The Combine is incredibly advanced technologically, being able to teleport to an entirely different plane of reality. Coupled with their limited teleportation technology, a field in which even the Resistance is more advanced, they are particularly susceptible to guerrilla warfare and ultimately suffered a string of defeats resulting in a general collapse of their regime on Earth following The Uprising. Despite their enormous size, or perhaps because of it, they are "slow to wake" and mobilizing their vast power requires great effort and time. Mighty as they are, the Combine are not without weaknesses. Earth's dominant species were modified to form a new arm of the Combine military, and the planet's resources were systematically stripped away, the most striking example of which being the dramatically lowered shorelines along the Coast as the Combine drain Earth's oceans. Following the Black Mesa Incident and subsequent Seven Hour War, Earth then became the Combine's most recently known annexation. It brought with it members of several species, both its allies and its slaves, including the Vortigaunts. It has since been revealed that the Combine originally invaded the homeworld of the Nihilanth's species and inflicted a campaign of total genocide against them, with only the Nihilanth able to escape the onslaught by seeking refuge in Xen. Breen refers to the Combine Soldiers and Civil Protection as "The Transhuman Arm of the Combine Overwatch" in Nova Prospekt, implying that "The Combine" is an accepted name of the empire, even by the Combine itself. The name is pronounced COM-bine, as in Combine harvester, opposed to the verb form com-BINE, as in "to join together or unite." Dr. Dialogue from Wallace Breen suggests many of the extra-dimensional territories under the control of the Combine are uninhabitable to humans without life support systems. Equally dire is the threat of "permanent off-world relocation" directed towards the normal Citizens for disobedience to the Combine regime. They are also highly trained, and can adapt well beyond the confines of Earth, potentially in other universes if needed - in-game dialogue characterises the deployment of Overwatch units across the Combine Empire as "permanent off-world assignment." Assignment on other worlds is often threatened as a punishment for soldiers who fail in their duties. Overwatch Soldiers have been surgically and psychologically altered to be obedient, deadlier, and more resilient than normal human beings. On Earth, the Combine notably uses their technology to create armies of cybernetically-enhanced transhuman soldiers forcibly conscripted from the enslaved human population, comprising the bulk of the Earth-based Combine Overwatch - a highly mobile and adaptive military force comprised of co-opted humans turned against their own kind. The results of the Combine's re-engineering processes are " synths" - synthetic organisms augmented with Combine technology that serve a variety of functions within the empire, from weapons of war to mindless worker drones. Wallace Breen, a human collaborator and puppet ruler who serves as the appointed 'Administrator' and humanity's representative within the Combine.įrom what is currently known, the Combine seems to only assimilate intelligent species from the worlds it conquers and manipulates these species through various means, including bioengineering and invasive surgery, twisting them to fit the Combine's pursuit of cruel perfection. On Earth, alien beings called Advisors are responsible for overseeing all communication and interaction between the larger Combine and the Earth-based occupation force, acting through Dr. Little is known about the Combine's overall goals, but it can be assumed that it's ultimate ambition is to assimilate the entire Multiverse.ĭetails of the Combine's leadership and administrative structure remain largely unknown. The Combine is a vast and powerful extra-dimensional empire, spanning several parallel universes.
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