The New Panopticon: A Close Look at Half-Life 2 

Additional credits that I wasn't able to fit in the description of the video: Game Footage: Half-life Half-life 2 Half-life 2: Episode 1 Metal Gear Solid 2 - Ending Deus Ex - Dark Age Ending DOOM Halo 2 - Opening Cutscenes Call of Duty (2003) Counter Strike 1.6 - "Frag Or Die" video Umurangi Generation Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssee Video Sources (in order of first appearance): The Y2K Scare | National Geographic Y2K Family Survival Guide | Monarch Home Video Did The World Almost End in 2000 Because of Y2K | Inside Edition Are YOU Ready for the Internet? | BBC, 1994 Inside a Target in the 1980s Vintage News Video | Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul Nov 10, 1989: Celebration at the Berlin Wall | ABC News The Technology of War | Popular Mechanics 1996 Presidential Debate: Bill Clinton Vs Bob Dole | C-Span 1993 CNN's First Reports on The Web | CNN Half-life 2 Beta Footage AP embed pictures of US troops conducting security operations in Baghdad | AP Archive Y2K: Bug or Bust? | ABC News Nightline 9/11: Second plane hits South Tower | CNN September 11, 2001 - Former President George W. Bush addresses the nation | ABC News Osama Bin Laden declares jihad in 1995 CNN Interview | CNN Bush Announces Iraq War Start | AP Archive Phantom Fury Footage Shows Intense Battle on Iraqi Streets | Funker530 GWT WRAP Clean, clear pix of Saddam walkabout plus speech | AP Archive Jogging Commercial (2005) | U.S. Army Reserve 1999 Columbine Massacre News Coverage | WABC-TV Edward Snowden interview: 'The US government will say I aided our enemies' - NSA whistleblower | The Guardian Doorbell video shows terrifying robbery as armed, masked men confront homeowner | ABC7 Michel Foucault Interview - "What is our Present" (1981) Gilles Deleuze Lecture at La Femis (1987) Video shows how well store security can monitor shoppers | WISN 12 News Suspected Target Shoplifter Caught On Camera | CBS Miami Gilles Deleuze's alphabet book: A for Animal NSA: Cellphone Tracking | CNN Are you being tracked while shopping? | CBS News Are You Being Tracked? How Companies Are Monitoring Productivity | TODAY Invasion of privacy? Debate wages over drone use by NY police | Eyewitness News ABC7NY FBI confirms drone use in U.S. skies | CBS News How Has The Internet Changed Us? | Parlor Chats Everything You Need To Know About The Patriot Act | 101 | NBC News Militarization of U.S. police? | CNN Iraq War Peace Protests (2003) | Journeyman Pictures Inside Al Qaeda | National Geographic Battle for Fallujah | National Geographic Report: NSA phone spying program illegal | CNN USA: VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE'S WARNING ON GLOBAL CLIMATE | AP Archive Climate Change in 2020 | CTV National News The Year 2020: Coronavirus becomes largest global health threat in a generation | ABC News Journalists tour Abu Ghraib prison | AP Archive 20 years on, Abu Ghraib survivor recalls torture by US forces | Al Jazeera Newsfeed Rumsfeld and Franks comment on Iraq strategy | AP Archive President George W. Bush delivers address on 9/11 from Sarasota school | WFLA News Channel 8 The capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann | CBS Sunday Mornings How Trains Were Central In The Operation Of The Holocaust - How Trains Changed The World | Discovery UK German Jewish deportees arriving at the Warsaw Ghetto | Yad Vashem Auschwitz: Drone video of Nazi concentration camp | BBC News D-Day Footage in Color Background Music (in chronological order): Beat The Police | Umurangi Generation OST Flying Guillotine | Buckethead Stealing Japanese Street Cars | Umurangi Generation OST Caution Drop | Buckethead The Innsbruck Experiment | Half-life 2 OST Destroyer | Buckethead Mush Area | Toy Commander OST The Panopticon | Malmrose Projects Original Pathways from Nowhere | Ecco The Dolphin: Defender of the Future OST Black Mesa Inbound | Half-life 2 OST Lab Practicum | Half-life 2 OST You're Not Supposed To be Here | Half-life 2 OST Negative Pressure | Half-life 2 OST Hard Fought | Half-life 2 OST Apprehension and Evasion | Half-life 2 OST Combine Advisory | Half-life 2: Episode 1 OST Disrupted | Half-life 2: Episode 1 OST Kaon | Half-life 2 OST Klaxon Beat | Half-life OST Abandoned in Place | Half-life 2: Episode 2 OST Eon Trap | Half-life 2: Episode 2 OST Ravenholm Reprise | Half-life 2 OST Requiem For Ravenholm | Half-life 2 OST Crawl Yard | Half-life 2: Episode 2 OST Guard Down | Half-life 2: Episode 1 OST Slow Light | Half-life 2 OST Inhuman Frequency | Half-life 2: Episode 2 OST Penultimatum | Half-life 2: Episode 1 OST Infraradiant | Half-life 2: Episode 1 OST Escape Array | Half-life 2 OST Pulse Phase | Half-life 2 OST Particle Ghost | Half-life 2 OST Nova Prospekt | Half-life 2 OST Tau-9 | Half-life 2 OST Dark Interval | Half-life 2: Episode 2 OST Zero Point Energy Field | Half-life 2 OST Darkness at Noon | Half-life 2: Episode 1 OST Decay Mode | Half-life 2: Episode 1 OST Battle Select | Bomberman 64 OST Crabtrap | Umurangi Generation OST Hunting Party | Half-life 2: Episode 2 OST Tracking Device | Half-life 2 OST Something Secret Steers Us | Half-life 2 OST Entering Tong-Nou | Eastern Mind OST Triage at Dawn | Half-life 2 OST

