Why do combine and the overwatch speak english???

[Oblivion]

Aren't they an alien race?

[Viper]

I dont think all of them are Alien. Just the leaders. These are definetelly humanoid soldiers.

[Oblivion]

Humanoid yes, but not human.

[Viper]

MInd Control...

[Xx_PyссyTraппэг_xX]

They're mostly mutated humans who have submitted to the combine authority. The real question to ask is, why is everyone speaking English in Eastern Europe.

[Kleerex]

There's a dead Combine soldier without the mask in sewers. Its head is all brains with no eyes. I'm not sure how they even are able to speak. They're definitely not humans.

[SilentCaay]

Because they're currently subjugating humans. They probably have magic babel fish technology so they can speak any language they need to.

[Jangster23]

The soldiers are actually human. In Half-Life 2, soldiers without the upper halves of their suits can be seen. Combine soldiers are basically humans who either willingly gave up their lives to become mindless slaves, or they were forced into it.
For how the rest of the Combine Empire knows English, I'm guessing it's a combination of Advisors and human cooperation. The Advisors are the slug things with big tongues who suck out the brains and knowledge of their victims.

[Lee Kong]

As Jangster23 said, the combine soldiers are actually augmented humans who have had parts of their body removed and replaced with combine technology. the striders, airships, dropships and hunters all appear to be alien lifeforms that have undergone similar augmentations which would make sense because the combine are inter-dimensional dictators.

[Kolas]

At this point in time people still don't know what the Combine are? Or people coming for HLA really forgot everything about HL2?

Here take a look at the wiki, they have all the information you may want to know.

https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Overwatch_Soldier
https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Civil_Protection

[Muse Snooze]

Originally posted by Sheogorath:

There's a dead Combine soldier without the mask in sewers. Its head is all brains with no eyes. I'm not sure how they even are able to speak. They're definitely not humans.

They're definitely humans. They are surgically changed. This is well established lore, and is hard cannon in veeery expensive Half Life texts that literally will run you 200 bucks, with concept art and everything. https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/half-life/images/0/03/Stripped_combine_soldier.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/284?cb=20090527202937&path-prefix=en

I find it funny you don't know this very very very basic piece of info known since 2004 in HL2, where all of this was depicted within the game. But hey, true half life fan, VR bad, you remember righhhht?

[Pharaoh (Revolution Idol)]

It's implied that the metrocops are mostly human, as seen by their human-like gasmasks and the fact that Barney can join their ranks without undergoing obvious surgical alterations.

As you go up the ranks though, the Combine soldiers are surgically augmented humans (like Muse said, you can see their model without torso armor in HL2) and the elites have a single monacular goggle, implying heavy surgical alteration (their faces probably aren't very human anymore).

The Combine are basically like the Borg from Star Trek. They assimilate and repurpose other species and their tech.

[Cat]

Originally posted by ppeccin:

Aren't they an alien race?

The combine? Yes. So, what?

[Kobs]

The gloves also have one of those star trek universal translator lol

[Brucecat]

There modified humans I'm guessing there prototypes to the ones in hl2 due to them acting more human

[Nick]

Originally posted by xX_♥♥♥♥♥Trapper_Xx:

They're mostly mutated humans who have submitted to the combine authority. The real question to ask is, why is everyone speaking English in Eastern Europe.

Yeah, that occurred to me while in the zoo level. All the signage was in cyrillic, but handwritten notes the staff had left to each other were in English. Yet the inconsistency didn't really matter when it's so fun to read the messages.