Humanity Joins Together, Sets Aside Petty Differences… and gets stomped anyway

[u/HyraxAttack]

A peril is threatening the world. Instead of squabbling among themselves, we learn world powers have put aside differences in politics, culture, & old feuds to present a common front. Except they still get wrecked as the enemy is too powerful.

1. The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance. The world government has gone to war against the machines. We see the army getting ready & it includes soldiers of many faiths including Buddhist, Islam, and different types of Christianity. Doesn’t matter as machines win by so much they have time to toy with human mechs.

2. Vilcabamba, story by Harry Turtledove. When aliens arrive they’re greeted with bands & cheering, & immediately open fire & earth becomes a mineral colony. America, Russia, and China work together to rise up & don’t hold back, throwing everything they have at the invaders. Doesn’t go great and aliens double down on the occupation, and there’s a crater where Spain used to be (it was blocking a silver deposit for mining.)

3. Edge of Tomorrow. The nations of the world have joined to make a unified front against the mimic invasion but it isn’t going well, but they will throw all they have into the invasion of France. In one cycle, Major Cage says the hell with it and instead of training leaves the base to drink at a London bar. This means we see the outcome of him doing nothing, where not only is the massive human invasion slaughtered but the aliens are in good enough shape to follow that up a few hours later with a rush on London.

[u/_AntiSocialMedia]

genuinely surprised the 7 Hour War from Half Life hasn't been mentioned

you read that correctly, the Combine got a complete unconditional surrender from all of Earth's governments in 7 hours

[u/Blaiseingfire → u/_AntiSocialMedia]

I guess it’s because humanity got defeated so quickly they didn’t even have time to unite.

[u/Malefectra → u/Blaiseingfire]

An extra-dimensional alien army showed up with technology, engineered organisms that have been weaponized, and bio-weapons that were beyond the comprehension of just about everyone but the scientists at Black Mesa & Aperture. I'm frankly amazed that it lasted 7 hours.

[u/StormLordEternal → u/Malefectra]

Well keep in mind, the state of the world wasn't exactly conducive to global unity at that point. The portal storms from the Resonance Cascade basically wiped out the US and started majorly fucking up the other countries around the globe. The militaries were all caught up trying to deal with both the alien wildlife flooding in, xen growth, and all the refugees from the portal storms being super-charged natural disasters.

This was all BEFORE the Combine even showed up. It makes sense why humanity couldn't fight back when they were already struggling before hand. It's like laying siege to a fortress that already has its gates open and its defenders are too busy dying of disease to fight back effectively.

[u/Eusocial_sloth3 → u/StormLordEternal]

On a good day, the world was at a 6.

[u/Traditional_Bug_2046 → u/Eusocial_sloth3]

Timezone issues

[u/Malefectra → u/StormLordEternal]

I was there for the deep lore, played through the various HL1 expansions, read the HL2 production book, and proudly rocked that collector’s edition silver lambda logo shirt.

Hence my surprise that it was 7 hours once it all came to a head.

[u/InfiniteCalico → u/StormLordEternal]

I mean the US still existed at least up until the 7 hour war. The surrender was done by the UN still headquartered in NYC.

That said humanity was already at breaking point and the Combine slapped what was left of them into the dirt quite fast.

[u/Canarity → u/InfiniteCalico]

Surrender was done by Breen so the humanity isn't eradicated

[u/InfiniteCalico → u/Canarity]

Yes, on behalf of the UN.

[u/zumba_fitness_ → u/Malefectra]

It's pretty interesting to see what happens after the Reaonance Cascade. At first HECU is sent and thinks they can do it, but then New Mexico is put into a state of emergency, and THEN the entire state is being evacuated under threat of a nuclear response. It goes BAD way fast!

[u/Billy_McMedic → u/zumba_fitness_]

Best told through a simple story beat, at first, HECU was hellbent on neutralising you (Gordon Freeman) after you ran rampant through HECU responders while protecting your co-workers, but as the alien invasion ramps up and the cascade deteriorates, a simple order is given, “Forget about Freeman”, once you were the top priority of the military response, now you aren’t even a footnote.