I love the idea that The Combine at one point did have a tangible ideology, but they're so far gone after millions of years that they've just lost any material motivation. They're just endlessly marching forward, being completely automated.

I personally think that even the advisors are not the "original" Combine species. They are another assimilated species. While most synths are used for their physical traits, the term "advisor" leads me to think the advisors are used for their intelligence. They provide a different type of thinking than the Overwatch AI that might be better suited for a given scenario. I think the "original species" wished to expand their empire, so they made an AI (of which Overwatch is a branch of) to help with that goal, but the AI went out of control and expanded at all costs, with no sense of morality or even a purpose for the expansion. It found that taking over planets and assimilating their intelligent species helped it expand further and faster. This is why everything feels so automated and efficient. It's just an AI doing its task as efficiently as possible.

it's incredible how marc laidlaw created a story that both fits gameplay wise and has connection to real life concepts. im just blown of by how well you can describe Panopticon using this games and link it to todays norms of living this is truly well made

Phenomenal work! I subbed to you after seeing your video on Half-Life’s arsenal. It’s been a bit of a wait but I certainly have not been disappointed. Your thesis was really fresh and interesting. I wanted to add something about the automaticity of the Combine, from the dubiously-canon story(?) BreenGrub. Something Breen mentions having learned following being fully assimilated into the Combine as an Advisor is that the Shu’ulathoi are not the “native species” of the Combine, as a player might imagine. The Shu’ulathoi were *colonized* by the Combine to be converted into a ruling class. This is so outside the realm of our human understanding of states and state power - what state is ruled by the people it colonized? But the slightly-more-pertinent implication with this is that we still have no idea who the “original” Combine were. Like you say in the video, the Combine itself seems to be fully automated, like a body without a head that still nevertheless performs its tasks by muscle memory.

This video deserves to have so many more views. Amazing work dude!

Stayed up past my bedtime to watch this all in one sitting. Incredibly gripping and relevant analysis. You've really laid out the beauty of HL2 for us to see. Godspeed.

Following up from my previous comment - I do appreciate the perspective of the Combine as end-stage fascism. I see them as a manifestation of the notion that oppression evolves convergently: whatever its ideological, biological or political origins, it has optimized itself to such an extent that they've become irrelevant, and all that's left is the oppression. From this point of view I would like to once again assail the notion that the combine is in any way a reflection of neoliberalism. I think the comparison is stretched to the point of meaninglessness; a late-late-late neoliberal society might resemble the combine, but so might a religious dictatorship. The fact that you can't tell is the point. Such texture has been filed off to make room for higher efficiency. So what you should have said is that the Combine represents the ur-Empire. The final stage of any and all systems of imperialism, stripped of anything that's not dedicated to expansion and exploitation. An interesting note would also be to point out the breengrub twitter account. Marc Laidlaw, the main writer for the series, sort of uses it to imply that even the supposed "leadership" caste of the combine, the advisors themselves, are nothing more than another co-opted, incorporated species that was subverted and subjugated into the machine. It's an elegant narrative concept: the empire is headless, because it needs no head. the bureaucracy runs and optimizes itself, it runs for its own benefit rather than that of a ruling class or an emperor, and it's nearly impossible to dismantle. In the face of such an enemy the only rational reaction is complete, reflexive, irrational resistance.

