Cindy
*sigh* ud know this if u read the silmarillion...
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Hello again.
Recently, I was playing through Half-Life 2: Episode Two again (I was trying to get the gnome rocket achievement) when I noticed something that I hadn't before. Specifically, a detail from the segment in the advisor barn that was along the way from the radio station on your way to the resistance auto shop at the end of the train-tracks.
Upon disrupting the power source to the incubation pod via striking it with a discharge from your gravity gun, you initiate a scripted sequence where the advisor within the pod awakens, telekinetically throttling Alyx, Gordon, a dead rebel's corpse and an oil drum against the walls before slowly emerging from its damaged pod to inspect the interlopers.
Curiously, rather than addressing Gordon or Alyx first, it goes to inspect the oil drum.
Recently, I was playing through Half-Life 2: Episode Two again (I was trying to get the gnome rocket achievement) when I noticed something that I hadn't before. Specifically, a detail from the segment in the advisor barn that was along the way from the radio station on your way to the resistance auto shop at the end of the train-tracks.
Upon disrupting the power source to the incubation pod via striking it with a discharge from your gravity gun, you initiate a scripted sequence where the advisor within the pod awakens, telekinetically throttling Alyx, Gordon, a dead rebel's corpse and an oil drum against the walls before slowly emerging from its damaged pod to inspect the interlopers.
Curiously, rather than addressing Gordon or Alyx first, it goes to inspect the oil drum.
This is most certainly just a sequence that allows Valve to show-off their engine's physics capabilities with suspended objects and an object being crunched and compressed after the Shu'ulathoi realizes it is not a living organism, as it would not be able to show off this feature if Alyx and Gordon were to be inspected first. However, I'd like to highlight a part you may have missed, because I did too, for the many, MANY times that I have played through this game:
It didn't know the oil drum wasn't a living organism.
An interesting detail, given the implied position of the advisors in the Combine hierarchy on this side of the superportal. This moment perhaps gives us a bit of a glimpse on not just how the advisors see humanity and Earth, but perhaps the Combine at large. It continues this sense of unfamiliarity as it goes on to its next victim: an already deceased rebel of whom it attempts to insert its appendage (tongue? proboscis?) into the corpse's neck, which it is initially unsuccessful at doing until it flips the corpse around.
This is twice in a row that the advisor expresses unfamiliarity with simple concepts of our world; the world they have subjugated and established control over for the last two decades. This suggests that the Combine at large only have, in addition to their strictly objective perspective, only a macroscopic understanding of their prospects: Vast but vague generalizations that aren't all that accurate but ultimately reflect more of the perceiver than the perceived.
But this is hardly the only time the Combine exhibit this. There is another, much more blatant display of this unfamiliarity with humanity that shows them rendering us just as alien to them as they are to us. In fact, it's something that permeates the very setting we roleplay in:
It didn't know the oil drum wasn't a living organism.
An interesting detail, given the implied position of the advisors in the Combine hierarchy on this side of the superportal. This moment perhaps gives us a bit of a glimpse on not just how the advisors see humanity and Earth, but perhaps the Combine at large. It continues this sense of unfamiliarity as it goes on to its next victim: an already deceased rebel of whom it attempts to insert its appendage (tongue? proboscis?) into the corpse's neck, which it is initially unsuccessful at doing until it flips the corpse around.
This is twice in a row that the advisor expresses unfamiliarity with simple concepts of our world; the world they have subjugated and established control over for the last two decades. This suggests that the Combine at large only have, in addition to their strictly objective perspective, only a macroscopic understanding of their prospects: Vast but vague generalizations that aren't all that accurate but ultimately reflect more of the perceiver than the perceived.
But this is hardly the only time the Combine exhibit this. There is another, much more blatant display of this unfamiliarity with humanity that shows them rendering us just as alien to them as they are to us. In fact, it's something that permeates the very setting we roleplay in:
Whether you're referring to the voice that is Overwatch itself as it dispenses notices to the communities of the city, or the many arms that it employs to secure the Combine's objective interests such as Civil Protection, Overwatch as a whole makes abundant use of strange terminology when relaying its directives to the citizen populace or its own delegates. Rife with a potluck of verbs relating to both biology and legal contexts, the Combine have relabeled and renamed a great deal of the world around us based on its own perception. And while the terms they use are not entirely incorrect in a very distant and disjointed sense, they are incredible generalizations that use context specific words for the broadest of applications.
