Wallace Breen's desk has become an integral part of his body, this is a subtle nod to the Half Life 2 Beta where Breen was known as the "Consul" and in the foolish attempt to please his Combine Benefactors he would have replaced all of his internal organs with stuff he found at IKEA, making him more desk than human. Alyx also had red hair that was in the beta too
All his organs are inside the desk and chair, it's wirelessly connected to his body so that he can move freely. However he got too far away from it in the end of half life 2, therefore resulting in him dying offscreen.
a lot of this was actually explained by the writers themselves ! basically, the citizens were allowed to keep their old clothes, but all new ones were the uniforms we see in hl2, as their older clothes got into worse shape, they were forced to switch to the combine distributed ones. as for the seemingly more strict combine rule, it's probably a lot of different factors, as mentioned in the vid, the vault being destroyed grabbed the attention of the combine, showing that humans were more dangerous to them then expected, leading them to increase their control over the population. another factor could be how little they need from humans in hl2, they are basically on the verge of killing everyone and going on to conquer the rest of the universe, having almost cracked local teleportation inside of our universe, which is basically the only reason they kept humanity alive as long as they did, to study what the rebelion created.
The combine in half life alyx wore much more bulky armor that was probably meant to look intimidating to the humans rather than actually protect them. That's why they usually are in squad formation and have roles: grunt (standard combatant meant for conventional engagements) ordinal (commanding officer that the team needs to rely on for orders) charger (equipped with a shield to push forward against the opposition) suppressor (supressing fire from the opposer in order for the squad to move forward) but in half life 2 they no longer have roles, they now wear compact armor.
Where did you get this from? Not just fact checking, I'm curious of what else I can find from this... interview? I don't remember reading it in Final Hours.
@@AdrianRojasF it's from something called "the marc laidlaw vault",it's a steam discussion page.. thing, you can look it up online, it has a ton of fascinating facts about the half-life universe.
Haha! While I think that probably is the reason, I also think that it was because valve had the ability to be far more detailed and diverse with the citizens and city 17 in general.
It’s also possible that, after the vault’s destruction, the Combine would tighten security and possibly even disallow things like hats and pets as a punishment of some kind.
The vault being destroyed is an alternate universe from Half-Life 2, wasn't it? How would that effect the citizens in City 17 if it was destroyed by Alyx in another timeline? The gmod section convinced me tho 10/10
Spoilers It goes like this: alyx is kept in stasis but the events of HL2 still happen until the part where alyx kills the advisor with the lightning and then gman takes her away and eli lives. So aka not an alternative reality
The Combine don't seem to care much about Earth... not at first, at least. Breen is, of course, subordinate to them, but because their lack of immediate interest, he seems to have pretty much total effective power over humanity. As long as Combine's interests aren't in danger, he can do pretty much whatever he wants. We can say that because the main power left on Earth are the transhuman Combine military, and they are controlled by Breen, as seen when Breen admonishes them in Nova Prospekt.
ok here's a reason this can't be, in half life alyx, gman travel's back in time and gets himself captured by the combine so that eli can tell alyx about the vault and the super weapon, so then alyx gets hired by gman, if gman wouldn't have been there, there would be no vault to knock down
I don't understand Valve's thought process when making Half-Life Alyx. They had modeled an ordinary blue HL2 citizen jumpsuit for Half-Life Alyx, as well as the default and standard HL2 Combine Soldier, but then they decided to cut them both. Why? They're canon, and common in Half-Life 2. Why the hell would you ever cut key assets like that? It just doesn't make sense to me.
That's just game development. Some things get used, some gets scrapped, some things move around and change mid development. Plus the chances of those assets getting used in future projects isn't 0%. They might pop up in a future entry or it won't, only time will tell.
@@thespectacularspider-man2549what most likely happened after he saw eli get killed he saw a oppurtunity to take a young alyx oblivious to what will happen and show her the future to have her join his employers. The easiest way is to wait for alyx, so he allows himself to be captured be freed by alyx and do his plan. The time DOES NOT CHANGE every event is the same up until eli gets killed by the advisor. TL:DR Time did not change until eli was killed, that is when in HLA alyx killed the advisor and saved her dad. Eli knowing G-man caused this.
