City 1

Clavius

Clavius

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I've been pondering over this for a very-very long time.
What is a City 17? Why would anyone call a city City 17?
It could be the seventeenth city the combine or whoever took over, or the age of Dr. Breens daughter, the day-of-the-month the assault on the city began, the minimal age req'ed to play HL2, or perhaps it could be a ranking!
Hmm, taken for a moment that its a ranking, and this pissy eastern European town is on the 17th place, what city would be City 1?

Just a thougt :|
 
No one knows. I guess we will find out when we play eh.
 
I think there are 24 cities in hl2...since theres only trains going to 24 on the rotor thing on the trainstation vid
 
City 17 is obviously where the best hoes are, hence why Breen moved there.

My guess is that after whatver happened whilst Gordon was sleeping, there were basically only 24 population centres left in the world. The rest was destroyed, or just unsafe due to the amount of Headcrabs and Zombies.

These population centres, the cities, are numbered 1 to 24. There may be an insight into the naming of the cities in the game. We can but hope.
 
czrsink said:
City 17 is obviously where the best hoes are, hence why Breen moved there.

My guess is that after whatver happened whilst Gordon was sleeping, there were basically only 24 population centres left in the world. The rest was destroyed, or just unsafe due to the amount of Headcrabs and Zombies.

These population centres, the cities, are numbered 1 to 24. There may be an insight into the naming of the cities in the game. We can but hope.
Click to expand...

Than all the remaining 24 cities must be located in Eastern Europe, for I doubt that one would be able to travel in those small trains very far.
 
Sigh - you guys are the same people who never got that Combine was a COMBINATION of human and aliens/biotech aren't you...

It's obvious that the Combine's de-humanising of human civilisation includes the removal of old city names and their replacement with numbers. This is analogous to the way colonial powers in Africa made arbitrary borders by drawing a straight line on a map (look at a map of Africa) and chose arbitrary names for countries and cities that bore no relation to local names.

17 could be because it is the 17th city to be eaten by the Combine, or they could have just given cities these numbers at some point by another system.

Than all the remaining 24 cities must be located in Eastern Europe, for I doubt that one would be able to travel in those small trains very far.
Click to expand...
By an ordinary train, with diesel power, from an 'Eastern European' city like Prague, it is possible to reach the farthest reaches of the former USSR and China to the East, the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the West, Africa via the middle east and Finland to the north.
 
dagobert, the russians named cities based on distance... newell didnt come up with this himself :_p


city 17 is probibly 17KM from Vladivostok, the closest major city (yes, the russians really did number cities)


city 33 is 33KM from moscow, ect..... it doesnt mean its the 33'rd city in a series...

and the "combine" referrs to the tower wall, which eats thru cities like a "combie" would...

red%20combine%20300dpi%20gimp.jpg


they are not combined aliens and humans...
 
Dagobert said:
By an ordinary train, with diesel power, from an 'Eastern European' city like Prague, it is possible to reach the farthest reaches of the former USSR and China to the East, the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the West, Africa via the middle east and Finland to the north.
Click to expand...
Of course, but with an "ordinary diesel train" it would take weeks to get to the Far East and the southern parts of Africa, and the train that Gordon was travelling in the Trainstation-vid, it would be very unpleasant to travel long distances.(I'm not saying that every thain would look like that, but you get the idea.)
 
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/bolshoi-kamen.htm

like posted abpve, this is an actual CITY17.
If you read the article, it's most likely THIS city at this site that is city17. The real place even has a coastline with grounded ships; the remains of the USSR's naval fleet. Part of the reason it is so controvertial is becasue of the 48 nuclear reactors that lay in those subs there, and the signed contract for a treatment facility, that never was built.

To add more wieght to it, the masks the combine wear have already been compared to russian gasmasks, and match unbelievably well.
 
Now this is thread worth posting in.
Great theories!
 
If the citys were named on which ones were taken over first, then named accordingly.... it would be poland.
 