When you consider the fact that, much like the rest of the Combine's technology, Overwatch may be biomechanical in nature (which in of itself suggests that the Combine do not draw a line between what is an organism and what is a machine), you can begin to see how much like the advisor toying with the oil drum it is not entirely familiar with the subjects it oversees. Instead, it uses a selection of terminology that reflects how the Combine at large see humanity: As specimens to be dissected, and promptly appraised/judged as to whether it can be subsumed into the Combine to benefit the whole. In other words: "We are the Borg."
This has had a profound impact on an entirely separate project that I've been working on in relation to Half-Life roleplaying. Over the years, I've been host to many projects and servers and each time requires a great deal of effort to organize parts of said project such as the lore, faction functions/interactions/rules and so-forth, and I decided that since this is something that I get into quite often (at least every couple of years) it would be in my best interest to just outline these things in full detail so that I never have to repeatedly recover ground. This is an endeavor that inevitably led me to the Combine's unique terminology and codes, which do a great service to conveying the setting roleplayers exist within. And a great deal of this has been in effort to peel back a lot of the roleplay "tropes" so-to-speak that have embedded themselves onto the underside of Half-Life canon. Since the source material our roleplay inspires from is entirely "show don't tell" we are left to our own devices to investigate and analyze the setting to the best of our ability so that we can have sufficient amounts of information to form the world our roleplay can take place in.
However, some of these perceptions have spiraled out of their own initial microcosms and taken on a life of their own in the greater roleplay community, effectively becoming our own Berenstein Bears vs. Berenstain Bears conundrum where we assume that the lore is one thing because of how much certain perspectives of the lore have been reiterated over and over until players begin to outright perceive them as canon. The three most notorious instances of this being "universal union", "transhuman arm" and "reeducation", which have each been vastly miscontextualized to the extent that a significant portion of the Half-Life roleplaying community have come to accept these things as being just as much part of the setting as the terms anticitizen and malcompliant.
And given the prior assessments into how terminology and language are responsible for depicting the exact nature of a setting, the kind of setting that "the universal union" depicts is not the same as the one that the Combine depicts. The perception that the Combine are in-fact "the universal union" eventually gives way to the shorthand referral to the Combine as "the union" and therein begins to slowly diminish the nature of the Combine in the setting by mislabeling it. So it was very important to me that if I was to go through all of the Combine terminology and assess what was what, I was to give it my all and be extremely thorough. Going into this, I expected to run into wall after wall of game design jargon that probably didn't mean anything, only to find that, with inspection, many of these terms actually did match up with some semblance of meaning after all.
So, what you're about to see is the fruit of that labor in an attempt to try and assess the voicelines within the Half-Life games (including the Overwatch voicelines, the Civil Protection voicelines, the Combine soldier voicelines, the Combine Grunt, Ordinal, Suppressor and Charger voicelines) as well as a few additional resources. I supply these with the intention of sharing our findings with the rest of the roleplaying community to perhaps provide some insight on some of the terms that have gone undefined, or redefining terms that have gone mislabeled/misinterpreted throughout the course of the last decade+ of HL2RP.
How we came to the conclusions we did:
Overwatch Quotes - Half-Life 2, its episodes and Half-Life Alyx
Civil Protection Quotes - Half-Life 2, its episodes and Half-Life Alyx
Combine Soldier Quotes - Half-Life 2 and its episodes
Combine Grunt Quotes - Half-Life Alyx
Combine Ordinal Quotes - Half-Life Alyx
Combine Suppressor Quotes - Half-Life Alyx
Combine Charger Quotes - Half-Life Alyx
Police Radio Codes - Real world police radio codes that, aside from two outliers, match-up 1:1 with the contexts the codes are used in-game.
sentences.txt - A text file that discerns the specific use of certain words/codes under different circumstances to simulate a sense of randomization among the NPCs in HL2.
Additionally, we reviewed the following:
• When and where a voice line is used.
• What the voice line is called in the files.
• The literal definition of the word, joined with the above.
• The context of a code when compared to other more identifiable codes/phrasing within its own voice line.