I've thought about this a bit, in the HL2 timeline the vault either didn't exist or Alyx didn't have anything to do with it. Wouldn't make sense for Gman to have been captured without an actual purpose, the events of Alyx were just Gman altering the timeline to test Alyx. After she passed her assessment he simply restored the default timeline and took Alyx away. HL:A couldn't really have anything to do with it. So why the change? I have a few ideas. It might be part of the Combines slow genocide, they gradually make things worse and wear down humanity. After constructing the Citadel they could have greatly strengthened their hold on City 17 and step up their oppression. It could also be possible that Gordon and Alyx just witnessed vastly different parts of the city, Gordon only really sees an area that seems dedicated to new intakes, possibly low level citizens who are afforded fewer privileges. Alyx's district may have been for skilled workers and those the Combine deemed loyal/compliant, giving them a higher quality of life in return such as the family members of Civil Protection. It's also possible that they might just be altering the lore a little bit to give City 17 a different feel.
Thanks, I was searching if someone said it. I agree that the capture of Gman happened in an alternative timeline (he couldn't have made the offer to Alyx if Eli's death hadn't happened). And yes, this kind of change in oppressive regimes is gradual so people don't even notice. We have Doctor Breen to thank for that....human treatment.
Plus... It's a video game developed by people and a new generation of artists with autonomy who weren't restrained from being creative for the sake of continuity. I know this isn't a serious video but we can talk about whatever we want.
@@AdrianRojasFGman can do anything at will even teleport, I think he insteas let himself get captured. And the vault could have been made because they wanted Gman kept in the prison, using the vortessence.
@@BananawithJaundice G-man has limited leeway. Sure, he can teleport, time travel, etc., etc. But he can't... trigger a resonance cascade, call the Combine so they can invade Earth, destroy the Citadel himself, teleport Alyx into White Forest. He's not almighty. As for intentions on getting captured... I don't really have a take on that but I don't see the game giving you a definitive answer either, as you present it. My guess is he did get caught (doing what? I don't know) unintentionally, but he made the best out of his situation, given that he did get rescued. The concept art shows him sitting upset inside his cage, but that's just concept art and stuff changes during development.
Ive very thankful you made this a normal video instead of a "short". the shorts ui is painful on desktop and im so sick of every video under a minute being a short
I suppose it also can show in the difference between the Combine Soldiers in each game. While they did still have the Automaton like soldiers in both games, Half Life Alex also had a handful of low ranking Combine Grunts who still kept some semblance of personality and memories (kinda like a halfway point between Civil Protection and the Combine Army) while in Half Life 2 every single Combine Soldier were the emotionless automatons whipped of all memories. I guess Dr. Breen seeing a single woman mowing down Grunts who carry a big red gas tank that just begs “please shoot me and make me explode” made him reconsider their effectiveness and decide to go full out Emotionless Memory whipped Automaton with the Combine Army. As for why he still allowed Civil Protection to stay the same, I’m gonna guess it’s because we didn’t really fight them that much as Alex and therefore Breen wouldn’t really get much of a chance to examine their weaknesses.
my guess for keeping CPs is because they are effective motivators to get people in. they are hardly armed, and they spread the word of "hey, rather than get beat up, im getting extra rations... you should join up too" though, theres nothing saying those half-way units dont exist in places where xen life is more of a threat. for instance, if the combine invaded ravenholm (which they have no reason too) we may see the more specialist units that we see in the quarantine zone.
a fair few people were talking about the fact there was aparantly fully modeled HL2 citizens and HL2 combine soldiers, and valve decided to just not use them and not understanding why. i simply propose the fact this game takes place YEARS before HL2, so those combine soldiers we see in HL2 are more recent evolutions, while the ones in Alyx are more slapdash, older armor and upgrades, as for the clothing, i believe it makes sense that a strict uniform would be put in place, due to that particular one being basically unable to carry any hidden weapons, while some of the outfits we see in Alyx are very much capable of doing so. TLDR: were seeing older units in alyx, not the more up to date units in HL2, and you cant hide a gun in the HL2 citizen outfits
cmon let's not act like valve had some lore reason. that's simply because they did not feel like modelling different clo- nvm that's some pretty sick slicing of breen's voicelines have my babies i beg you.
I've always wondered why the citizens were all american considering where city 17 is thought to be located. As well as how characters like Eli and Alyx were able to get there from Black Mesa
People were relocated after the Combine took over; there's a globe showing an arrow from America to Eastern Europe in Alyx, and citizens mention being frequently relocated in Half-Life 2. Moving people to a foreign place where they can't read most of the signs or books is probably a way to suppress rebellion
It's still "legit," just not an in-depth analysis. It is still likely that Breen and/or the Combine reduced the living conditions greatly because they heard that someone from City 17 destroyed a very important structure.
