/games/ - Games

I don't see it as such, quite the opposite. They are a genocidal imperialist mishmash of a thousand worlds and peoples who spread invasive species across everything they touch and build hyper-militarized city eating megastructures to assist in the domination and consumption of newly conquered worlds (note the specific location of the second game, eastern europe. Fall lf the USSR commentary much?) It might be portrayed as le evil stalinist authoritarianism but that's a red herring. Rather, it's in the ruins of a fallen socialist nation (or just simply a failed fight against an imperialist invader) and the subsequent plundering that create the conditions for the 1984 ass breencasts.

Are the Combine supposed to be communist? In literal terms they turned Earth into a resource colony. In thematic terms they are paired with the aesthetic of post-soviet decline, ripping through the communist-era architecture with their dehumanizing alien technology. They are closer to an allegory for shock therapy.

Also the inciting incident of the series happens because of secret US military projects of extremely shady nature. And the closest thing to a big bad exercising agency is portrayed as the Time Lord version of a CIA agent.

Why must you impose the belief that all governments must follow a system of policies created by ideologies? The earliest forms of governments existed without ideology, many of the governments between then and the rise of feudalism and dynasties in the eastern hemisphere existed without ideologies. Similarly, a multi universal government doesn’t necessarily have to follow a single or even any specific ideology to endlessly expand its territories or its governance.

>>36187
I don't think they're supposed to be anything other than vague totalitarian. I get what you mean about communism since the environment seems like post ww2 eastern europe. I guess le 1984 because of cameras and everything so that means communism. But once again, I think it's just vague totalitarian, I don't think it was supposed to be a soviet stand in at all.

combine are communism viewed from the eyes of a liberal
>hey bro, we have achieved interdimensional travel and are building dyson spheres and shit, we're going to take you into our inter-species, universe spanning civilization, where you can cast off your primitive biological limitations and meld into a shared hive-mind where all members work in unison as parts of a single unified body
>NOOOO MUH INDIVIDUALISM, MUH REPRODUCTION, I WANT TO COOOOM

don't get me started on the zombies in the last of us

>>36199
Imagine being a scientist put in charge of shepherding humanity into post-scarcity space communism, but then some drugged up schizo and his literal CIA glowie handler ruin it all.

Good god.

>>36200
the Combine might also be a case of Kautskian ultra-imperialism. either way resistance is clearly reactionary

>another "is le pop culture le communist????????????" thread
oh my fucking god who cares

>>36203
this is clearly a "is le pop culture le anticommunist????????????" thread, pay attention

>>36203
more productive then a porn thread or japan/anime thread that devolves into bunch of neets complaining about jcp not being pro hentai.

>The USSR was a repressive brutal dictatorship, but actually that was good
>Therefore every depiction of repressive brutal dictatorships in media must be good and opposing them is wrong!

Zoomers please stop doing this

The combine destroyed the united states and abolished money, states and class division in only 7 hours but liberals will still deny they are communists

no its anti immmigration cus they aliens

>>36187
The Combines are just fash. I think you're trying to find anti-communism in places where there is none just to complain.

>>38607
IDK it's probably not a coincidence that the game is set in 'Eastern Europe' and features decayed commieblocks heavily

>>38613
Ukraine was also a part of the Soviet Union once…

Aren't most characters Americans though?

>>38616
Well pretty much all the characters have American accents yeah, some of them are from Black Mesa whereas the locals could have just been relocated from America or it's just 'translating' their native accents/language for the audience, the only guy who sounds Eastern European that I can think of is Father Grigori but he lives off the grid so maybe the Combine already wiped out all Eastern Europeans.

>>38617
>maybe the Combine already wiped out all Eastern Europeans.

You don't think it's suspicious that you never see any Eastern Europeans and the Combine in the same room huh?

>>38617
They state in the dev commentary that they wanted the NPCs to feel like they could be from anywhere. They're all voiced by the same couple voice actors, the men get one and the women get another. The named characters are Americans, besides Grigori. That part is just continuity. The idea is that the Combine were shuffling people around the planet to break up social cohesion, not unlike what happened in the trans-atlantic slave trade.

>>38619
>They state in the dev commentary that they wanted the NPCs to feel like they could be from anywhere.

and by 'anywhere' they mean America

HL2 is a more Red pilled game than most people realize. Gordon Freeman was originally going to crash an airplane into what become the Citadel and the Combine were supposed to use Merkava tanks.

watched the half life 2 20th anniversary documentary and right at the beginning when talking about setting the game in eastern europe, one of the developers talks about how eastern europe has such an interesting history and cultural influences because it was… invaded so many times by so many different cultures, such as, uh, the ottoman empire and russia

for some reason fails to mention nazi germany
curious

>>38807
The occupation lasted 5 years and didnt really have any lasting cultural impact, tone down your persecution complex.(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

>>38807
>cultures
>such as the nazis
There's your problem

>>38814
he could've put it more tactfully than "lmao they get invaded so much"

Floog gigeckded

>>36188
>genocidal imperialist mishmash of a thousand worlds and peoples who spread invasive species across everything they touch and build hyper-militarized city eating megastructures to assist in the domination and consumption of newly conquered worlds
That's exactly how I remember life under socialism, I personally was genocided at least 15 times.

>>36187
its just general dystopian schlock, 1984, Anthem, Fahrenheit 451, all lib dystopias look the same because they're lacking in material analysis.

i do find the combine really interesting however, they have ostensibly replaced currency with rationing, and abolished private property within their direct control, but it is clear they have some kind of class system of different species/engineered bureaucrats (the advisors). they have a pseudo military rank system with the citizens at the bottom, the civil protection in between, and the trans-humans at the top (of the human clade) but even the highest ranking trans-humans, the overwatch elite, effectively serve the same purpose as any other trans-human, suggesting the combine are only interested in assimilating other species insofar as it contributes to their bio-engineered hyper specialisation and division of labour.

the developers definitely did take the aesthetics of post-soviet countries into account when designing the combine, (see the beta poster in picrel) however i sincerely doubt this was done with any conscious political intent, but was a side effect of them changing the setting of the game from an american style city, into a post-soviet eastern bloc inspired city early into the development, they had done this specifically because they already decided that the citadel would be the site of the final confrontation, and they wanted it to stand out from the scenery around it so it would always look ominous, looming in the distance. because of this the art director who was from sofia, bulgaria, suggested they based city 17 on their hometown because it had no skyscrapers at the time and so would have a nice contrast of the giant citadel against the skyline. i imagine the eastern european and post soviet influences on the art direction simply continued from there.

also i would like to point out that the architecture actually created by the combine themselves, rather than assimilated from previous owners, is much more alien and not particularly comparable to any real world counterpart, certainly not a soviet allegory.

>>38918
>also i would like to point out that the architecture actually created by the combine themselves, rather than assimilated from previous owners, is much more alien and not particularly comparable to any real world counterpart, certainly not a soviet allegory.
If anything the old soviet buildings are what represents humanity in terms of architecture, and the devs basically say as much in the commentary. The combine walls and the citadel are meant to impose themselves on the familiar human setting like an infection taking over an organism. That contrast doesn't really make sense if the post-soviet aesthetics are supposed to also convey "totalitarianism" or something like that.

>>36187
It's an anti-civ game primarily. It is about reestablishing people's control over their own destinies and not enslavement to the machine. All species are free to live together, just not as tools.