Is there anything that's likeable about the Roman Empire? No joke here, I just think it's a good comparison. If you look at CA as 'Space Romans', then their situation becomes either more understandable or more detestable, depending where you come from. But the fact is the 'average' citizen of the CA enjoys a lot better life than the 'average' citizen of the human sphere, and while they don't have a lot of political freedom, they do have a lot of personal freedom (this comes from the Bit fluff, so it might be just propaganda). So yeah, there's reason to like the Combine. They have killed, they have destroyed and they will most likely keep doing it. But they don't opress their own people, and 'thanks' to their centralized goverment, I would wager they don't have a lot of issues with corruption either. My own personal appeal when it comes to CA is that they're Bad Guys with capital letters. I love me some absolutist pricks as antagonists.
Yeah, if the premise is assimilation of one's being into a greater consciousness then yes. If we are just going to die because we're in the way or deemed unfit, that's another story. I'm not familiar with Dune, so I can't comment on that particular context, unfortunately.
@Knauf well, I'd highly recommend reading Dune, then. At least Dune itself. Following volumes are not as good (though I personally do like God Emperor of Dune). I'd also suggest pretending the prequels and sequels to the Dune cycle (written by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson) do not exist, and never had ;) As far as I can see, EI's general goal isn't to "Kill everyone else down to the last child". Note that they do offer other civilizations to join the EI civilization. What their goal is, if I get it right, is to transcend - what the Ur have came up with as a way of avoiding coming down in the heat death of the Universe (from our point of view, The End of Everything, Fullstop. The greatest, all-encompassing extinction event. No civilization and no living being is going to survive it). Yes, this is going to happen in a future so far that we can hardly imagine it - but it is inevitably going to happen. So, their goal is basically survival. Maybe - maybe - EI will be able to take with it Cube records of its countless denizens into the transcendence. And, with ruthless, machine efficiency, it gathers resources to advance it towards its goal. Resources of every possible kind - raw materials, technologies, talented sentient beings (and the infrastructure - material and societal - to keep these resources operating). Because without these resources, it has no chance. And if these resources aren't used to further the Transcendence objective, they will be - in cosmic scale of things - wasted. If those unwilling to cooperate with it do suffer and die? Well, as one Frenchman has famously said, "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs". Comparing to dodging the End of Everything, Fullstop, the Human Sphere's powers' goals seem simply trifle. And yet powers of the Human Sphere were comitting atrocities to achieve these goals. EI simply operates on a bigger scale. ...yeah, I'm kinda playing advocatus diaboli here ;)
WARNING:- Slight spoilers for Betrayal. I liked Betrayal in the sense that it gave us a look at Ko Dali and possibly by extension, others who have joined the Hegemony. I was pretty comfortably with the fact that she was probably under some sort of control. Maybe she's still had a little nudge initially with some conditioning or drugs. But I've come around on full control, she's just a survivor and good at what she does - killing. I don't think CA are 'evil', rather they are utterly, completely ruthless in the pursuit of the EI's goal. Just that, ruthless. It will use every weapon, person, program and civilisation in it's pursuit of transcendence. If you can contribute, well hop on board for the trip. There's a great piece of OCF fluff where the Umbra in charge basically says to an alien civilisation:- 'You get this one chance, think carefully'. I'd bet the EI abhors waste. Look at the makeup of CA:- Morats - great shock troops. Shasvastii - great infiltrators. Urks - Great operatives. Umbra - the universe's best killers. Combine bug things - haul that ammo. Ko Dali - this human kills other humans pretty good. If you're some gas giant floater civilisation that worships bubble plants as holy relics with a technology level around the steam age, well, you can't contribute and you're just a potential threat down the road, so why not drop a singularity into your home world just to be safe. It's not evil, just practical, clean and tidy. You need to think closer to the Borg, but you don't get turned into a drone (probably). Side note:- I enjoyed Betrayal but think Outrage is still the stronger book.
Not an abstract concept of greater good, but the survival of humanity as a species. All other roads would eventually lead to mankind's downfall. Leto II orchestrates events to move humanity outside of the scope of prescience's view, as all known paths ultimately would lead to destruction.
Remind me what those words were again? Also, the original poster has things backwards. The combine army are the only good guys in Infinity. The humans are all various shades of evil and the Tohaa were a mistake. The only salvation in the universe is submitting to the EI. Your gods are all false, there is only the EI. GLORY TO THE EI!
“From a certain point of view”... Hades, I can even imagine a scenario where the Umbra are understandable.
I would say that whether the CA are more evil or not is debatable, but that they are definitely more hostile. Yu Jing and PanO are rivals who have fought wars, but they can co-exist. You can't co exist with the CA, you can exist within it, on it's terms, or die outside it. Which is kind of the Nomad argument about ALEPH, incidentally, although I think that probably it's a bit of a false equivalence. Certainly the CA are evil, like they did invade Paradiso and kill millions of innocent people for no reason other than the EI's desire to subsume or annihilate any civilisation it encounters. Make no mistake, the war against the CA is a case of slavery or death. In the game we can all make our arguments for each faction being good or bad either way, but if the CA existed in real life... yeah. They're definitely beyond the moral event horizon in a way that the other factions aren't, really. Like the other factions absolutely do do heinous things, but they don't do the heinous things that the CA does on the scale it does for the reasons it does. The CA has literally genocided billions, potentially hundreds of billions, of beings for the crime of not necessarily wanting to be in the CA. Now, could you argue that if the Human Sphere had the capability to do that, they would? You might. But they don't so. Also as a further note, we are debating a moral point of view... if you hold certain positions to be objectively immoral then you will be able to rank certain factions as more horrible than others. If you don't then really it boils down to "they all think they are doing the right thing," although I think that the capacity for internal disagreement in the Sphere is there and regularly exercised, whereas in the CA it isn't. You're either cool with the genocide, a slave whose opinion is irrelevant, or eliminated.
Whats the full lines and context? lol I do not understand the pointing trying to be made. Edit: I found the full quote. Its from Return of the Jedi. "what I told you was true, from a certain point of view. You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
This is a far point but I think it is also a false equivalance. PanO and Yu Jing have a cold war balance thing going. Checks and balanced with O-12 within an ecosystem. Imagine giving unlimited power to one or the other. Do you think they would still co-exist? I don’t. Not to say they would immediately go on a murderous rampage killing millions. But life as the other major powers know it would be over and their lifes dictated by the most powerful. Global real-politiks has always been about the old 40k motto: The Strong are Strongest Alone.
I's just a matter of scales. CA encounters ENTIRE (INTRA)PLANETARY civilizations. Human Sphere factions encounters small scale regional populations. Why do you call one a genocide and one a democracy exportation?
You know the difference between genocide and homicide or serial killing is precisely a matter of scale, right? That's why it is being called genocide
Let's rephrase. Given the opportunity, do you really think the human sphere factions would go easier? And would they give the enemy an opportunity to join their FULL status? The best parallel i ever read here is the Roman Empire. You join or you die. And if you join you get the full civilization advancement package. Damn, they could even claim the highest ruling position in the empire!
That's not quite accurate, though. Genocide is the targeted destruction of members of any given ethnicity/religion/people – in whole or in part. It's not the scale of murders but this specific intent that makes it genocide as opposed to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
*wrongly used by lazy people undermining the meaning of its clear terminology and descriptive purpose of a rather specific set of circumstances