I mean i think the answer is that with new technology they could give the HL2 world more life by adding more details and such. HL2 is an old game after all
Wallace Breen's desk has become an integral part of his body, this is a subtle nod to the Half Life 2 Beta where Breen was known as the "Consul" and in the foolish attempt to please his Combine Benefactors he would have replaced all of his internal organs with stuff he found at IKEA, making him more desk than human. Alyx also had red hair that was in the beta too
"He's more furniture now than man."
So He Simped For The Combine?
Did you know that they changed the story because of the leak and the beta was dark and gritty it was true they scrapped the whole game
@@YourFoxFriendYT Don't spread misinformation, the game was changed of art direction way long before the leak
All his organs are inside the desk and chair, it's wirelessly connected to his body so that he can move freely. However he got too far away from it in the end of half life 2, therefore resulting in him dying offscreen.
I was disappointed in the length of the video when I was about to watch it, but the ending is so magnificient, the sacrifice was definitely worth it.
there'll be a bigger thingy next week :)
@@PurpleColonel
@@PurpleColonel that's what she said
@@PurpleColonel YES YES YES YES
there was not a bigger thing next week
The hat ban is what truly led to Breen's downfall
That’s one of the multiple main reasons I joined the lambda resistance.
a lot of this was actually explained by the writers themselves ! basically, the citizens were allowed to keep their old clothes, but all new ones were the uniforms we see in hl2, as their older clothes got into worse shape, they were forced to switch to the combine distributed ones. as for the seemingly more strict combine rule, it's probably a lot of different factors, as mentioned in the vid, the vault being destroyed grabbed the attention of the combine, showing that humans were more dangerous to them then expected, leading them to increase their control over the population. another factor could be how little they need from humans in hl2, they are basically on the verge of killing everyone and going on to conquer the rest of the universe, having almost cracked local teleportation inside of our universe, which is basically the only reason they kept humanity alive as long as they did, to study what the rebelion created.
The combine in half life alyx wore much more bulky armor that was probably meant to look intimidating to the humans rather than actually protect them. That's why they usually are in squad formation and have roles: grunt (standard combatant meant for conventional engagements) ordinal (commanding officer that the team needs to rely on for orders) charger (equipped with a shield to push forward against the opposition) suppressor (supressing fire from the opposer in order for the squad to move forward) but in half life 2 they no longer have roles, they now wear compact armor.
Where did you get this from? Not just fact checking, I'm curious of what else I can find from this... interview? I don't remember reading it in Final Hours.
@@AdrianRojasF it's from something called "the marc laidlaw vault",it's a steam discussion page.. thing, you can look it up online, it has a ton of fascinating facts about the half-life universe.
@@bouribou4073 Thanks!
@@ADcommenter Only took the Combine 5 years to learn what had already been established by pre-existing militaries..
Haha!
While I think that probably is the reason, I also think that it was because valve had the ability to be far more detailed and diverse with the citizens and city 17 in general.
It’s also possible that, after the vault’s destruction, the Combine would tighten security and possibly even disallow things like hats and pets as a punishment of some kind.
I mean, from a practical standpoint that is exactly it.
The question though is how do we explain this in-lore.
I can Imagine Dr Breen driving through highway 17 with his desk
The vault being destroyed is an alternate universe from Half-Life 2, wasn't it? How would that effect the citizens in City 17 if it was destroyed by Alyx in another timeline?
The gmod section convinced me tho 10/10
Gman had to be freed from the vault before HL2 so some shit musta happened, time travel is fucky bro
Well no, it's not really an alternate universe.
Spoilers
It goes like this: alyx is kept in stasis but the events of HL2 still happen until the part where alyx kills the advisor with the lightning and then gman takes her away and eli lives. So aka not an alternative reality
Half life Alyx is a prequel to HL2 not an alternate storyline
The confusion around Alyx’s ending is why it’s a bad idea to just throw time travel into a story willy-nilly.
the depressing uniforms can be seen on the ghost citizens inside the vault IIRC
my stoned ass baked an entire pizza to watch this.... until i finished one slice and realized this vid was a meme xD
the cats on the other hand? I think those all going is Kleiner's fault.
This makes total sense, including Breen beating random people in gm construct
I always figured that Dr. Breen didn't have much actual control over City 17, and was more of a figurehead than anything else.
The Combine don't seem to care much about Earth... not at first, at least. Breen is, of course, subordinate to them, but because their lack of immediate interest, he seems to have pretty much total effective power over humanity. As long as Combine's interests aren't in danger, he can do pretty much whatever he wants.
We can say that because the main power left on Earth are the transhuman Combine military, and they are controlled by Breen, as seen when Breen admonishes them in Nova Prospekt.
On a more serious note: it would make sense for the Combine to tighten up security after the vault gets destroyed.
