Why Half-Life’s Combine is the Most Brutal Dystopia in Gaming
Though players tear through their ranks, Half-Life’s Combine are perhaps one of the most brutal and terrifying dystopian societies in gaming.
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Since the series’ second entry, Half-Life players have taken up the mantle of Gordon Freeman to combat the interdimensional alien empire known as The Combine. Ruthlessly inhuman, The Combine come off as especially intriguing and disturbing for their extreme level of scrutiny in their oppression. They are one of the most brutal examples of a dystopian society in gaming.
The Combine first appear at the very beginning of Half-Life 2. However, the player knows next to nothing about them. After beating the boss of the original Half-Life, Gordon Freeman is frozen in time for 20 years by the mysterious entity knows as the G-Man. Both he and the player only meet the Combine a few minutes after he is awakened from this stasis. For the past two decades, however, the planet has been under the tyrannical control of The Combine Empire. Due to the resonance cascade cause by Black Mesa in the original Half-Life, The Combine were able to find Earth. In a conflict known as “The Seven Hour War,” The Combine defeated the majority of Earth’s militaries and slaughtered billions of people. What Gordon and the player see in Half-Life 2, and its episodes, are the last dregs of a dying humanity.
However, The Combine’s raw power isn’t the only thing that makes them so unnerving as a government. It is how The Combine uses this power, combined with the numerous other exacting methods by which they oppress humans. Furthermore, the fact that The Combine’s origins and true limits are almost entirely unknown deepens the mystery around them and makes them more intimidating. What players see of Earth under The Combine rule in Half-Life 2 could only scratch the surface of the power The Combine truly wields over humans.
How Half-Life’s Combine Rule Over Earth
After all, The Combine in Half-Life are a civilization that has seemingly mastered interdimensional teleportation. They somehow have the logistical infrastructure to constantly track and move each individual citizen according to their whim. Based on a lot of environmental storytelling throughout Half-Life 2, The Combine frequently relocates citizens at random to prevent them from forming any sort of social clique between humans. They also drug Earth’s remaining water supplies (after draining the planet of its resources) in order to wipe people’s memories. The most devastating blow, however, comes in the Combine’s suppression field, which prevents humans from reproducing in its radius. Humans have effectively been unable to propagate in 20 years. In essence, living under The Combine means sacrificing any and all individuality when Combine forces aren’t committing random acts of violence and mass killings in order to inspire fear.
If someone is lucky, then they die quickly. Otherwise, they are captured and transformed into Stalkers, the cybernetically modified maintenance workers of The Combine Empire. Becoming a Stalker might be the worst possible fate in the Half-Life universe, as they are completely incapable of any sort of independent thought or action and have been surgically and cybernetically altered to the point where they just barely resemble humans. On the flip side, the best fate is that of a Combine Soldier. While The Combine Overwatch are also thoughtless cyborgs, they retain a bit more autonomy than Stalkers. They also get the benefit of being on the giving end of The Combine’s boot, rather than the receiving one.
All of this would be less disturbing if anyone knew what the Combine really were. It is known that they are lead by the Combine Advisors (aka the Shu’ulathoi) to some extent, but it is unknown how many of them exist. There’s also indications that Advisors are merely larvae, meaning that nobody knows what a mature Advisor looks like or is capable of. In many ways, Half-Life implies that the Combine we see is only a fraction of what they have, and that the resistance’s endeavors are close to hopeless, if not already there. After all, many races before humans have been completely subjugated and wiped out, and there’s nothing the games do which suggests it could turn out differently for Earth.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/half-life-combine-government-most-brutal-dystopia-game/