Combine Radio Codes
Given that the Combine radio codes are almost 1:1 with actual police radio with a few exceptions, this list has been complimented with an additional surplus of radio codes that would be useful for Civil Protection roleplay. Naturally, a separate, smaller list of the important "must-know" codes would be beneficial for those who aren't seeking the extra credit of knowing a vast swath of these codes.
10-0: Use Caution
10-2: Received, signal strong
10-3: Stop transmitting
10-4: Affirmative
10-6: Busy
10-7: Off-duty
10-8: On-duty
10-9: Repeat last
10-10: Fight in progress
10-12: Standby
10-14: Escorting
10-15: Prisoner in custody
10-17: En route
10-19: Return to station
10-20: Location
10-22: Disregard last
10-30: Does not conform with regulations
10-31: In pursuit
10-32: Person with a gun
10-33: Emergency, all units stand by
10-34: Riot
10-37: Identify yourself
10-60: Team in vicinity
10-65: Clear traffic; priority message to all units
10-74: Theft
10-91d: Dead animal/alien
10-93: Blockage (In reference to a road, path or route)
10-97: Arrived at scene
10-99: Hostage
10-103: Disturbance
10-107: Suspicious individual/suspect
10-108: Officer down
10-109: Suicide
10-112: Impersonating an officer
10-200: Narcotics/drugs
11-6: Unauthorized weapons discharge
11-26: Inoperable vehicle
11-27: Subject has existing record of malcompliance
11-29: Subject has no record
11-31: Citizen requesting help
11-42: No medical assistance required
11-43: Medical assistance required
11-44: Possible fatality
11-94: Citizen stop
11-99: Officer needs help
Code 1: At your convenience
Code 2: Urgent
Code 3: Emergency
Code 4: No further assistance required
Code 7: Out of service to eat
Code 10: Bomb
Code 12: False alarm, resume standard protocol
Code 14: Resume standard operations
Code 100: In position to intercept
Code 148: Resisting arrest
Code 187: Murder
Code 243: Battery with dangerous weapon
Code 404: Riot / Unrest / Unknown problem
Code 408: Drunk or inebriated
Code 415: Civic disunity; Disturbing the peace
Code 603: Unlawful entry
Code 647: Miscount (Missing persons)
Code 647e: Miscount (Excess persons)
ADW: Assault with Deadly Weapon
APB: All Points Bulletin
ETA: Estimated Time of Arrival
BOL: Be On Lookout
GOA: Gone On Arrival
DOA: Dead On Arrival
DB: Dead Body
HVT: High Value Target
POI: Person Of Interest
UPI: Unidentified Person of Interest
UTL: Unable To Locate
CPT/PT: (Civil) Protection Team
Various vocabulary from Overwatch codes to vernacular actively used between Overwatch personnel
CODES
These are the various kinds of codes that Overwatch can issue to its delegates:
Prosecution code - The rules of operation for civil protection officers called to prosecute an individual
Emergency code - The rules of operation for Overwatch units during an emergency situation, often of higher priority
Verdict code - The form of judgment to a given suspect
Response code - The required form of response to a given situation and its level of urgency
Unrest procedure code - The rules of operation in the face of unrest in a community or area
Asset allocation adjustment code - Level of response to a situation and by what resources/assets
Overload Protocol - Called when all previous containment systems have failed. All available Overwatch forces are to secure defensive and offensive positions and regain control of the situation by any means necessary.
That is then complimented with three different codes that determine the method of action in regards to the prosecution/emergency/verdict/response/etc. code:
Administer - To deliver unto (for instance: a sentence, a citation, verdicts)
Amputate - To kill an individual
Angle - To get into position
Assemble - To group up with other officers/units
Cauterize - To regain control over a given situation by any means necessary (e.g. riot control, crackdowns)
Clamp - To hold an area
Coagulate - To slow down enemy’s advance or retreat
Contain - ‘Contain’ an infection; deal with a criminal
Diagnose - To determine a problem
Deservice - To kill Combine personnel, or to restrict/retire an area from use
Dislocate - To destroy something
Expose - To search and identify
Inject - To enter an area.
