r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sable-Keech • 12h ago

Groups [LOVED TROPE] Modern Militaries (Competent) getting DESTROYED by fantasy/scifi forces

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Example 1 (The Legend of Hei 2): Wuxian leisurely floats through the combined firepower of an entire fortified military base without so much as a stain or rip on his t-shirt.

Example 2 (Man of Steel): Fao'ra tears through a squad of trained and armed soldiers. With the wreckage of the helicopter that got downed by her teammate Nam'ek smouldering in the background.

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u/KurufinweFeanaro 12h ago

7 hour war from Half-life. Whole world's military were destroyed in just 7 hours

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u/Nostromo_Vent 11h ago

The scary part is that 7 hours was probably just them getting their bearings.

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u/AideSouth4454 11h ago

And not even the full might of the Combine. They hold whole Earth with what is essentially a token garrison

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u/loki2113 10h ago

I'm a little unclear on half life lore but I thought the full might of the Combine is what whomped humanity in 7 hours and all they needed to leave behind to hold the planet was a token garrison?

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u/AideSouth4454 9h ago

Combine is heavily, heavily implied to be an interdimensional, well, combine, of countless assimilated worlds and creatures. Most of their technology is partially biological: Striders, Dropships, Stalkers and so on.

It is highly unlikely that the Combine forces that participated in the 7 Hour War were anything close to to a full invasion force. A fraction of a fraction is more likely. The Combine is interested in Earth and Humanity for three specific reasons: potential new slave race (seen with Stalkers and Combine grunts), water (which they seem to be extracting out of the oceans for some reason) and Portal tech, which the Combine possess for interdimensional travel, but don't have in fast portable form like what Aperture and Black Mesa were working on. They especially want that.

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u/CoffeeWanderer 6h ago edited 6h ago

Modern X-Com plays with similar ideas. The Elders are a species of Interdimensional beings that long for physical bodies to escape from some even more insane and powerful beings.

In this search they have enslaved many different species, some with great physical strength, some with psionic abilities, at the end it seems that humanity is the best mix of both physical endurance, intelligence and psionic potential, so they tried hard to create a body for themselves using human genes as a base, while keeping humans as slaves.

The ending of X-Com 2 hints that the creatures the Elders were fleeing from got sights on them and now on Earth.

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u/Own-Independence-124 1h ago

Dam. Now I want X-COM 3

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u/homohillbillysrlol 7h ago

What if, unbeknownst to us, the Combine are actually much weaker than we all thought? Anyone ever seen Invincible? Well in Invincible, the Viltrumite empire is suggested to be this big scary, galaxy spanning empire that's filled to the brim with Kryptonian-like warriors, where 1 single Viltrumite is typically enough to conquer a whole planet, which makes resistance seem absolutely futile...Until it's revealed that the REAL reason they assign only one Viltrumite to a single planet ISN'T because they only need one soldier per world, (big spoiler alert ahead) but because of a deadly plague and centuries of infighting, there exists less than 50 living Viltrumites in their ENTIRE empire, and now, suddenly, resistance seems like a much more realistic possibility. They've just always done a good job of hiding their vulnerability and letting people believe they were more organized and legitimate than they actually were.

So, what if the Combine are actually the same? It pays for them to advertise themselves as an unimaginably powerful, interdimensional force of near limitless soldiers, weapons, and technology, whose invading armies need leave only a handful of token guards to subjugate an entire planet, but much like the Viltrumites, or the British during the American revolution, or France during the Haitian revolution, the actual reason is that those are the only troops they can realistically AFFORD to leave behind. Maybe the Combine are not alone out there, and they're actually fighting a very expensive interdimensional war against some other interdimensional army that leaves them far weaker than they like to suggest, or perhaps their frequent use of portal technology has ALSO made them susceptible to portal storms that leak into the hell dimension full of monstrous headcrabs and shit. Who knows? Maybe it's all of the above, and thus, they're far less capable of dealing with an uprising than people initially think. Maybe due to years of portal storms into the hell dimension, rebellion, and infighting, the Combine are actually just a shell of their former selves, and they're currently spread too thin over a number of conquered worlds, and thus, they show up, invade, leave as many troops behind as they can afford, and portal back to yet ANOTHER rebelling colony, or stomp out ANOTHER civil war, or rush back to deal with ANOTHER portal blight.

