The Combine defeat the entirety of the worlds military in 7 hours

>the Combine defeat the entirety of the worlds military in 7 hours

>is defeated by a nerd with glasses wearing an HEV suit

>people acknowledge this critical plot hole and inconsistency

>they applaud the games story anyway

If the HEV suit is so fucking good at preventing the users death, why is it not more widespread?

>le sciency man

It was other aliens, not the combine. The combine is what they left/established on earth.

Probably the same reason you don't see Spartan armor on every soldier in halo.

Because Black Mesa only had three, for some reason.

>is defeated by a nerd with glasses wearing an HEV suit

low quality bait

the best humanity can hope for is that the combine decides earth no longer has a favorable cost/benefit ratio and is no longer profitable and decide to fuck off

which is irrelevant because half life 3 never ever

>He didn't see the dead bodies on Xen

Wrong. Xen attracted the attention of the combine, who conquered earth in 7 hours. I think breen negotiated earth's surrender on the 7th hour, allowing the combine to establish their administration and drain earths resources

Isn't the Combine forces on Earth just a fraction of their actual military power, and the real heavy hitting troops they used in the invasion are somewhere else?

>Isn't the Combine forces on Earth just a fraction of their actual military power
the dudes in the masks that hit you for not picking up cans are humans the combine modified to use against the rest of humanity

so yeah I think it's safe to say those guys aren't the full extent of the combine military

So those fat larva things are the actual combine?

Everytime with you negroes.

The combine you see in game and the combine that attacked Earth are not even close to the same. As the story goes, the combine is, first of all, a literal combination of many different alien forces unfiied under one government/entity/being or whatever, and with that comes unimaginable strength in numbers.

The forces that were launched against Earth were so innumerable that, yes, Earth lasted only 7 hours. However, this was an invasion, not a mission of destruction. After the conquering of Earth, the Combine enslaved Earth and left only its most necessary forces on the surface to maintain order and make sure that all resources (such as Earth's oceans) would be drained, processed, and shipped accordingly.

In other words, imagine a full force taking a country, and then leaving 10% of that force to maintain the country.

As shown by the Citadel in City 17, there is constant communication with the Combine, and if the need arise, the Combine could amass their forces and come back. When Gordon Freeman comes back, he is not taken as a very credible threat (he is just ONE man, after all) but once it becomes clear that the rebel forces are actually growing in strength and mobilizing, plans to evacuate Breen and, furthermore, open back up the Combine portal, are set in motion. Gordon Freeman, of course, blows up the Citadel tower, stopping the forming of the portal.

The Combine cannot just easily return to Earth via space travel when the portal is an incredibly easy way to do it, so there are immediately measures in place to reactivate the portal (which is the plot of Episode 2). Thanks to Gordon Freeman's efforts once again, the missile stops the portal's reformation, and the Combine's point of entry is shut off.

THAT is how one man changed the world. As Eli says in Episode 2, if the full forces came back, the Earth would not even last seven seconds.

, I am The "fat larvae things" are not necessarily "Combine" but rather Combine Advisors, a subspecies of many subspecies all collected under the Combine name. There is not enough information to know if they are pure Combine, but they certainly are a part of the faction nonetheless (given that Breen is seen communicating with one and later, is theorized to become one)

thank you based lore man

Welp, bait is over!

The more interesting question is: do the strides and small hunters come from the same planet? They share the tripedal body setup, just with different augmentation.
And what about the gunships? Were they always helicopter like or are they like augmented whales?
And are human combine used on other planets? Possibly augmented in a similar way?

over?

it ended when op posted his redditfrog meme

it should be a sign to automatically invalidate their shitty opinions

Yup. Also dont forget about the G-man. That thing knows when and where to put Gordon to make shit happen

someone tell me more about g-man

He's Gordon Freeman

They're all obviously completely artificial organisms

theres nothing to be told. He's a mysterious figure that places Gordon in some kind of stasis and later places him on the tram at the beginning of HL2.

He hints he might be working for some higher order, and that Gordon is bought for someone elses agenda. Also apparently vortigaunts can make him fuck off.

I like to think theres some force in the universe that opposes the combine and G-man happens to be an entity with the ability to transcend dimensions easily. So he employs himself as some kind of broker

No. The combine assimilate, at some point they were organisms.
Hell, striders have literal brains.

With fucking electronics wired into it, look at it closer some time. They were completely engineered and what can't be grown is welded on.