Inquire - To question individuals for information
Interpose - Cover (e.g. something to hide behind); an obstacle
Dissect - To confiscate contraband, weapons or otherwise
Duty - A given mission or directive
Expunge - To eliminate all threat within an area with force
Extirpate - To sweep an area incredibly thoroughly until said area is secured and clear
Flash - To use caution
Flint - To spread out
Flush - To push a threat or force out from an area (such as malignants or aliens)
Inoculate - To maintain control of a situation teetering on regression and prevent the situation from worsening
Interlock - To join/team up with other officers or otherwise
Isolate - To remove a subject from public space or restricted area
Key - To make priority and address with haste
Lock - To gain control of and restrict an area
Midnight - Escalation of response to a problem that initial response has failed to contain
Migrate - To relocate to (area)
Operate - Initial/first response to a problem
Pacify - To render an individual non-hostile, by any means necessary
Pressure - To stop the regressing status of an uncontrolled situation
Probe - To determine a situation’s status
Sacrifice - Complete objective at any cost or face punishment if you fail
Shield - To guard a controlled area
Sterilize - Kill or destroy an organism, system, or structure that threatens sociostability; destroy alien presence, remove rebellion hideouts, kill anti-citizens
Sword - To combat, such as to combat malignancy or malcompliance in an area/situation
Void - All units stop what you’re doing; await new directives
ALIENS & HOSTILES
Necrotic - Zombie
Parasitic - Headcrabs
Biotic - Vortigaunt
Outland Biotic - Unregistered/free Vortigaunt
Subjugated Biotic - Enslaved Vortigaunt
Exogen - Antlions
Virome - A pack, group or community of aliens
Non-tagged Virome - An unidentified alien
Malcompliant - Disobedient citizen.
Malignant - Criminally active citizen.
Anticitizen - Someone whose citizen status has been revoked. Wanted individual.
Political conscripts - Prisoners
EQUIPMENT & ASSETS
Verdict - Bullets/gunfire
Spikes - Pulseweapon fire
Bouncer - Grenade (Enemy)
Daggers - Firearm; Weapon
Genecode - Genetic marker used to access Combine equipment and restricted areas.
Sterilized credits - Reward points for Civil Protection fulfilling their duties.
Anti-fatigue - A stimulant issued to ground units in their rations. Allows the user to stay up and awake for extended periods of time. Also acts as a mild pain management drug.
Stim-boost - A drug that allows the user to quickly get back into the fight. Pain is significantly reduced and the body pushes on until a real doctor can be found.
Airwatch - Overwatch air surveillance
Boomer - Dropship
Containment fields - Forcefield
Ground Units - The Overwatch delegates actively involved in a given situation.
King - Helicopter
Restrictor - Thumper
Skyshield - Air support
Stabilization delegates - Combine soldiers
Sterilizer - Turret
Antibody Protection Force - Combine suppressor
Viscerator - Manhack
Wallhammer - Combine charger
Winder - Gunship
Protection Teams - Civil Protection squads.
Stabilization Teams - Combine soldier squads.
SOCIOSTABILITY & CRIMINAL ACTIVITY
Sociostability - Status of the area in question
Stabilization readout - Status report given by Overwatch via a series of short form reports collated from sources (cameras, scanners)
Civic Polity Stabilization Index - The overall ‘stability’ of a polity (e.g. the city), calculated through multiple different factors. A ‘marginal’ Stabilization Index, for example, implies the populace is unstable, riots are occurring, an uprising may be imminent, et cetera.
Sociostable - ‘Stable’ situation; no crimes being committed
Civil Infection - Presence of one or more malcompliant citizens in a given area (such as a block)
Re-infection - Re-emerging issue after being previously contained/dealt with
Outbreak - Escalating anticivil activity
Sociocide - Criminal/Crimes against the state; Incredibly severe criminal activity
Social Fracture - Severe breakdown of societal norms; Large scale riots, “Uprising”, et cetera
Judgement Waiver - Authorization for discretionary dispensation of force or “autonomous judgement”
Cohesive - Fully operational
Non-cohesive - Not operational
Combine Civil Code - "The law" imposed by the Combine Civil Authority.