I think it’s funny that the combine soldiers use MP7s implying that H&K saw the 7 hour war and decided to get a defense contract with the combine lmao

You should become more informed about the Soviet satellite states. They became brutal after the fall of the USSR and the neolibwral gutting of those countries. Check out the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein or killing hope by David blum

the music was somewhat distracting at first but when i realized how peak 90s it was i understood it was meant to enrich the experience. great vid. thanks for working so hard on it.

I knew it was going to be good, but damn, that was absolutely fantastic! Great work, as always.

I've always seen the headcrab variants as created by the Combine, as we see them using Headcrabs just the same as they use humans and others. Drop a couple poison ones here, some fast ones there, and ol' reliable classic crabs EVERYWHERE. Boom, instant ghost town!

Excellent video. I sometimes feel like Half-Life's setting takes a backseat to the groundbreaking lighting and physics, but it's an excellently realized world with horrific implications I never thought about until you talked about them in detail. Thank you. Also some inspired music selections early in the video, much appreciated.

Came for HL2, left with existential crisis. Bravo

One of the Glassdoor reviews of Valve by a former Valve employee described the company as a Panopticon.

Brilliant and interesting analysis as always, I really do love hearing your thoughts and you explain them very well. Thanks for sharing. I will echo other comments though, I think the music is too loud and even if it were lower I have a hard time concentrating and absorbing what's being said due to the type of music playing. I decided to download the video and use a program to try to remove the music and it worked well. I will let the RU-vid upload play out to count as a view too.

I have no idea why I stumbled upon this video by accident, how can finding such brilliant analysis be left to chance? I like to think that I'm not too bad at taking up on the message of media I consume but this video really opened my eyes on Half Life which I thought I already understood (mostly about the complex, even if mute character, or rather symbol of Freeman) What if find most revolutionary about your work here is that it highlighted the effect of the circumstances, the times during which Half-Life series was created. As someone born after 911 and not in US I completely lacked this important context to understanding what Half-Life, and specifically the sequel was saying. The comparison to Nazis is quite easy to make. Any bad "empire" that systematically genocides can be compared to them. What now seems obvious, but before wasn't, is the connection you made to the invading forces of US upon countries of middle east. It makes me appreciate the game even more, that in times where games like CoD were actively promoting and cooperating with the military industrial complex, Valve made something that so cleverly that seldom anyone noticed, subverted the trend and critiqued the system. (weird that you talked about how combine uses nature to poison and harass through headcrab bombs without pointing out the now obvious connection to indiscriminate bombing of civilians by US using rockets and drone strikes. One could even say that Ravenholm is a town ravaged by this purposefully indiscriminate bombing as in the case of many of the attacks by US) Another thing that I found weird to be omitted was the connection between the way you described the resistance, specifically how they were forced to live underground, in cramped spaces, like rats. It imminently reminded me of "MAUS". Where Jews were depicted as mice, hiding from Nazis portrayed as cats. GermanPeter recently made a video on a connection between BJ Blazkowicz and rodents. Nazis depicted Jews as vermin, but those same vermin can be a symbol of tenacity and perseverance of those resisting their oppressors. One thing I have to critique is the way you content warned of mentions of holocaust and Nazis. It is precisely BECAUSE the things they did are so horrible and hard to listen is why we should and never turn our heads, avert eyes or cover ears at the mention. Now I get it that some people are squeamish, it is good to warn them of this content, but you should never encourage them to avoid it, never avoid it yourself. I don't care if you find what the Nazis did horrible, you shouldn't avoid listening to it. It may be harsh, but it is precisely because it was unpleasant to listen to, or look at, that the Polish spies, who VOLUNTEERED to be sent to a concentration camp, just so that they can witness it and report to peoples around the world, namely US, but the people of US turned their eyes away. They didn't want to listen, see, face the horrible truth of what was going on the continent. In the town I grew up in there were thousands of Jews before the war, from industrial magnates to beggars. After the war their cemetery was demolished, their synagogues blown up, but they also built a station, from which trains took them by carloads to their doom at the hand of oppressors. Never avoid talking about the holocaust in the most excruciating detail possible or encourage to avoid listening to it. Well that part of the rant was a bit bigger than the part praising the video, but I hope I across why that one piece of critique is important. Other than that (which was just a small but important to me line) the video was very eye-opening, maybe not at the nature of the Neo-Liberal oppressive order but at the unique connection that H-L has to it. Well done and I now am obligated to watch the video on H-L 1 and check out rest of the channel.

just discovered this channel. incredible video! very refreshing to watch

Great work on the video ! Learned allot of new things. Keep it up !

phenomenal video with a perspective I've never seen, thank you.

