Just a quick point:
Breen was slowly KILLING humanity, is that a good intention? Not only with uber-violent MetroPolice, but with the suppression thingy. No reproduction=Slow extinction. Freeman’s a vigilante, not a hero. There IS a difference.
but Xen creatures only killed the people in the Black Mesa facility against their will and half of the creatures were just animals behaving in their normal way (headcrabs , houndeyes etc.) while the combine had systematically drawn resources like our oceans for example and suppressed the reproduction of humans to control the population etc. for years… basically , they’d slowly been choking the human race until it had been finally gone for good , if you put those two things together they aren’t really equal …
Wrong. In the level Apprehension, the marines that capture Freeman say that they want him alive, and also over the intercom during various parts of Half-Life the Black Mesa scientists are told to come to the surface for questioning.
I wouldn’t call a guy who says “Work for me or die” morally neutral.
He gives a speech in Half Life 2 over Breencast about someday lowering the suppression field. He didn’t want to kill his own species, that’d be dumb. Also he can’t be responsible for police that abuse their power.
Also the Combine aren’t that evil, they want to raise humans up to a higher level of existence. Most of the oppression is done by the metro police, who are human. And humanity was already draining their own resources.
So they can be shot.
Well, what do you want the ending to be? Like I said, that’s not the ending I want, but it seemed like it was semi plausible until you stated that excellent point.
Ah, sir, have you never noticed that the metro police were BRAINWASHED by the combine? That is actually implied in the games. Thank you for raising such a rousing discussion though!
They’re not brainwashed. They’re bribed volunteers.
lol the combine lines up a bunch of people and executes them in one of the doorways at the beginning of half life…thats pretty evil
but then again…evil is subject and depends on who wins in the end because they choose whats evil and what isnt 
Are you fucking kidding me? Breen killed thousands.
THEY PUT HIM IN A FUCKING GARBAGE COMPACTOR!!!
Their Officers wanted freeman alive but they would have probably killed him after the questioning is over.
indeed i did, it fitted so well 
sneaky Norwegians:[
Yeah, Breen says that the suppression device would have been turned off eventually, presumably if/when the Combine judged us worth using. Or possibly they were cloning humans; I think the phrase “non-mechanical reproduction simulation” may have been referring to biological reproduction methods, as opposed to mechanical reproduction, i.e. artificial cloning.
Even without any of that, it’s probably to have everyone have a chance of survival rather that all be killed straight away. Gordon may have saved humanity, but Breen got it to a state where it was possible to save.
This. They’ve probably been fed a lot of propaganda, but they’re basically just regular people who have joined up for their own motives. They get better food, “reproduction simulations”, and they also get to stay with their families and not have them relocated (sometimes when a metrocop kills you the Overwatch voice will say “Reward Notice: Protection Team member, your family cohesion is preserved.”)
As to how violent they are, look up the Standford Prison Experiment. I’m actually surprised they weren’t worse given the situation.
This topic is awesome, btw.
Thread starter is Dr. Breen
People willing to kill their own species for power exists, just like people willing to have sexual intercourse with vortigaunts exists.
You appear to have fallen for combine propaganda.
Nova Prospekt, where people are turned into mindless soldiers and stakers? You call that a higher level of existence? Not to mention the beginning of the game; Horrible living conditions, disgusting food, brainwashing water and citizens saying: “We can’t be seen talking to each other”
The apartment block raid at the beginning is performed under orders from the Combine, too. How else would they get the Overwatch Voice to announce a: “miscount”?
And finally: “Humanity already draining their own resources” can’t justify the Combine’s actions.
There’s also the little factors of draining the ocean, infesting urban areas with headcrabs, and lack of free speech.
If it was possible to ask a rebel, or a friend of Gordon Freeman like Barney or Dr. Kleiner he would probably describe him as a hero who is willing to fight for freedom, since he is’t force in to it, he could walk away any time.
He also couldn’t be responsible for the BM Accident, since he had to push the cart in the beam not knowing that he will unleashed alien invasion. If he had’t push it in somebody else would.
If he surrender to the HEVU he would be shot and then who could stop the invasion of Xen Forces.
If he wouldn’t kill Breen the entire population would die.
Since he arrived at city 17. A lot of people died fighting, but i belive they rather die fighting, then living as rats in the sewer.
