Agreed
I’m not sure on Breen returning cause we all expect it. But I suppose it’ll be based on how Valve implements it, in other games such as MW2, where a iconic character makes a return, it was completely unexpected. So I guess its just a case of hoping for the best. Breen was quite a compelling antagonist in the HL-series if I say so myself.
Breen was a complete asshole, who actually believed that by allowing the Combine to do their thing, humanity would advance enormously (technologically, physically, mentally, etc.). I hope he’s in hell right now for all the lives he helped destroy.
Then again, if he does come back, I might have a chance to kill him. Face to face. With a gun. Much better than seeing him fall down the teleport chamber in HL2.
Breen is dead.
You don’t really understand politics too well, do you? 90% of the crap he spouted were excuses designed to justify what he did. He didn’t actually believe that humanity would benefit from the combine. When he surrendered, it was for 2 reasons;
- He was a coward who believed that surrendering was the only way to survive. This much at least may have actually been true. If the combine had managed to take out the entire earth’s military in 7 hours, then they probably could have just kept going. There was more chance to learn about how the combine operated by being servants than enemies, and by giving the combine the impression they had already won, it had them off guard for when Gordon Freeman actually arrived (even if not him, some other rebel force that managed to garner enough firepower and luck)
- Ultimately though, Breen is the type of person that believed that by allowing himself to be used as a puppet by the combine, he could sacrifice the rest of humanity in order to garner personal favor. In the meantime he gets to act as the ruler of humanity, even if it is only as a puppet. It’s possible that it even worked to a certain extent given the spiel he was telling Eli at the end of HL2. It’s pretty obvious that would only last as long as he showed the ability to be useful, and once humanity’s resources were expended, his usefulness would be gone as well and he would be discarded without a second thought.
People who play politics do so because it gives them an advantage they’d never have on their own skills, and for some reason they never consider the other side may simply stop playing, possibly because they know they have absolutely no chance once that happens.
I admit I don’t know much about politics, but what I stated before was based on what I read from the Half-life Saga website. The excerpts that I based my statement on are listed below.
Wallace Breen, “made” optimistic about the Combine takeover, is appointed the Administrator of Earth, acting as a puppet for the Combine. How he is selected for this role is unknown at this time. Breen’s first act is to surrender Earth to the Combine, explaining that the Combine have arrived for good, to immortalize humanity, convinced by the Combine that the loss of life is inevitable in this transition period as Earth joins the Universal Union…Breen’s message is simple: That humanity should not attempt in any way to cause friction in the transition period as mankind integrates itself with the Combine. He believes in order to join this Universal Union, Man will have to sacrifice a lot, but he still believes that the ends justify the means. He truly believes that joining the Combine will be positive to humanity, and tries to convert the rest of it to his point of view.
If I misinterpreted these excerpts of what appears to be Breen’s personal feelings towards the Combine’s rule, please let me know where I made a mistake. Website link: https://members.shaw.ca/halflifestory/timeline.htm
The mistake you made was basing your assumptions on the assumptions that someone else made, rather than directly from the game. The guy who wrote up the summary of everything wasn’t the actual guy who did the writing for the Half Life series.
This states that the overall summary is pretty accurate, but not necessarily every detail.
What’s most likely is that Dr. Breen’s actual motivations are intentionally left open to interpretation so that there is room to mold things to fit whatever Valve needs for any type of plot device they might come up with in the future. As a result, your interpretation may be just as good as mine, but I feel that the methodology to his arguments reek of far too much propaganda for him to honestly believe in what he’s doing.
The types of arguments he makes when trying to convince the rebels, the combine soldiers, Eli, and even Gordon and Mossman all are highly emotional arguments that that twist facts and are specifically crafted with the intent to provoke a visceral rather than logical reaction in the person he is speaking to. My experience is that these are not traits of someone who honestly believes in the points they represent, or if they do, it is because they are deluding themselves even more than they are anyone else.
It’s actually the primary reason I love him as a villian. Underneath all the twofaced smiles and impotent displays of anger, he’s a sniveling, ass-kissing bureaucrat. It makes for such a realistic villian in what is otherwise a fantastical universe and it not only makes it so easy to hate him, but it also grounds the fantastic aspects of HalfLife and makes them all the easier to believe.
Now that you mention it, I actually have had no clue who wrote that timeline. I need to read more carefully. So thanks for telling me. 
However, now that I think about it, his arguments are very emotional. I actually started a new game and stood in the train station listening to his broadcasts. And a lot of the stuff he said makes perfect sense, especially the part about human nature and instinct. If it wasn’t for the oh so obvious fact that the Combine don’t give a shit about the advancement of humanity, I would actually have believed him in a real life conversation. What a manipulative little bastard!
On another less serious note, how would you feel/what would you do if you had an opportunity to face Dr. Breen? Personally, I’d shoot him in the face(or smash him with a crowbar).
I feel like it would be more satisfying to get in a fistfight with him, resulting in him being thrown out of a very high window.
Would you use your crowbar to send him out the window?
agreed. Except that, instead of a fistfight, I could try inviting him to give up of his life, putting him above the suppression device while my finger gets closer and closer to the activation switch.
Don’t give him the opportunity to pussy out and give up easily! Beat the shit out of him! Although, seeing him vaporized by the suppression device would be pretty funny, but it would happen too fast and he wouldn’t have time to scream in pain like the little bitch he is.
the suppression device would be set to operate on the lowest energy lever possible. Why? Because I like the smell of cooked meat on the morning.
and, if that don’t work, I could create an army of Breen’s replicas, only to get the satisfaction of seeing the vaporization over and over again.
If you make an army of replicas, make sure to keep them in check. If just one of those assholes gets free, shit will start all over again.:fffuuu:
Worse, they could team up and make n times the Breencasts that they could before!
I actually found Breen’s broadcasts to be quite amusing. While, technically speaking, it’s a bunch of bullshit, what he says DOES have some validity. It’s just the circumstances under which he is broadcasting that makes them annoying sometimes.
No, I liked them too. But I’m sure the civilians find them to be annoying loads of crap.
On the contrary, at least one of them enjoys the show, especially when he had the jugglers on.
Also, am I the only one who feels that Breen has actually done a lot of good for mankind? He’s obviously far from perfect, but I think that without him to persuade the Combine that humanity was of some use, they would have wiped us all out long ago. He wants the rebels etc. to stop fighting because he believes that there is no way that we can win, and the only way to survive is to keep a low profile and try not be more trouble than we’re worth, which might actually have been true if it weren’t for the One Free Man.
The Combine is keeping the humans alive, not Breen, and not out of the goodness in their hearts. Breen is just the tool to keep people calm, and feel like humanity is in control (not very effective). Besides, i doubt the combine were planning on keeping them around forever.
it might be worth mentioning that according to RTB, valve intended Breen to have contacted the Combine prior to the RC. however, the revelation about the Gman in ep2 seems to contradict this (or just makes it more convoluted).