Good video! Kind of reminded me of Futurasound. I have some things to add. I can't really say I think HL2 was actually that deep. It had its fair share of star warsy naivete to it, but the design department did a great job of evoking a storm of thoughts and feelings. That's perhaps what draws people to the HL fanbase and keeps them there for decades. Not to mention all the terrific work that Marc Laidlaw did, making use of his love for complex references and erudite characters. Regarding politics, I think the major event that went unnoticed both in the video and the comment section was the Yugoslav Wars, especially the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo. Some parallels to the Combine lore can be found there, as the NATO/USA ignored the rest of the world and acted independently, going to Eastern Europe and causing bloodshed to stop the bloodshed that was already taking place. On one side, it could be seen as justified, on the other, it created a precedent for breaking international law without facing consequences. That had dark implications that there is no real law in the world, only the rule of the jungle and a facade of reason and democracy for balance. (Coincidentally, the term 'the Combine' was translated as 'the Alliance' in the Russian version of the game, which is how NATO is called in Russian. And also the intervention in Kosovo was used as an argument by Russia to justify the invasion of Ukraine.) And of course, there is a passage from the Final Hours of HL2 where Gabe was thunderstruck after the US invasion of Iraq. Or a lesser-known fact that among the street graffiti in HL2 was discovered a piece of a real-life poster criticizing the post-9/11 police state. Another political parallel, although coincidental, was how eerily Valve envisioned future authoritarianism in Eastern Europe, which wasn't a thing yet in 2003-04. As you mentioned, the leader doesn't have to be a great public speaker anymore or be relatable to the masses. He can even be an old guy, always polite and unbothered, even though he himself is likely aware he's brutally destroying if not the world, then at least his own country. Breen loves bringing up negotiating as much as any other dictator for the same reasons: to buy more time, to look less like a crook, to make more people dance to his tune. I feel like the thought that HL2 was trying to convey was that the atrocities of yesterday can return any day, with newer and newer evil empires emerging by devouring what used to be a normal life, reusing their predecessors' practices and throwing us back to the symbolic 1930s. I wish we had more games from Valve that followed that design philosophy of taking all kinds of interesting themes and references and turning them into coherent lore. HL2 incorporated concepts from War of the Worlds, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Starship Troopers, Back to the Future, The Fly, etc., and at the same time historical symbols like the Berlin Wall, the Fireside chats, the Underground Railroad, the Reichstag-looking Nexus, and the collaborationist-rebel dynamic (similar to what was in WW2 France), (arguably) the Aral Sea or the confiscation of suitcases at train stations which was a tactic used in the Holocaust. (This style, of course, had started on a smaller scale in HL1 with The Space Odyssey-like space baby, The Smoking Man, and the facehuggers.) It can only be imagined where Gordon Freeman would've gone next, what he would've seen and whom he would've met. We may have missed an action-packed Star Trek! HL:A in that regard was very lukewarm, unfortunately. Old Valve is never coming back. But at least they had a good run.

2h half-life video yeaaaaaaah!!!!

Brilliant work!

I love your videos, you deserve way more views

Bear with me, but I see the Combines actions as essentially Baudrillard's idea of Pure Simulacra in the context of Genocide. In my opinion and a recent paper Ive been working on in regards to Simulacra and Simulation and Genocide, this Genocide by the Combine doesnt resemble a Reality of Genocide as we are used to seeing throughout history, they arent just eradicating species, but eradicating their identity AS a individual culture/species to be integrated into the greater Combine Machine of Panopticism and Genocide.

I love this youtube channel so much 🙏

Great video 🙏

Yet another video essay that makes you one of my favourite writers. It's so hard to view and explain current hegemonic dominant ideology of any given culture, but you explain Neoliberal capitalism so well AND how it's shapes our media.