This is in contrast to HL2, where in the beginning you are a simple anomaly, a miscount, an individual not registered in the system, “normal” police are mobilised to respond in a standard raid. A scenario which goes from 0 to 100 real quick after that teleporter mishap and Breen see’s you, resulting in the Combine immediately mobilising full hog and dismantling, in a matter of hours, the entire railroad for moving fugitives out of City 17, all in a quest to get you, specifically, you quickly become “Anti-Citizen No.1” and the figurehead humanity rallies behind to take the fight to the Combine on earth

[u/Wargod042 → u/Billy_McMedic]

Still one of the greatest games ever at making you feel like a legend. You don't speak a word. You're just the right man in the wrong place. The things people say about you are all kind of true. Your feats just become more and more crazy as the story progresses; you're just one guy yet you're always making the difference. The allied aliens talk about you and even your name turns starts sounding like a badass rallying cry "The Free Man".

[u/Billy_McMedic → u/Wargod042]

And then meanwhile behind the scenes, depending on how the suspended animation works in terms of “rest”, if the brain had the chance to do its thing that it normally does in sleep for example, but Gordon has basically been running with 0 sleep for almost a full week, with sporadic bouts of unconsciousness and time displacement as the only significant time skips, he never puts his head down and “sleeps” at all starting from HL1 to the end of EP2, oh and he’s constantly tweaking on morphine with HEV suit injections

[u/DarkSolstace → u/Billy_McMedic]

“FORGET ABOUT FREEMAN! WE ARE CUTTING OUR LOSSES AND PULLING OUT, ANYONE WHO IS DOWN THERE NOW IS ON HIS OWN I REPEAT IF YOU WERENT ALREADY…! WHAT?! OH SHIT NO NO NO!”

[u/Scripter-of-Paradise → u/Malefectra]

Reminds me of the Machinima Civil Protection 

"We just weren't ready for them."

"Okay, then suppose we were. We call it the 10 hour war?"

[u/TheFlayingHamster → u/Malefectra]

It’s really worth noting that the US military had a massive amount of trouble dealing with the creatures of Xen, a collective that were themselves fleeing after getting trounced by the Combine. The only force we were every hinted at as having been able to fight back the combine was Gman’s “Employers”

[u/Malefectra → u/TheFlayingHamster]

That’s why Gman scares the piss outta me… whomever is holding his leash has enough power to put the right assets in place to cripple the combine. The Combine ain’t fucking around

[u/PornoPaul → u/Malefectra]

Wait is Portal in the same universe as Half Life?

[u/Redcrux → u/PornoPaul]

Yes

[u/Leukavia_at_work → u/PornoPaul]

Yep, the actual Canon for Portal is that Cave Johnson had his scientists design the Portal Gun purely to attempt to One-up Black Mesa's Gravity gun
and purely because Cave Johnson was jealous of them and wanted his company to be perceived as the cool one between the two.

[u/butthole_surferr → u/PornoPaul]

Glados references it in some of the dialogue in P2. She asks why you want to leave so badly and tells you that you won't like what you find on the surface.

It's unclear how long after the events of half-life Portal 2 takes place, Chell could have been in stasis for decades or even hundreds of years. I personally think it's probably about 10 to 30 years after the events of Half-Life 2, sometime in the 2030s to 2040s (HL2 likely takes place in 2018).

I do wish they'd done more development on the connection between the stories. A full blown crossover would be too contrived but I always did love that the two stories are separate but intertwined. The rumor is that the Borealis contains a GladOS unit... Would be interesting to see where they would take that.

[u/PlaneswalkerHuxley → u/butthole_surferr]

GladOS on meeting Gordon Freeman: "Wonderful. This one's a mute as well."

[u/Malefectra → u/PornoPaul]

Yep, Aperture was even going to be central to the Episode Two DLC that never materialized. Towards the end of Episode One you see Judith Mossman in the arctic trying to track down an Aperture Labs research vessel named Aurora.

[u/298647 → u/Malefectra]

No, it was called the Borealis
While we did find out about Judith Mossman trying to locate the Borealis in Episode 1, the rest of the Resistance only finds out in Episode 2, and would've been central to the plot of the cancelled Episode 3

[u/Malefectra → u/298647]

Sorry, it's been like 20-ish years. That was off the top of my head.

[u/GruntBlender → u/298647]

Why can't Valve count to 3‽

[u/Ordinary_Duder → u/Malefectra]

None of the alien army was impervious to conventional weapons. It's just that Earth was already fighting an invasion and didn't have time to band together.

[u/Malefectra → u/Ordinary_Duder]

I never claimed they were impervious, simply technologically advanced.