So for my opinion Gordon Freeman is the biggest Hero of them all. No Master Chief or anyone could come near, as the instent the Rebels see Gordon with he’s HEV Suit, the fight till the bitter end.
I think that this way it’s more realistic than if Freeman was fighting against mean bad guys who only want to steal from you and kill you for fun. That would be too cheesy and way too childish. In children’s stories, you have the bad guys who are bad in every single way and the good guys who are good in every way. That’s way to plain and boring compared to real life. In real life, there are no real heroes and everyone has a dark side.
As it was detailed in HL2, Freeman is a pawn and he is basically forced to do whatever he does, so he isn’t really responsible and doesn’t deserve merit for his heroic acts. However, people will never see it that way, which is why he is look upon as a hero. You, as the player, often feel that you’re not in control of your actions.
When you killed Nihilanth, you didn’t know it was going to free the Vortiguants. You just did it because he was there and he wanted to kill you. The Vortiguants in HL2 treat you as a hero who saved them, even though you didn’t do it on purpose. At the time of HL2, you wouldn’t have wanted to save them, because they were your enemies.
Freeman is a complex character and his motives are obscure on purpose. It isn’t even clear whether the Black Mesa incident was caused by you or if it was sabotaged, or whether it was just pure bad luck, making you constantly wonder whether you’re actually guilty of everything that happened afterwards or not.
Yes you killed the marines, and they were innocent because they were following orders, but you wanted to save yourself and not die. You might also have wanted to save your fellow scientists, and after seeing them get killed by the marines, you probably don’t want to surrender.
Freeman is a good guy in the eyes of humanity, because he did save humanity. This is all that matters for the citizens.
In reality, you could have a similar situation: if a dog attacks you and tries to kill you, and to protect yourself you kill it, you were just doing the only thing you could do to save yourself, regardless of whether the dog was just acting by its instincts or deliberately trying to harm you.
Life isn’t Black and White and the same applies for Half-Life, which results in an interesting game that cannot be understood even more than 10 years after its release.
Some of them didn’t care about them being civilians, but others did, you cant use that as your basis for them being bad, you have to listen to all hecu conversations, one hecu said "monsters sure but scientists, who ordered this OP anyway, most hecu dont have any real way to abort the mission, since they were given orders while on mission grounds, Even in the U.S. today Mutiny (disobeying direct orders or taking command of the ship) is punishable by death, and there is no real place to run and hide to, if you want soldiers to kill civilians you bring them to a place where they have no choice or availablities for transport except that what you provide them and then tell them in that spot kill them all, you dont go on a military base with those orders, people can still get away from doing the mission if that happens, but once you are enroute to a mission or on mission grounds and have your orders its over, take your chances with mutiny or keep mouth shut and do something about it when its all over.
“Freeman is a complex character and his motives are obscure on purpose. It isn’t even clear whether the Black Mesa incident was caused by you or if it was sabotaged, or whether it was just pure bad luck, making you constantly wonder whether you’re actually guilty of everything that happened afterwards or not.”
As it Turns out it was gman, he gave eli vance the crystal and said prepare for unforeseen consequences,
hence Subject: gordon freeman, Subject: barney calhoun, Subject: adrian shephard, the incident was coming,
and for those who cite dr. breen as a good guy, what do you call genocide, a necessary aspect to saving humanity, im not calling him a black and white evil person but hes not a good guy, “gordon did you know your contract was open to the highest bidder”. “with eli vance and gordon I can dictate the terms of any deal I want to make with the combine”
The thing about this discussion is that we are trying to determine the right and wrong, black and white, shades of grey about the series, and we are failing, when the series comletes we can do that, but since we dont know the behind the scenes plot of the plot, we can’t do anything but make conclusions based off of black and white, when series concludes we can move on to shades of grey analysis.
rofl there are alien fascists in this thread 
Although he is being forced Gordon can be good or bad depending on your actions. You can save a citizen/Scientist from death and get hurt or you could save your own ass. You can kill anyone in hl1. but you don’t have to. and Breen did something good actually… He saved Humanity’s ass from total extinction. If Earth didn’t surrender, Combine would have killed Humanity, drained world’s resources and then leave. But I’m sure he was trying to save himself not humanity