NOTE: Please approach this thread from a lore perspective, not gameplay perspective.
If they are 'around here somewhere' than they should be present on Earth, regardless of its current state. Based on where they should've been found (Canals and similar semi-aquatic environments like on Xen), they would still be roaming in those locations. Also, I don't beleive they're extinct as they fared well with other native Xen species such as Headcrabs and Barnacles. Unless Antlions are from a different borderworld (which is unlikely) or they are better adapted to Earths climate and are thus more dominant than Bullsquids.
With real world examples of invasive species, only a small percentage of animal introductions actually take hold and result in a sustained population. A species needs certain qualities to be good at invading new regions, and it needs to out-compete existing species in the niche it's introduced to. Naturally not all of the species introduced in the resonance Cascade will establish themselves on Earth
This may be true for some continents such as Africa and potentially Asia and North America as there are a multitude of species that would surely out-do some of the invasive Xen species regarding their roles. However, other continents such as Europe would be more susceptible to this as there aren't alot of animals present to fill those roles to an impactful degree. Particularly, there are little amounts of large animals in Europe, especially semi-aquatic ones at that and the Bullsquid could easily become the apex of most water-plains and swamps.
It could be that Bullsquids require a different environment to most other Xen wildlife. They were originally intended to appear in the canals, weren't they? With all that radioactive sludge? Black Mesa also had a tonne of questionable chemicals. Seeing that Bullsquids spit out some sort of toxic substance, maybe they can't exist in the environments that players are most likely to explore.
Yes, they we're intended to be in the canals. But in Half-Life, Bullsquids can be found practically bathing in toxic waste, even man-made chemicals too, that most likely wouldn't bother them in the long-run. While not a perfect contrast, think of a Tardigrade, they can handle even the most extreme conditions, but fare well in non-harmful environments.
Laidlaw actually said they're still around in-universe (along with houndeyes), they're just not seen in-game.
I quoted this in the original post lol. "If they are 'around here somewhere' than they should be present on Earth," Laidlaw said that quote (underlined) during an interview.
Mayhaps the Combine killed the ones around City 17, at least in the final revision of HL2's storyline since they are present in the Beta maps.
That could be probable as they wouldn't provide alot of utility when being compared to a Headcrab or something. Maybe they could be deployed in their own dropships and sent to wreck havoc on rebel outposts lol, similar to those bull runnings.
Whoops sorry, my bad. But yeah, they're still living on Earth in canon but we just don't see them in the course of the final version of HL2. We can probably safely assume that in-universe bullsquids do live in the canals and sewers, at least the more rundown and remote parts. It might not make sense from an in-universe perspective when you think about it, but "They exist but they're not seen in the course of HL2" is pretty much the entire extent of it really. Similarly, we also see only one Icthyosaur in a scripted scene, despite there being tons of water areas for them to be living in. It doesn't necessarily mean all but one have died out, just that Gordon simply doesn't encounter them.
The idea that because they're big scary aliens they must necessarily be better than existing species at filling their role in the ecosystem is really ignoring the biology here. Yes, bullsquids are big and deadly but that doesn't mean they're actually more suited to this specific environment. Consider that, if no large predators have evolved in Europe to fill the niche of large semi aquatic predator, that niche might not exist. There might just not be enough food to sustain something as large as a bullsquid.
In fact we know very little about the bullsquid's biology. We don't know its thermal tolerances (Europe might be too cold or too hot for the bullsquid to survive more than a few days), mating habits (maybe it needs specific substrate not found on Earth for nesting), generation time (if they only reproduce every 10 years they could have been all been killed off before they were able to breed), diet (maybe they're dependent on a food source that never ended up on earth to provide some nutrients) or even more basic stuff like whether they can tolerate Earth's atmosphere long term.
Species invasion is a relatively rare event and not every species is going to be able to do it. Setting aside whether they're a good match for the environment itself, a species needs a sizeable starting population for good genetic diversity (we have no idea how many bullsquid's actually ended up on earth, certainly all of the ones we saw in game died when BM got nuked, or more likely by Freeman's hand), a high rate of reproduction (who knows how often they reproduce), high adaptability, and other factors to favor them if they're going to take hold.
Basically, the assumption that the bullsquids would still be around at all isn't really a good one to make. There's far too many factors at play and it's arguably more likely that they would have died off by now, because a successful species invasion requires a whole lot of things to go right for the invader.
Maybe they just have really specific breeding grounds and there's nowhere for that to happen on Earth?
It was me. I took them all.
They're on vacation.
Extremely well written and reasonable response, I can see why Bullsquid's would struggle more than thrive. Apologies if this response doesn't do yours justice.
Similar to the response from above, good point.
Hard to believe, but put them back : (
They must be chilling with some regular squids on some Antlion free coast.
They took the houndeyes with them, they're good friends.
wonder if they'd still use that red hl2beta skin or just go back with the old palette
That new skin was probably for design choice rather than anything else as the old skin was too vibrant for Half-Life 2's more 'industrial' art style. Or maybe that red one was just a sub-species or something, alongside that green one being a whole different species.
He lost a leg doing it huh.
Well according to the canon, Eli lost his leg to a Bullsquid while he and Kleiner were breaking into City 17, so they're most likely still around just not seen in Half-Life 2.
If I recall correctly one of the Vortigaunts says their ancestors had domesticated antlions, so they're probably from the same home world (as well as grunts, controllers and Nihilanth.) They're not controlled by Combine technology or synthetically altered so I'd guess that they arrived in portal storms from Xen.
There's also the "Xen Thumper", and while it's similarities to the Combine Thumper are almost certainly an accident, it is fun to pretend that they were constructed by the Vortigaunts to keep Antlions off certain rock clusters.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1811/4ccf089c-76d8-4c30-8114-ac44d14bc448/image.png
Along this line of thinking, how awesome would it have been to have seen xen wildlife fighting earth wildlife on occasion? Like a bullsquid hunting deer or wolves eating headcrabs.
The closest we got to any interaction between the two is a Xen Barnacle eating a Crow, but regardless it would be interesting to see such a situation.
I've always wanted to see more Xen wildlife and flora (or whatever you'd call it) in the HL2 era. It would have been cool to see bullsquids hanging around in the more remote parts of the canals and deeper parts of the sewers. It would have been cool to see houndeyes running wild around White Forest. It would have been cool if there was an old tunnel somewhere that had become overgrown with those xen fungus things and light pods. Things like that to make it clear that it isn't our Earth anymore.
I really dislike how limited the alien bestiary is in the final version of HL2, where it's pretty much just headcrabs and antlions with the occasional barnacle.
In the beta, it seems that the Cremators got rid of the bullsquids and the rest were in the wasteland. Since, the Wasteland was cut, the Bullsquids were too.
Sounds probable, just not every one would've fled to the Wasteland's.
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