Here for it. Gotta say, the shredding guitar in the background is distracting tho

Oh man, looks like my long comment got hidden. I'll repost it in parts, then: Good video! Kind of reminded me of Futurasound. I have some things to add. I can't really say I think HL2 was actually that deep. It had its fair share of star warsy naivete to it, but the design department did a great job of evoking a storm of thoughts and feelings. That's perhaps what draws people to the HL fanbase and keeps them there for decades. Not to mention all the terrific work that Marc Laidlaw did, making use of his love for complex references and erudite characters.

God damn this is a good video.

My post-2014 observations of Half-Life 2's plot also point to a direct correlation to the situation in Palestine. City 17 serves as a direct analogue to the West Bank and Gaza, the latter even moreso following The Uprising after the fall of Nova Prospekt when the Combine escalate with much more direct military action. Both are also heavily surveilled and literally, walled off from the rest of the world with a tight control on what's allowed to transit through. The supply of food, water and medicine is also under strict control, if not outright halted (or destroyed) with the education, healthcare and public services infrastructure having long ago collapsed. The propaganda that is broadcast by the Combine is also rather close to pro-Israeli sources, with the war/genocide being portrayed as a necessity or even praised outright. The Resistance and it's sympathizers are demonized or even destroyed outright, be it bombing an apartment tower for a Tik-Tok video, or the Combine Overwatch shelling a city block with Headcrab Canisters. Full and unconditional support to the Combine is also demanded and deviation is seen as criminal, in the same manner as media in the western world now portrays Palestine and to a growing extent, South Africa, as the "enemy". With the subject of South Africa now; As for those seeking to escape City 17, White Forest may even serve as the analogue to some Palestinians escaping to South Africa, far away from the bombs of Israel... or the Combine. The Resistance also mirrors the real-world resistances in Palestine and in South Africa, with much the same goals, guerilla tactics, use of improvised weapons and propaganda levied against them. I also noticed how you described City 17 as an "open-air prison", which is the description given to the Gaza Strip some 20 years ago. Your analysis also, while drawing parallels of the Combine occupation of Earth, with a focus on City 17 (as much of the game takes place in the vicinity), also closely appears to mirror the recent case that was brought against Israel by South Africa at the ICJ some months ago. There is also a non-zero chance that some random tweaked-out Nazi or paid troll will scream at me in a reply, justifying the Apartheid rule and genocide on opposite ends of the African continent. But I digress, I'm just a working-class Joe from a former apartheid state

anyway, solid 7.5/10 video. Could have been better (THAT IS NOT WHAT A RETCON IS. I'M BEGGING YOU TO USE OTHER WORDS) and I always love seeing ideological/narrative/political breakdowns of my favorite game series.

Great Video! Something I was thinking about throughout but was surprised didn't come up, was how Breen was retconned to be a former Black Mesa Administrator. One of the central parts of this essay is that both Half Life 1 and 2 reflect the anxieties about neoliberalism at the times of their creation. Half Life 1 has the major reveal that Black Mesa had already known about Zen and was exploiting it for its own gains. From that implication, Breen was likely someone who was instrumental in that process, or at least was aware of it. It was probably why he found himself able to work out some negotiation between the Combine and Earth. But comparing the roles he played theoretically in 1 and what he does in 2, I think the games are underlining the slippery slope aspect of neoliberalism to fascism. Breen is doing for the Combine what he already was doing for the US government. The way he organizes and diffuses, belittles his staff like in Nova Prospekt, justifies his actions as being necessary, it all works in both parallel roles. Also given the idea that in future Half Life Games, Breen was planned to have been transformed into a Combine, I think that also says a lot about where that slippery slope leads as well.

Based on the 9/11 thing I'm jusssst older than you enough and was precocious enough as a kid to comment on the difference and even as a non American surveillance kicked into the major format was post 9/11. I can recall the Patriot Act being passed and that being seen as the major breach, then the nsa leaks happened, and then social media made informational security an antique. It takes like..3 years tips for oppression to be normalized.

music in 1:11:00?

hey can u make a video on bioshock 1 and 2

eyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy two hours here we go

Despite Half-Lifes goofy b-movie tone there’s a lot of extremely disturbing sequences and ideas laced throughout the franchise

Mark Laidlaw stated that The Combine were inspired by Isreal, and that the 7 hour war was meant to evoke the 6 day war. Just thought you should know.

