".....relocate to one of our finest REMAINING urban centers"

NJspeed

NJspeed

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I've been a member here almost two years now and I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention this fact nor have I thought of it myself.

Anyway, since the thought popped in my head, when Breen says the above quote in full, he must be implying that something has happened to the Combine's other "urban centers". Have they abadoned certain cities? Move residents elsewhere? Wiped out an urban center?

Comments?
 
Probably some got overrun by Necrotics, some were too hard to monitor, and some were overrun by wildlife.
 
There is no procreation. As humans die off; being killed, diseases, age, etc. and population decreases in one center. The remaining are shipped to another. Easier for the Combine to manage a few million people in a few centers instead of a few million across a dozen or so centers.
 
I took it to mean the last cities that arent destroyed in the 7 hour war or by Xen wildlife...
 
Almost all of Earth's cities have either been destroyed in the 7 hour war, overrun by Xen wildlife due to the combine not protecting them or just abondoned, leaving maybe somewhere in the vicinity of 30+ cities.
 
AJ Rimmer said:
Almost all of Earth's cities have either been destroyed in the 7 hour war, overrun by Xen wildlife due to the combine not protecting them or just abandoned, leaving maybe somewhere in the vicinity of 30+ cities.
Click to expand...
Yep, most cities have been destroyed. Remaining urban centers refers to the total number of cities left that are habitable, not taking into account whether they're Combine-controlled or not (although of course all the habitable cities are Combine-controlled). Breen didn't mean to imply that the Combine were evacuating the remaining cities.

Function9 brings up a good point though, what with human population decreasing to more "manageable" levels. However the Combine might keep these cities around anyway even if they do contain only small populations, if only because the Combine like to shift people around to keep them disoriented. If you were only shifting people to a couple different cities, they could get used to the change of scenery, and that's not something they'd want.

Plus I believe that the cities are close to 50 if not more; in Raising the Bar, one of the drafts for the intro has a passenger saying he spent the last trimester in City 49.
 
When you think about it, it really promotes a feeling of the wasteland that the earth has become.
 
Darkside55 said:
Plus I believe that the cities are close to 50 if not more; in Raising the Bar, one of the drafts for the intro has a passenger saying he spent the last trimester in City 49.
Click to expand...
But then again, it could be that the cities were assigned their numbers when there were many more of them. Then, with time, many of the cities went under, but the remaining ones still kept their original numbers. So even though there's a City 49, that doesn't mean that there are at least 49 cities. It could theoretically be 30.

I hope that made more sense than I have reason to believe it did.
 
No, no, it makes sense along with the whole Combine disorientation thing.

Man, I wonder which Urban Centres survived? And if they're the same urban centres we consider to be important today...
 
Well, there's a list of cities in the trainstation schedule. I can only remember 17 and 14 though (that guy in the train who never gets used to transfers).
 
Potemkin said:
But then again, it could be that the cities were assigned their numbers when there were many more of them. Then, with time, many of the cities went under, but the remaining ones still kept their original numbers. So even though there's a City 49, that doesn't mean that there are at least 49 cities. It could theoretically be 30.

I hope that made more sense than I have reason to believe it did.
Click to expand...
You made sense. :)

Truthfully, I'm glad that seen with Samuel was cut, because when I read it I couldn't fathom 49 remaining cities. I have a hard time imagining 30. I would assume that the remaining cities are the largest ones, and they horde people into them...having so many cities, while good for moving people around, seems unmanageable for the Combine.

Plus, I don't like the thought of 29 remaining citadels.
 
Darkside55 said:
Plus, I don't like the thought of 29 remaining citadels.
Click to expand...

Are there citadels in the other cities? I always thought that there was only the City 17 one, as that was where Breen had his base of operations.
 
No, that was just Breen's citadel. I think they had the misguided thought that Breen was running the whole show. Or they thought that killing Breen would somehow stop the Combine. Or he just happened to be the closest to the largest pocket of resistance...
 
I think Breen's citadel was the only one with a comm link to the Combine homeworld.

To hold on to earth they would have needed a lot more than just one citadel.
 
well, i think breen only managed some cities, and when they mention gordon freeman was a highbidder, i think they wanted him to manage other cities as breen is doing... btw i dont know too much about half life universe, sad*
 
All the Combine citadels had a link, but because of Gordon and Alyx's efforts that link was broken in Episode One. Now none of the citadels can contact the offworld forces of the Combine.

