I tend to find this to be an interesting take. One would suppose having the foundation of the Combine's absolute control upturned would allow for a more dynamic system. Players might push for it to only be fight rebels or fight combine, but it doesn't have to be? Maybe cities remain under Combine Control, fighting off growing resistance efforts. Maybe those cities start competing or actively shafting each other for resources now that their overlords can't dictate terms.
Futurism would actually have a viable goal of extorting combine tech to literally visit the stars.
We all know given what we have now the options are inherently limited and any kind of interesting plotline needs a lot of ignorance to not be crushed by a competent global authority.
Just seems we could keep doing what we're doing without needing to call the Combine stupid to explain it all away. They're just not all powerful now and the ego maniacs they left in charge are extorting their positions without oversight.
Well ye, this I am fine with.
My post was about the fact peeps were mentioning a non-cityrp environment which is the worst of the worst. It can be fun for a lot of people who align with those types of servers and playstyle, but for those who enjoy a more relaxing playstyle.... yeah, doesn't work at all and thus removes 50% of the playerbase from the scene. CityRP allows for all types of playstyles to exist all at the same time despite its bland gameplay loop.
So everything you all mentioned is all good.
kind of an underwhelming uprising then, you’d expect the info to spread and for there to be like, a domino effect or something.
I thought the whole point of an uprising event was to have everything reach its logical conclusion before we move to V3 with a Global rebellion through momentum.
Well an City uprising isn't some grandiose event by any means, I mean, looking at City 2 for example we see it basically did nothing to the world around it despite being a place of uprising. And I know that is all related to shit writing since tbf the whole of City 2 was bad writing with no creativity behind it with stolen group names from HOI4...
City 17 will be much bigger on the otherhand with better writing (aka following the game) but won't be some grand world ending event. Afterall, everyone who has played the game reports the exact same feeling- Lambda won out of sheer LUCK losing a massive chunk of their forces just for 1 urban centre and its Citadel with the help of both the Gman and Gordon Freeman. Without them, they would've been massacred with ease and the Resistance was getting hammered before Gordon came along to turn the tide... the whole plot revolving around a single OP man with game logic.
Of course, those who have looked into deeply enough see the story and lore of HL2 actually leaves a massive plot hole- they have shown how brutal the Combine can be and how strong it is, while also killing a large chunk of the main force that allowed the events in the game to occur- meaning if other cities do indeed exist in the world of the true HL2, then the writers would've shot themselves in the foot with everything they did up to that point. Infact, some theorize its because they made the Combine a bit too powerful is part of why they tried retconning some of its power and tech in Half Life Alyx and also changing chunks of the lore to fit more suitably- not to mention its ending to re-life Eli and stop his death from happening knowing it would only serve to work against them later on had Eli been allowed to die.
Ontop of that theory is the idea the whole reason they have avoided HL3 is because they know in a sense they dun fucked up with the Combines power and authority and realize... "Oops, it took this much to kill the Combine in ONE city... it would require a force 1000 times the size to take back Earth completely which is impossible by all means." and sure an exaggeration in there but you get the idea.... the story of HL2 is flawed quite badly with the writers having put a gun up to their heads on accident. One wrong move and everything falls apart.
Its one reason why Willard choose not to follow HL2 completely and rewrite parts of its lower to make it vulnerable, give it weaknesses, add elements which can cripple it if the Resistance works it way to that point, etc. Even when HL:A came out, we followed parts of its lore but not entirely given both together were a contradiction of one another.
Anyway, I ranted long enough about story to earn a Nerd reaction (Maybe everyone who did the investigation in the Lore team back then needs a Nerd emoji too for analysing the whole story)
But to the actual point... it seems there is a quick misconception to fix here. V3 or what is now called radioworks goes back in time just for correction sake. V3/Radioworks will not enter Post-HL2 times since it had already been decided to go back in time and redo large chunks of lore from scratch due to various flaws and contradictions of our own design which became apparent overtime.
As for the uprising in C17 itself, it would leave quite a large impact. I was by no means trying to downplay it, but pointing out it would not be some grand world ending event. If anything, it would just kickstart rebellions in other places which may or may not be successful and some cities may go down. The Suppression field to our dismay will also go down as a result as the Citadel network would indeed fail having one of its citadels be removed from its connection- forcing the field surrounding Earth to collapse.
The Combine at this time having lost its Administrator will also devolve into chaos and disorganisation as well as the Advisors who were present in C17 mostly dying with the ones who escaped still alive but out in the wilderness as per EP1/EP2, some even dying because Freeman likes killing them against all odds.
Beyond that the story continues on, etc etc, lots of stuff to possibly occur and you also got to remember as well they will eventually reach where HL3 was meant to take place where if my memory serves me right heading towards the Artic to find a ship named the Borealis to recover Apertures tech which the Combine also want given it holds the portal gun. But that is all I will say for now as everything here is outside of scope atm.