 3 ever happens, but one of the things I like about the setting is that unlike in most other scifi stories, humanity isn't especially important to the broader universe, or Gordon Freeman some destined Chosen One.
(Compare this to something like Halo, where the Covenant is eradicating humanity specifically because they know that they are the actual true inheritors of the precursor "gods" their entire religion is based on or how the later games retconned Master Chief into just such a destined Chosen One whose coming was encoded into humanity's genes by said precursors)
The beta of HL2 is so cool and mysterious. It's literally 1984 the game. I dunno, maybe it's folly but I've been thinking about trying to win back that book from the chuds, to start using it to describe capitalism and the police state the USA became.
The beta of HL2 is so cool and mysterious. It’s literally 1984 the game.
It seemed a lot more icky and grimy to me. I'm glad we got the HL2 we got which is in a word simply :matt: The base game and the episodes are just so fucking good. The mid 2000s to early 2010s was a great streak for Valve in general
WHY VOLVO NO MAKE MORE GAME :monke-rage:
It had a much, much, darker tone. Might get some flack for saying but I prefer the prototype to the finished product, but retail HL2 is not bad by any means. It's easily one of the best fps games of all time. Sadly though, there was more money to be had with Steam, hence why Valve is known for it's digital release platform and not really games anymore.
Alyx was genuinely the best game I've ever played. I absolutely adore that game and it was 100% worth the price of a quest 2 to play it . Valves been gone for a while but they seem to have a lot in the pipeline right now and some big plans for VR in particular. The steam deck is basically a stepping stone for a standalone VR headset capable of playing triple a titles. Either way I rather they continue how they are than become another publicly traded shit hole of a studio like so many others have become.
Yeah it feels like Alyx is finally that mythical "good" VR game.
Either way I rather they continue how they are than become another publicly traded shit hole of a studio like so many others have become.
I have to imagine Microsoft tries to send some lackeys with increasingly bigger briefcases full of money to Gaben's house every couple of years
I do wish they’d show a little more concern for their bread and butter platform. Steam is stable and usable, but basically hasn’t changed in years. It feels like every feature they add just stagnates. Review system has been the same for a decade, “early access” has become a near-meaningless term, client browser has always sucked, etc. I agree that it could be worse, but it seems odd that it’s not way better.
At some point if you aren't wanting to grow any bigger you're going to have a lot of stuff like that fall through the cracks. I'd rather have a stable working platform than something that's constantly reinventing itself and therefore breaking itself. It's pretty amazing how much stuff valve manages to keep running considering how small they really are. Definitely better than the chasing non stop growth bullshit the rest of the industry is about. Early access is probably my biggest pet peeves with steam at this point. Definitely agree with that.
It’s tough because I agree with you. It’s a solid platform and has been for a while. I don’t want them to mess with it too much and risk turning it into a pile of trash. That said, it’s because it’s so solid that I wish they’d spend more effort on it. I don’t want them to add for the sake of adding, I want them to spend more effort refining their existing features. I don’t want more I want better.
I just adore the character writing in HL2 and I'm not sure we would've gotten that tone in a darker game
