It has come to my attention that some have lately called me a collaborator, as if such a term were shameful.
I ask you, what greater endeavor exists than that of collaboration?
In our current unparalleled enterprise, refusal to collaborate is simply a refusal to grow -- an insistence on suicide, if you will.
Did the lungfish refuse to breathe air? It did not
It crept forth boldly while its brethren remained in the blackest ocean abyss, with lidless eyes forever staring at the dark, ignorant and doomed despite their eternal vigilance.
Would we model ourselves on the trilobite?
Are all the accomplishment of humanity fated to be nothing more than a layer of broken plastic shards thinly strewn across a fossil bed, sandwiched between the Burgess shale and an eon's worth of mud?
In order to be true to our nature, and our destiny, we must aspire to greater things. We have outgrown our cradle.
It is futile to cry for mother's milk, when our true sustenance awaits us among the stars.
And only the universal union that small minds call "The Combine" can carry us there.
Therefore I say, yes, I am a collaborator. We must ALL collaborate, willingly, eagerly, if we expect to reap the benefits of unification.
AND REAP WE SHALL!
>>716437518 (OP)Laidlaw likes to be all faux modest and attribute everything to the voice acting of Robert Culp, but even without Culp's voice acting this speech is genuinely powerful rhetoric.
>>716437775Laidlaw is good at writing dialogue and situational scenes, that is true. However, he absolutely sucks at continuity, character development and general plot writing.
>>716438287He's pretty good in his actual books. The issues with Half-Life are mostly from the fact that he has to write to fit what the rest of the team builds. The story is only there to serve the game so they prioritize building cool stuff first over maintaining continuity, character development, and plot.
Valve screwed over the Artifact fanbase by cancelling the Artifact 2.0 beta without even allowing users to invite friends like they said they would in January 2021 and does not deserve your financial support for these gross consumer-unfriendly practices.
>>716438590>He's pretty good in his actual booksWell, I was just going off of what I saw in the games. I won't make any claims for his literary work which I am not familiar with.
>>716437518 (OP)Prove him wrong. I dare you.
A rebel Human instinctive BMRF scientist professor and theoretical physics doctorate was teaching a class on Gordon Freeman, known anticitizen
"Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Freeman and accept that he was the most opportunely timed being the world has ever known, even greater than Wallace Breen!"
At this moment, a memory erased, patriotic, pro-universal union Overwatch soldier who had served 1500 tours of offworld duty and understood the necessity of the suppression field and fully supported all military decisions made by the Universal Union stood up and held up a model of a man.
"What's the greatest endeavor?"
The arrogant professor smirked quite instinctively and smugly replied "our biological imperative and doing your part"
"Wrong. It’s collaboration. If it is instinct, would we model ourselves on the Trilobite? Did the lungfish refuse to breathe air?"
The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of Raising the Bar. He stormed out of the room crying those reactionary and fearful tears.
The students applauded and all joined civil protection that day and accepted Our Benefactors as their savior. An Advisor named "Universal Union" flew into the room and perched atop the combine emblem and shed a tear on the supply crate. Humanity's surrender was read several times, and Our Benefactors themselves showed up and enacted immortality across the species.
The scientist lost his rations and was relocated the next day. He died of the preventable plague called age (when immortality is in our reach), and was tossed into a layer of broken plastic shards thinly strewn across a fossil bed, sandwiched between the Burgess shale and an eon's worth of mud for all eternity.
Be safe, Be aware
>>716437518 (OP)How could Freeman respond to this?
>>716437518 (OP)Can i be honest with /v/?, I loathe when people over analyzed Valve game, This Dialogue meant nothing in the grand scheme of things and many Reddit quips because Half Life setting is just objectively terrible for sequel.
>>716440894*gravguns you into an undefinable singularity*
>>716438932coward. say he sucks with no grounding or gtfo
the mistake of breen is not taking into account the g man. humanity has a wild card on its side, something to at least stall for.
>>716447510Vortigaunts are only allies of convenience and will turn on humanity the exact second they decide the Combine are no longer a threat.
Tell me, anonymous, if you can. You have shitposted so much. What is it, exactly, that you have created? Can you name even one effortpost? I thought not.
>>716437518 (OP)How is it possible to say this many words this elegantly and still have all of them be completely wrong?
Like if you translated his speech to plain text and just gave the overall key bullet points, you see how horribly wrong it all is.
...
And yet people will think he's right.
This level of writing talent is on a level that is unfathomable.
>>716438590At least the theoretical HL3, whenever that is, will be less awkward with the story because they had to think about continuity this time, unlike HL2 did.
>>716450042who the fuck thinks he's right?
Female01
md5: 8abce601cb974b7ef0d6a1577b98282e
🔍
>>716449457Inferior to my wife, Female01.
>>716450042He was right in the sense of "What the fuck can we do against this ultra-developed society".
He knew that the humanity had no chance and he knew that G-Man was fucking around as well and and both Breen and Gordon (+ Eli) knew that G-man is a glownigger that had no allegiance to Earth.
>>716451490Well the problem is when your writing is "woooooaah the combine are like, so unknowable, and the g-man is sooooo mysterious and humanity are just puppets dancing on their strings for a plot we don't grasp (and now we probably never really will)", you've basically just removed all the agency from the setting. G-man tells protag what to do against enemy we have no chance against, and if you don't he just kills you.
No human character is really doing anything of their own choice or for any immediate purposes, it's all alliances with mysterious unknowable figures against other mysterious unknowable figures. It's not like we can do anything different. Even the vortigaunts are a mostly unknown factor. Every character is just playing into someones plans and the plan doesn't even actually exist. There is no fucking plan lol
>>716440894Honestly without Breen, humanity would have likely perished or be in a way worse state. He did the best he could given the circumstances then ended up drinking the kool-aid.