I love this video, laughing so hard rn :D subscribing to this channel was a great choice
This is canon
ok here's a reason this can't be, in half life alyx, gman travel's back in time and gets himself captured by the combine so that eli can tell alyx about the vault and the super weapon, so then alyx gets hired by gman, if gman wouldn't have been there, there would be no vault to knock down
What if after the vault incident the combine became more strict with the citizens luxury.
Yikes! This is sooooo evil, man.
I don't understand Valve's thought process when making Half-Life Alyx. They had modeled an ordinary blue HL2 citizen jumpsuit for Half-Life Alyx, as well as the default and standard HL2 Combine Soldier, but then they decided to cut them both. Why? They're canon, and common in Half-Life 2. Why the hell would you ever cut key assets like that? It just doesn't make sense to me.
That's just game development. Some things get used, some gets scrapped, some things move around and change mid development.
Plus the chances of those assets getting used in future projects isn't 0%. They might pop up in a future entry or it won't, only time will tell.
I don't treat Alyx as canon. Just a fun side story.
@@thespectacularspider-man2549 then you are just straight up wrong
@@guyjuprod I mean, maybe. But you gotta agree there's too many inconsistencies between HL2 and HLA.
@@thespectacularspider-man2549what most likely happened after he saw eli get killed he saw a oppurtunity to take a young alyx oblivious to what will happen and show her the future to have her join his employers. The easiest way is to wait for alyx, so he allows himself to be captured be freed by alyx and do his plan. The time DOES NOT CHANGE every event is the same up until eli gets killed by the advisor.
TL:DR
Time did not change until eli was killed, that is when in HLA alyx killed the advisor and saved her dad. Eli knowing G-man caused this.
Yeap sounds about right.
when me play half life 2 but gmod i have hat
I've thought about this a bit, in the HL2 timeline the vault either didn't exist or Alyx didn't have anything to do with it. Wouldn't make sense for Gman to have been captured without an actual purpose, the events of Alyx were just Gman altering the timeline to test Alyx. After she passed her assessment he simply restored the default timeline and took Alyx away. HL:A couldn't really have anything to do with it.
So why the change? I have a few ideas. It might be part of the Combines slow genocide, they gradually make things worse and wear down humanity. After constructing the Citadel they could have greatly strengthened their hold on City 17 and step up their oppression. It could also be possible that Gordon and Alyx just witnessed vastly different parts of the city, Gordon only really sees an area that seems dedicated to new intakes, possibly low level citizens who are afforded fewer privileges. Alyx's district may have been for skilled workers and those the Combine deemed loyal/compliant, giving them a higher quality of life in return such as the family members of Civil Protection. It's also possible that they might just be altering the lore a little bit to give City 17 a different feel.
Thanks, I was searching if someone said it. I agree that the capture of Gman happened in an alternative timeline (he couldn't have made the offer to Alyx if Eli's death hadn't happened). And yes, this kind of change in oppressive regimes is gradual so people don't even notice. We have Doctor Breen to thank for that....human treatment.
Plus... It's a video game developed by people and a new generation of artists with autonomy who weren't restrained from being creative for the sake of continuity.
I know this isn't a serious video but we can talk about whatever we want.
@@AdrianRojasFGman can do anything at will even teleport, I think he insteas let himself get captured. And the vault could have been made because they wanted Gman kept in the prison, using the vortessence.
@@BananawithJaundice G-man has limited leeway. Sure, he can teleport, time travel, etc., etc. But he can't... trigger a resonance cascade, call the Combine so they can invade Earth, destroy the Citadel himself, teleport Alyx into White Forest. He's not almighty.
As for intentions on getting captured... I don't really have a take on that but I don't see the game giving you a definitive answer either, as you present it. My guess is he did get caught (doing what? I don't know) unintentionally, but he made the best out of his situation, given that he did get rescued. The concept art shows him sitting upset inside his cage, but that's just concept art and stuff changes during development.
Ive very thankful you made this a normal video instead of a "short". the shorts ui is painful on desktop and im so sick of every video under a minute being a short
I'm experimenting with uploading it both ways; seems like this is the best way to go in general
You know, your voice kinda sounds like Lead head's.