Amazing video but unfortunately I’m an ultrakill fan so I’m here to yell about the panopticon

incredible work, i really appreciate games being critically examined in the context they were created in. though i think what most resonated with me was the bit about existing in vast video game spaces as a means to be truly alone with yourself. ive never heard anyone else say something like that, but i've always been drawn to games with a lot of breathing room, and to this day i still fire up games like this just to hang out in them. okay, second thing - i cried real tears thinking about your stated implications of father grigori tending to his flock. anyway, can't wait to click around on your videos page some more

yippee !!!!!

yayayayayaya❤❤❤❤❤

I actually think that HL2 was inspired by first several books of "The Dark Tower" by Stephen King, not Iraq war. You should definitely explore that.

Fascism is here and has been here for years, right under our noses...

This video was a great analysis of Half-Life 2's environmental storytelling but I have some MAJOR issues with this video. Firstly, it seems like you can't go 5 minutes without mentioning "neoliberal capitalism" as some boogeyman who is responsible for all the evils of the world or whatever instead of the basic economic system that it actually is. You also confuse mercantilism with capitalism on multiple occasions. Also implying that neoliberalism and fascism is basically the same thing is such bullshit. I think you need a proper explanation of what capitalism actually is. It is simply a market regulated by buyers and vendors. Supply and demand. Yes, it is easily exploitable when one company gets too much power. That's why we have anti-trust regulations. Yes, working conditions in early capitalism were terrible. That's why we have worker protection laws. The point I'm trying to make is that so many of the flaws of unrestricted capitalism can easily be fixed by passing laws. The goal of capitalism is to break down the barriers between groups and allow free trade, which was a response to mercantilism. It's baffling that you briefly threw up a picture of the Atlantic slave trade triangle in the video as an example of "capitalism bad" when it is the defining element of mercantilism which is a nationalist economy. Capitalism, being a response to mercantilism, is anti-nationalist. Which is the complete opposite of fascism. Secondly, this video comes off as heavily American-centric with all the comparison between the Combine and the U.S. A much better example of a Combine-like modern state is Russia. It seems obvious as City 17 is set in Eastern Europe but Soviet colonialism only got a passing mention in this video which does the region a huge disservice. It's not talked about enough how Eastern Europe (and North/Central Asia) was broadly a victim of colonalism through the suppression of languages, mockery of culture, and racism against native peoples. These left deep scars on Eastern Europe which is only now being healed. It underwent a capitalist revolution to free its people which goes against your surface level points of "capitalism is oppression" and "u.s. government bad". The Combine also mirrors Russia in the sense that the goal of the Russian empire was to turn all of its subjects into Russian citizens through the erasing of their local identity. People also tend to forget when comparing the crimes of America to that of Russia or China is that America is a free democracy and thus is WAY more transparent regarding crimes against humanity. Everybody knows about the Iraq war and the crimes from it but almost nobody talks about the Chechen wars. It was justified through Russia bombing its own civilian apartment blocks which they then blamed on the Chechens to give the Russian public a reason to destroy the Chechen nation-state and assimilate its people into Russia as it has done throughout history and continues to do in Georgia and Ukraine. Similarly, the Uyghur genocide is an ongoing effort by China to eliminate the native Muslims of East Turkestan but gets almost no media attention because Russia and China are totalitarian dictatorships where what you see is what their governments want you to see. If anything, Neoliberal America is the complete opposite of the Combine because of it valuing individuality over assimilation, and limited government over mass bureaucracy. In conclusion: Please take a break from Breadtube

I am so grateful that you put focus on how binary gender roles are still so heavily reinforced in society, and how trans people are criminalized because they go against it just by existing.

Is the patriot act good?

Amazing analysis dude! I wish there were more around who were intune to how deep and philosophical the games we grew up playing truly are. I wish I had friends as intelligent and deep as you! Then maybe I would have someone to talk to! There was a man who just stabbed to death a shoplifter at a dollar store who was stealing food. People seek to be perceived as ethical rather than actually be ethical. Perhaps the zeitgeist of the world hasn't changed enough to warrant and motivate a true Half-Life 3. Perhaps in the coming years something may change. I also find large empty games really peaceful. I enjoy playing STALKER and DCS a lot! It's slower and let's me enjoy the world instead of just dying and being in some constantly intense battle. BTW this whole video is absolutely fantastic and I have it archived for posterity.