Civic trust - The ‘trust’ in a citizen to be lawful. Violating the civic trust is equivocal to committing a crime
Tag - Identify through Overwatch
Judge - To infer whether someone has performed a crime; this is usually arbitrary
Prosecute - To charge someone for a crime they are judged to be guilty of
Citation - The punishment given to a prosecuted individual, generally of lesser severity (e.g. restricting ration intake; verbal warnings)
Sentence - The punishment given to a prosecuted individual, generally of greater severity (e.g. death; imprisonment)
Loyalty check - Giving instructions to a citizen to gauge possible malcompliance
Voluntary Conscription - The act of getting someone (usually a citizen) to do a task for you
Memory Replacement - To receive a memory altering procedure that washes away traumatic or negative sensations. Can be used as a reward and a punishment
Recycle - Reassign or discharge to a lesser work assignment
General Public Service Detail - Community service
Disassociation from the Civic Populace - Imprisonment
Terminal Prosecution - Stalkerization
Miscount - Less or more citizens than expected.
Incursion - A hostile breach
Civil privacy violation - Trespassing into private or restricted areas
Status Evasion - Resisting/evading arrest
Permissive Inactive Coercion - Citizen failure to report malcompliance in their community
Viral Interface Bypass - Unauthorized systems breach/hacking
Socio-Endangerment - Actions that threaten the stability of the area
Malcompliance - Disobedience/failure to cooperate
Malignancy - Organized disobedience or dissent against the Combine
Passive signature imprint - A faint energy signature being read in a general area
Active signature imprint - A strong energy signature being pinpointed to a specific location
AREAS
Block - A small area in the city or a Combine installation/outpost.
Canal Block - The part of the canals that’s still within the confines of the city.
Distribution Block - Ration distribution
Transit Block - Train station
Production Block - Factory
Residential Block - Housing/apartments
Station Block - Civil Protection station
Section - A large area in the city determining Civil Protection jurisdiction.
Control Section - Central area of a city; in cities with a citadel, this is where it would be located.
Zone - A large purpose-oriented area, such as the industrial region of a city, a quarantine or the areas in-between cities.
Condemned Zone - A restricted area, likely one that is no longer in use.
Industrial Zone - A work zone in the city which houses much of the city’s infrastructure such as power.
Infested Zone - An area infested by alien presence.
Outland Zone - Areas outside the urban centers.
Terminal Restriction Zone - No trespass under penalty of capital punishment
Quarantine Zone - Restricted area infested by abundant alien presence.
Sector - A very large region.
Hardpoint - An Overwatch outpost or FOB.
Nexus - An Overwatch command center.
Citadel - A Combine megastructure that houses a bulk of the Combine's forces in the region.
Urban Center/Polity - A city.
Workforce Intake Hub - One of the only few official channels in or out of a city, often used to take in new citizens from other cities. Train stations (and likely bus stations depending on where you are)
Non-patrol Region - An area in which no effort is put into overseeing or controlling.
High Priority Region - An area with significant importance, either overall or just to the current directive
ORGANIZATIONS
Ministry of Civil Protection - The policing arm of the Combine Overwatch within urban centers.
Security Council - The administrative board governing a city.
Combine Civil Authority - The "government" of the new world in charge of the Combine Civil Code
Infestation Control - An organization charged with keeping the cities clean of alien infestation.
Engineer Core - Technicians and engineers under the Combine's employ.
Discrepancies & Errors
Ultimately, as with all of Half-Life's lore, we can only guess and speculate as to the true meaning of the things we see in the games. For as long as Half-Life and Valve abide by its rule of "show don't tell" we will only be able to rely on our own investigations to base our roleplay settings off of. With that in mind, the above stands to represent what I believe to be the best guess to a lot of these terms that most only ever give a surface level amount of guesswork towards.
But even with that, we are not immune to human error, and I would be most interested in improving what is on display here in hopes of making this as close-to-accurate as possible, given the limited information we are provided. If you have a contribution to make or a suggestion to pitch, I would love to hear from you in the replies below. I would also be happy to show you how we arrived to individual conclusions of different codes as well.
CREDITS:
@Cindy & @Erkor
ASSISTED BY:
@Appetite Ruining Kebab
Our friends: Gavinlad, Mird, Dirge/Seth, Sinclair, Owain and Dandy
@Cindy & @Erkor
ASSISTED BY:
@Appetite Ruining Kebab
Our friends: Gavinlad, Mird, Dirge/Seth, Sinclair, Owain and Dandy
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