This is 100% canon
I suppose it also can show in the difference between the Combine Soldiers in each game. While they did still have the Automaton like soldiers in both games, Half Life Alex also had a handful of low ranking Combine Grunts who still kept some semblance of personality and memories (kinda like a halfway point between Civil Protection and the Combine Army) while in Half Life 2 every single Combine Soldier were the emotionless automatons whipped of all memories. I guess Dr. Breen seeing a single woman mowing down Grunts who carry a big red gas tank that just begs “please shoot me and make me explode” made him reconsider their effectiveness and decide to go full out Emotionless Memory whipped Automaton with the Combine Army. As for why he still allowed Civil Protection to stay the same, I’m gonna guess it’s because we didn’t really fight them that much as Alex and therefore Breen wouldn’t really get much of a chance to examine their weaknesses.
my guess for keeping CPs is because they are effective motivators to get people in. they are hardly armed, and they spread the word of "hey, rather than get beat up, im getting extra rations... you should join up too"
though, theres nothing saying those half-way units dont exist in places where xen life is more of a threat. for instance, if the combine invaded ravenholm (which they have no reason too) we may see the more specialist units that we see in the quarantine zone.
callusque
Perfectly explained in 59 seconds thank you
Or uhh maybe its just because valve improved when it comes to game development so they could give the citizens more variety....
Thus was hilarious. Thank you
Does this make Alyx an accidental anagonist
Kinda but less than Gordon already was
a fair few people were talking about the fact there was aparantly fully modeled HL2 citizens and HL2 combine soldiers, and valve decided to just not use them and not understanding why.
i simply propose the fact this game takes place YEARS before HL2, so those combine soldiers we see in HL2 are more recent evolutions, while the ones in Alyx are more slapdash, older armor and upgrades, as for the clothing, i believe it makes sense that a strict uniform would be put in place, due to that particular one being basically unable to carry any hidden weapons, while some of the outfits we see in Alyx are very much capable of doing so.
TLDR: were seeing older units in alyx, not the more up to date units in HL2, and you cant hide a gun in the HL2 citizen outfits
Exactly a minute long? That's surreal.
City 17 in actual Half Life 2: Worker and Prisoners adapted from 1984.
City 17 people in Half Life Alyx: Actual normal clothes.
That is NOT what I expected from the second half of the video, lmao I'm dying we need more of this
HAAAAAX
Dr Wallace Breen
I imagine most of them were conscripted into the combine military or slaughtered en masse.
Ahahaha! God, thwt ending!
Vinny in the thumbnail?
canon canon canon canon
yeah, pretty much
how did you make Dr. Breen speak like that??
Legendary
C A N O N
I was not expecting this to go in the direction it did at all
civil protection
Foken loool
It's all fun until Gordon Freeman joins the game
cmon let's not act like valve had some lore reason. that's simply because they did not feel like modelling different clo-
nvm that's some pretty sick slicing of breen's voicelines have my babies i beg you.
That's also why Grunts are unarmored soldiers and vice versa.
Consul has authorized all protection teams and Echo forces to prosecute all citizens.
Huh...I did not see the length and thought it was an actual video.
I mean they also all get an American cadence between the games but it is an interesting theory.
Breen's canon reaction
Change my mind
You got us in the first hat tho, ngl.
Straight to the point. Good lore video sir
Sounds legit.
I've always wondered why the citizens were all american considering where city 17 is thought to be located. As well as how characters like Eli and Alyx were able to get there from Black Mesa
I heard somewhere that during development they planned to have the language of citizens randomized, don’t quote me on that though I have no source.
People were relocated after the Combine took over; there's a globe showing an arrow from America to Eastern Europe in Alyx, and citizens mention being frequently relocated in Half-Life 2. Moving people to a foreign place where they can't read most of the signs or books is probably a way to suppress rebellion
i thought this video was legit ☠☠☠ (but like fr i wanna know what happened to the citizens when the citadel exploded in episode 2)
It's still "legit," just not an in-depth analysis. It is still likely that Breen and/or the Combine reduced the living conditions greatly because they heard that someone from City 17 destroyed a very important structure.
I'm pretty sure the citizens either escaped City 17 with Barney or died from the explosion.
But I'm wondering where Dr. Kleiner is during Half Life: Alyx
he was going to be in the game but valve cut him form the game
@@FFgames446he was busy capturing cats
ajajaja
Or maybe they just didn’t put the kitty cat in hl2 cause they didn’t feel like doing it
Dr. Kleiner did some horrible things to the remaining cats I hear.
@@EnbyLite NO HE DIDNT IM IN DENIAL AND THE KITTY CATS ARE OK
@@YourFoxFriendYT bro brenny says I still have nightmars about that cat
@@YourFoxFriendYT “Look Gordon, I had to turn that cat right side out!”
@@SomeGrunt_On_UA-cam"to make sure it was a cat..."
It’s not just the hats, the weaponry was also changed.
I mean i think the answer is that with new technology they could give the HL2 world more life by adding more details and such. HL2 is an old game after all
Thanks for clearing it up!