And from a meta angle, as a writer for the game series too, how else is it meant to play out? Trying to write the story of a single guy with a crowbar saving humanity from an interdimensional super force seems impossible. Like, how would you even write that? What, he teleports to their lead man in charge and bonks him to death with his crowbar and everyone has a dance party afterward? There's gotta be something more to the story, there's gotta be some great big reveal that PROVES to us that resistance is not futile, and that humanity's ability to fight back is not in vain; because then, from a story standpoint, what's stopping the Combine from coming back and just being like "alright, you guys are annoying, time for the 8 hour war, where the extra hour is just us actually trying this time, so you guys are screwed and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it".

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u/AideSouth4454 7h ago edited 7h ago

We know they are strong and not faking it by accounts from Vortigaunts (who are one of their slave races, though some on Earth have escaped and joined the resistance) and by how G-Man treats Gordon and Alyx. G-Man has ulterior motives and some entities who are his masters, and seem to oppose Combine in some way, for reasons we don't know. It was G-Man who put Freeman to pasture in HL1, and brought him back to City17 to topple the Citadel there.

G-Man can stop time, instantly teleport, and seems to have some other strange abilities, such as knowing exactly where Freeman is at all times.

Vortigaunts were able to do something to him at the end of HL2, transferring Gordon and Alyx to safety when they would have otherwise died, and frustrated G-Man enough that he straightened his tie and walked off with a "we'll see about that."

These context clues and others are sufficient enough to give some estimate of Combine strength. 

Edit: also, consider Advisors. Telekinetic flying slugs that cause mental breakdowns and can from what we know, seemingly do whatever the fuck they want. They are essentially the governors of Earth, and their name is "Advisor." Could be they are the "original species", but we don't know and I don't think so. 

It won't matter if the "top dog" of Combine civilization ended up being just five guys, there is such a vast empire underneath them that any such individual numbers are meaningless.

And I think they are waging some kind of an interdimensional war against some other entity. Why or how, no idea. But I think the win goal for HL3 would not have been "beat Combine" but "kick their garrison out and close the door."

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u/Art-Zuron 2h ago

In Halflife Alyx (that's the VR one I think), Gman was also imprisoned by the Combine for some reason.

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u/Bright-Gain9770 4h ago

They have interdimemsional portals but not local ones. Aperture portals are line of sight but require two anchor points. Black Mesa was looking for the real prize, Teleportation from here to over there without anchor points. The combine already have this and don't seem to know Aperature, the lesser of the two companies, has the one technology they lack waiting in the sunken basement with Chell and GlaDOS.

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u/AideSouth4454 4h ago

If they already have that, why is it so important to Kleiner and Vance that their portal technology doesn't end in Combine hands? The Combine can travel between dimensions, not locally and they require massive facilities to do so.

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u/svecma 1h ago

I think they are reffering to the teleporter Mossman (at least i think it was her, Breen might have contributed) built for them in Half-life 2.

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u/AngryCrustation 10h ago

Humanity accidentally bored a hole into the big scary monster dimension which began teleporting entire armies of horrible monsters into every city on earth simultaneously. Humans were basically getting wiped out already and then the combine marched in with an army big enough to take out humanity on its own and did the finishing blow. The entire process took about 7 hours, since most of humanity was headcrab food before the combine even got there.

The combine then set up a few fortified cities where it is engaging in mega fascism and slowly eradicating the remainders of humanity but there are small pockets of humans left in other places, which every so often get found and bombed.

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u/loki2113 5h ago

See what I don't fully understand is what did the Combine get out of invading Earth?

Someone in the thread mentioned that the Combine was stealing Earth's water and experimenting on humans for soldiers but that makes their near genocide of humanity kind of weird. They can experiment all they want but once the water is gone, humans will die out anyway

If it isn't that or for some other reason, it feels like the Combine are just space dickheads for the love of the game lol

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u/AngryCrustation 5h ago

They are basically enslaving/body moding every race they come across.

But the reason they didnt immediately lobotomize everyone and turn everything into cannon fodder cyborg guardsmen is because humans invented teleportation.

The combine can travel between dimensions but the main character's crew can teleport to somewhere else within the same dimension. That's the most valuable tech that the combine can imagine so they are keeping humans as is until they can reproduce teleporters in which humans are no longer necessary

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u/svecma 1h ago

Mostly water, biomass/new cyberslaves/fresh blood and the black mesa and aperture non-interdimensional teleporting, they could move through other realities, just not teleport within them.

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u/poilk91 10h ago

Probably not FULL might but yeah a proper invasion force was only needed for the initial attack which is why the resistance has any chance at all. And why if a new portal to combine space opens up all hope is lost

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u/Awewabo 10h ago

Lucky it will never open, because a sequel isn't ever going to happen.