Dagobert said:
Sigh - you guys are the same people who never got that Combine was a COMBINATION of human and aliens/biotech aren't you...
Click to expand...
Actually no. Reading some of the magazine reviews they refer to the combine forces as "The combine overwatch". I believe "combine" refers to a political/economic group of organisations allied for a common goal (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=combine).
Also, I don't think many people still believe that the combine/striders are biotech.
17 could be because it is the 17th city to be eaten by the Combine, or they could have just given cities these numbers at some point by another system.
Click to expand...
It has been revealed in the magazine reviews that City 17 is where Breen lives, and Breen's the governer of the planet - so if anything, city 17 would have been the first city to be touched by the combine.
By an ordinary train, with diesel power, from an 'Eastern European' city like Prague, it is possible to reach the farthest reaches of the former USSR and China to the East, the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the West, Africa via the middle east and Finland to the north.
Click to expand...
Yes, it would in todays world. Who knows what carnage has taken place in the country-side, whether the tracks are still intact or not (most likely not, they do need repairs and it could have been 10 years since anyone tended to specific parts) and whether they actually have enough diesel/fuel to move anyone that far, if they even wanted to.
 
You've all great great theory's and interesting ideas, but i just think it sounds cool. Really rolls off the tounge. Alliteration anyone?
 
cadaveca said:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/bolshoi-kamen.htm

like posted abpve, this is an actual CITY17.
If you read the article, it's most likely THIS city at this site that is city17. The real place even has a coastline with grounded ships; the remains of the USSR's naval fleet. Part of the reason it is so controvertial is becasue of the 48 nuclear reactors that lay in those subs there, and the signed contract for a treatment facility, that never was built.

To add more wieght to it, the masks the combine wear have already been compared to russian gasmasks, and match unbelievably well.
Click to expand...
Beautiful find my man! This looks likes the closest thing to City17 so far.
Maybe we should send this to valve, heck you might even get a poster for it!
 
there's more to it than that. Dig deeper into the towns history, and there is a disturbingly similar story to what we see in the BINK videos.

There are rumours that this is where the nuclear material that the middle-east and korean countries have been experimenting with has come from. (g-man=government man + cover-up)

A friend of mine used to work on a oil-rig near there. It's a palce not often talked about, considering the controversy. Seems that people there are more "unto themselves" than other places, and the word "oppresion" springs to mind.(welcome to city 17...it's safer here)

i could quote HL2 lines from the binks that fit, and arial photos that sometimes match what we have seen...

it's kinda creepy....:eek:
 
Actually no. Reading some of the magazine reviews they refer to the combine forces as "The combine overwatch". I believe "combine" refers to a political/economic group of organisations allied for a common goal (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=combine).
Also, I don't think many people still believe that the combine/striders are biotech.
Click to expand...
Then how come the PC Zone UK review refers to them as such?

Let me get this straight, so I can bookmark this thread for later reference - you don't belive that the 'Combine' are a combined force of humans like Breen and the aliens that were in control of Xen in HL2? You don't beleive that there is any combination of human and alien forms going on?

It has been revealed in the magazine reviews that City 17 is where Breen lives, and Breen's the governer of the planet - so if anything, city 17 would have been the first city to be touched by the combine.
Click to expand...
Breen used to run Black Mesa. In new Mexico. A long way from Eastern Europe.
 
yall are reading way too much into all of this, i dont think VALVE choose the name 'City 17' for anything except that the way it sounds, it porbably only loosely based on any real city. Having said that, there are obviously other cities weve heard about from the movies and othere placces, like City 14, nova prospekt (new prospect?), and Odessa (city on the black sea, so this could be the coastline scenes)
 
Can we get some photo's of this supposed City 17 in Russia. Like photos of the towns and the harbor.

I wouldn't be surprised if Valve modeled City 17 after a real city like the folks working on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. did with Chernobyl.
 
http://fokino.wikiverse.org/

this is the name of the actual town that i mention, at least to locals. Notice that it is a closed town, meaning that public cannot enter, mainly becasue it is a "naval town."

Vladivostok is the region, and Fokino is the town. It is under this town's history that the local mayor was so oppresive that they ended up publicly executing him.



http://www.admin.debryansk***/~press/Maltzov.html

for the city's origin.

The Moscow State Univercity Building we really can to call as "The Russian Empire State Building": this construction was ordered by the state soon after the Victory in the Second World War, and its architecture, in according to primary conception, must to be a symbol of the Great Power.
Click to expand...

citadel?
 