Crimo, Breen wanted Freeman to be a figurehead, but not a city leader. Breen wanted Gordon to assume responsibility for the resistance, and then force his cooperation...if Gordon cooperated with the Combine, the resistance would follow suit. Aside from that there is no need for another human leader than Dr. Breen.
 
If it comes to that you barely need humans.
 
True. They are simply using humans as tools, to learn whatever they can from us and then turn us into slaves/synths.

Id imagine most of the remaining centers are in Europe, Asia and South America...I dont really see the US and North America going down without a fight, which would have likely leveled most of the urban centers in North America...quite possible for Western Europe, as well...
 
Australia to them is probably a useless pile of ****, which is sad. :(
 
Nah, I think Aussies were deemed too insignificant to get a Citadel, so now they are free, have power, play HL2:DM matches over the AustraLAN, wear cool shirts, roast Antlions and 'crabs and generally have a g'day, mate!

As for the remaining urban centers... I always thought it was meant to foreshadow, that the world is in terrible shape. The draining of oceans causes drought, and drought kills cities pretty fast, as well as xenotheric infestation. I think it's safe to assume, that most coastal cities were bandoned, after their ports have dried up, and a population shift has occured towards the mainland cities, which naturally have better defensive positions than coastal cities (not to mention less possibility of slipping and falling into the sea). Over time, as more and more humans are converted into stalkers and Overwatch, the cities with smaller populations would be emptied and people sent to other destinations, while mobile walls would move in to disassemble and ship raw materials to citadels.

I think that's what he means by 'remaining urban centers'.
 
They fought. They got trampled. End of story.
 
So, the human race is running out?, i thought there were some free rebels in other parts of the world and they made stalkers of them, i mean, only the slaves are not allowed to "get busy"... but i bet there should be some free humans hidding in the mountains or cities like ravenholm as the crazy priest...
 
You really think there is going to be a lot of people left outside of the centers? While the centers are there to contain the citizens, they also serve as a fortress against the wildlife that came via the portal storms. I can't see thriving communities outside of the centers and even if they were I don't think the numbers would make any significant difference.
 
well, i do... the world is huge... and im not telling there is the same number outside than inside the contain centers... anyway, at the first episodes, there is a resistence and its even INSIDE the combine area (dr klein, eli, etc). just imagine outside.. antlions are supossed to be the most dangerous xen wild life.. (in numbers), i bet there could be 2 or 3 vortiguants that has an "antlion ball".. well, probably im wrong.. but if there are not people outside, why containing human race alive? why need a doctor breen to represent humanity?
 
Nah, the earth's entire human population has probably been reduced to just a few million ot so.
 
It'd be a pretty cool twist if we learn that all of the other cities downfalls were because of rebellion.

(NOTE: If someone else mentioned this highly unoriginal idea, sorry, I didn't read the rest of this topic).
 
They all flocked to city 17 cause Alyx is there. ever know what they show on those monitors at night?
'wink'
 
Ya know, the giggidy part brings up a good question...

Was the anti-reproduction field only around the cities and some distance beyond? Did it cover the whole world? If so, was C17 the only generator?
 
Darkside55 said:
You made sense. :)

Truthfully, I'm glad that seen with Samuel was cut, because when I read it I couldn't fathom 49 remaining cities. I have a hard time imagining 30. I would assume that the remaining cities are the largest ones, and they horde people into them...having so many cities, while good for moving people around, seems unmanageable for the Combine.

Plus, I don't like the thought of 29 remaining citadels.
Click to expand...


Keep in mind that we're talking about 49 cities in the entire WORLD. How many cities we have now? Even with 49, we're probably talking about less than 120 million people at most -- a lot less than the current 6.5 BILLION.
 
Ridge said:
True. They are simply using humans as tools, to learn whatever they can from us and then turn us into slaves/synths.

Id imagine most of the remaining centers are in Europe, Asia and South America...I dont really see the US and North America going down without a fight, which would have likely leveled most of the urban centers in North America...quite possible for Western Europe, as well...
Click to expand...

Hell, I can't imagine China going down without a fight... 1 billion people to contain? And since there's a lot of countryside.... even after citadels pop up in shanghai, beijing, nanking, and hong kong.. we're still talking about more than half still out there.
 
Lol, they fought, they died, they got owned. End of story.
 
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