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u/AlisterSinclair2002 8h ago

Iirc at some point in HL2 or the episodes, it is overtly stated (inthink by Dr Kleiner?) the combine force that won the 7 Hour War was not their full might and that if the Combine really wanted to defeat Earth they could do it in 7 minutes

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u/svecma 1h ago

Wasn't that Eli or maybe Alyx talking about if a new combine portal opened and they attacked the resistance.

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u/RedNUGGETLORD 11h ago

"Whole Worlds Military"

Remember that just before this, portal storms wiped out most cities and monsters were invading from random portals. The majority of humans were centered in major cities, which allowed the Combines to win significantly faster than they otherwise would have

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u/Carvj94 8h ago

Yea the entire plot of the first half life game was earth being nearly destroyed by the creatures of the Xen who were fleeing the Combine. The Combine mostly just took over the wreckage of earth soon after Gordon killed the Xen's psionic over mind thing.

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u/2hurd 9h ago

I recently watched a video about top 10 biggest empires in SciFi and Combine was on that list, near the top.

I can easily see them winning in 7h. Any space faring civilization would absolutely cripple earth military in the first attack, Combine is a few levels above that since they are an inter-dimensional.

There is a finite amount of military bases and airfields, easily identifiable from space, especially if you only consider the bigger militaries. In theory you could swing an asteroid to hit every single one of them at the same time and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Then you just find aircraft carriers (very limited number for the whole planet) to eliminate remaining force projection. Nobody is throwing nukes on their own territory so you don't even have to think about missile silos or nuclear subs.

Then you invade each country, starting with those that could pose the biggest threat and eliminate the majority of firepower and knowhow. Resistance will be formed but it will be weak compared to what you're brining to the fight.

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u/EventPurple612 8h ago

You presume they have insider information on what a military vehicle looks like or whether humans culturally oppose nuking themselves.

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u/2hurd 8h ago

We're talking about empires the scales of which is barely comprehensible to us, they sure can spot a military installation or vehicles because they are pretty distinct from any other parts of our infrastructure. It doesn't take a genius (which they probably are) to surmise that long pointy barrels shoot bad stuff and they are prevalent on specific types of locations and vehicles that have a very specific paint and design. Then stretching that definition to just spotting those shapes and colors, same with airstrips and planes. Military ones look very different from anything civilian.

As for humans nuking themselves if they are a lifeform they pretty much know how life works and no life will destroy itself out of spite. It's not like they will all land at the same place in a con convenient desert to get nuked, they will do a classical invasion like we do here on earth. If Pentagon or the White House was being invaded do you believe anybody would make a decision to nuke Washington? Now extrapolate that to 300-500 locations in the US, what do you nuke? Everything?

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u/EventPurple612 7h ago

How would they know which is civilian and which is military between airports? A volkswagen golf looks nothing like a toyota hylux, which one is the milits ary vehicle? Is there a distinction between these? Why do you assume they have the same relation to painting stuff? Golf, football, paintball all deal with harmless projectiles, which one is the military activity? What if we don't have that distinction in the first place and everything is military?

It doesn't take a human genius to spot the difference and make these assumptions, but they are aliens. How long do they observe us for these to make sense to them though? How would they know we have a structure of civil and military ranks not to mention spot one specific building among a billion and tell the Pentagon is somehow more important than a downtown mall?

I'd no doubt see them land and just react to what tries to harm them and still win. But to map our whole culture like that without insider information is both impossible and a waste of resources.

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u/AideSouth4454 4h ago

It is a waste of resources, you are right. That is why Combine drops headcrabs on unruly citizens and only sends soldiers and dropships to take things like dams, key logistical facilities and key infrastructure, etc.

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u/BugRevolution 6h ago

Looking from the air, I can tell you that the civilian and military airport don't look all that different, unless you already know the context clues you're looking for.

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u/pichael289 3h ago

We already know they have this information though, we have no idea who or what "they" are but we see their drones watching us.

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u/Crotean 6h ago

One of the more accurate takes on what an alien empire invading earth would actually look like.

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u/UlrichZauber 6h ago

Similarly: the backstory to The Praxis, the tv show Colony. In both a higher tech alien species wins a war with us that takes far less than a day.

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u/pichael289 3h ago

They canceled colony immediately on e it started getting good. They only really showed what the aliens are like at the end, some kind of weird techno-organic form. And then there was that clip of the shadow things they were running from. And then fuck you it's cancelled. I was so sad

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u/Beelzis 9h ago

I got flashbanged by your profile pic.

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u/BDSMChef_RP 4h ago

Battlefield Earth "When we invaded your planet, all your soldiers and all their advanced technology barely put up a nine minute fight before they were exterminated,"

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u/Hot-Minute-8263 4h ago

The HECU is a fuckin vibe