The Mullinator said:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/secret-cities.htm

Thats my theory on what City-17 is. To me its a former research city that had been experimenting with something that must have involved teleportation technologies and thats why it relates to the HL2 story.
Click to expand...

Amazing link! That's it exactly. The historical connection at least

The city with the number designation of "17" is also a shipyard town

interesting ...
 
hehe.. that laidlaw guy is good...

also notice; 'city 17' is similar in syntax to 'airstrip 1' (more 1984 images)
 
Dagobert said:
Sigh - you guys are the same people who never got that Combine was a COMBINATION of human and aliens/biotech aren't you...

It's obvious that the Combine's de-humanising of human civilisation includes the removal of old city names and their replacement with numbers. This is analogous to the way colonial powers in Africa made arbitrary borders by drawing a straight line on a map (look at a map of Africa) and chose arbitrary names for countries and cities that bore no relation to local names.

17 could be because it is the 17th city to be eaten by the Combine, or they could have just given cities these numbers at some point by another system.


By an ordinary train, with diesel power, from an 'Eastern European' city like Prague, it is possible to reach the farthest reaches of the former USSR and China to the East, the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the West, Africa via the middle east and Finland to the north.
Click to expand...
sigh...you must be one of those idiots who doesn't know that the Combine is named after a peice of farming equipment used for harvesting. The mere biomech notion makes no sense at all to me.
 
Fokino made alot of news in 2002, as there was a world summit there for the "world powers" to decide what to do with the remaining soviet nuclear subs, as radioactive material had gone missing from 2 subs. The similarities between the Vladistovok area and the HL2 setting are disturbing. Sound like the citizen's of the fictional City17 were under as much military pressure as their non-fictional counterparts.

Funny to note that this is where alot of stolen honda's and suzuki's end up getting sold for dirt cheap. I was even able to find a reporter's claim of trying to buy a car there, and the difficulties that arose from his adventure, including getting ticketed by a radar set up BEFORE any posted signs.
 
Lanthanide said:
Actually no. Reading some of the magazine reviews they refer to the combine forces as "The combine overwatch". I believe "combine" refers to a political/economic group of organisations allied for a common goal (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=combine).
Also, I don't think many people still believe that the combine/striders are biotech.
Click to expand...

Its quite obvious the striders are biotech! The gunship is obvious biotech too. Theyre obviously deeply involved with this technology.
 
I have a theory but..I'm not gonna say...I might be right and if I AM..I don't want to ruin it for people.
 
Clavius said:
I've been pondering over this for a very-very long time.
What is a City 17? Why would anyone call a city City 17?
It could be the seventeenth city the combine or whoever took over, or the age of Dr. Breens daughter, the day-of-the-month the assault on the city began, the minimal age req'ed to play HL2, or perhaps it could be a ranking!
Hmm, taken for a moment that its a ranking, and this pissy eastern European town is on the 17th place, what city would be City 1?

Just a thougt :|
Click to expand...

I dont think the Combine would sit down and give thier citys names like 'The city of Hope' or 'Berningham' =p

If I lived in a city called City 17 I would feel kinda depressed. The combine just called cities after the number that they probably conqured it, which means City 17 is the 17th city to have been taken over (Which could be Russia judging by the language on some posters).

I think the citizens would also be called after numbers like 'Citizen 004123'

Combine will also be called after numbers as well to keep uniqeness apon thier troops (So they are not all called names like Jhon Smith)

Just my 2 cents...
 
I reckon the Combine are aliens (they were referred to as "The alien Combine" in a voiceover during one of the original shakycam vids, IIRC), the soldiers they employ are humans, and their heavy weapons platforms and "vehicles" are biomechs (Strider, Gunship and Dropship).

The plating of each biomech has an organic appearance, and if you look closely enough, you can see that they have musculature (check the Strider's underbelly, for instance). Though, they seem also to have purely mechanical parts, so I reckon they've been grown and then further cybernetically enhanced.
 
Maybe they used human muscles to create their so-called musculature structures, a la the cyborgs in System Shock.
 
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