Someone on Reddit posted a super high quality scan of a magazine showing off an early Opposing Force with the early designs of Shephard and the pitdrones, and even a bunch of images of TF2's Brotherhood of Arms phase
https://i.redd.it/t5p6zq0anbe21.jpg
Check it, this detailed to the point that you can see the white inbetween every other pixel.
https://i.imgur.com/bJAi9gh.jpg
I mean, I agree, but did you post that in the right thread?
Oops, that's what i get for having too many tabs open.
I keep thinking about that cut train yard assault map and feeling bad that it didn't make it in. I can't stop thinking of how fucking cool that premise is, combine troop trains pulling directly into the station to offload their cargo to fight *you*. Even knocking abandoned trains out of the way to get make room for themselves, which is also a fucking cool way to show how powerful a razor train is.
New headcanon:
The HECU is targeting Gordon not because they think he is responsible for the invasion but because he is a 30+ man with a ponytail.
God, unrelated, but I fucking hate how that video reminds me that they butchered War of the Worlds for the Spielberg movie. They turned an incredibly vitriolic and biting anti-Imperialist work into a 'Poor America!' 9/11 allegory.
At least we got an amazing album out of it. And the audible version. It's sorta crazy how post 9/11 so much stuff had to be changed. Not just in half life, but like how they had to change spiderman 2 and metal gear solid 2. It's kinda crazy how one event can just change so much stuff, even to this day.
On topic, Was there any canon reason WHY the Hgrunts wore artic camo in a fuckin desert?
It's not arctic camo, it's urban camo. I don't know the exact pattern name.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/229956/5bb1875d-e17b-435b-bb0a-6f66101c0362/5a967044bfcf7b56ad885bbd47d52fb8--desert-camo-va-ebenefits.jpg
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/229956/c48392da-7d3e-414a-b409-3ff5f132e06f/513_a548.jpg
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/229956/9b23fac6-0a3b-4930-81b2-e369d4012b8c/CAR4-1024x676.jpg
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/229956/67a5b29f-e6a6-404a-9ac6-7bcd9b957cce/xxDesertStormPhoto27.jpg
The US hadn't really fought a desert war before, and didn't have the full logistics in place to equip every soldier (especially the massive amounts of National Guard) that they were deploying for Desert Storm and the Gulf War, meaning that a lot of dudes went in wearing woodland greens. I doubt the HECU had anything more than the urban camo they wear -- they weren't ever really intending to fight in the desert anyway, as a CBRN/Hazchem unit, the odds are they were never intended to do much more than roll in, blow away some 'loose test subjects', and then roll back out. If it got to the point where they were fighting a land war across a swathe of New Mexico then they'd have fucked up proper.
The blitzkrieg nature of Desert Storm also made camo largely ineffective -- CAS, armor support, and the incredibly fast nature of the war meant that ultimately camo was a tertiary concern, if at all. Most soldiers deployed in their woodland greens fared fine, by all accounts. it wasn't a protracted war and stealth was not really a feature. They rolled in, trucked, and rolled back out just like the HECU would have.
I doubt Valve really had this much consideration in mind but I figure it was a bit of subtextual, unintentional inspiration.
He's 26 during HL1 lol.
27
I started playing Half-Life when I was a child and now I'm probably older than Gordon Freeman.
I shouldn't feel as old as I should.
Raising The Bar has an explanation:
Even with their award winning Al. at some level the
soldiers job in the Half-Life universe was to look busy,
menace the player, and die in interesting ways, Wearing a
clever form of anti-camo, these soldiers were designed to
give both the impression of being camouflaged, but at the
same time be highly visible on low- resolution displays.
FIRE-TEAM-IS-IN-YOUR-ASS-HOLE-MOTHER-FREEMAN!
Oh shit! This is why Gordon was able to go into the Citadel core without a helmet!
His head was so full of lead already that it acted as insulation!
He's had so many minor and major lacerations that his body is now covered in a layer of super thick scar tissue that is highly resistant to radiation as well as small arms fire.
Perhaps not just his head, his whole body is literally covered in lead now. HL2's Gordon model now makes perfect sense.
http://combineoverwiki.net/images/1/1b/Gordon_player_hl2.jpg
I remember opening the Xen maps in Garry's mods and finding those at the spawn spots thinking it was the creepiest thing ever.
It's intentional, in RtB Steve Bond's notes for the grunts states that they are designed wearing "anti-camo", designed to look like camouflage but actually stand out at low resolutions.
even worse with adrian shepard
what was once a badass manly role model turns out to be barely above teen age.
oof
22
freshly stolen from LMAO pics
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/484529630976540694/542113632771899393/raccoonfight.mp4
oh hey i'm the same age. shit.
well at least i'm not in a literal and figurative limbo :^)
shit, you're better off than me
Haha no way.
And I thought Valve did such a good job with characters age being appropriate to their station/experience with Tf2...
I had a blast playing Half Life 2 with MMod, first time beating it on Hard. I experienced a few bugs with NPCs, one time I had to restart a level because Barney stopped following me.
Shepard's age isn't too out-there for someone who's a relative greenhorn in the Marine Corps, although honestly the likelihood of him being part of a spec-ops CBRN team like the HECU is very, very unlikely.
I'm not sure HECU was a spec ops team. More likely they needed lots of "elite infantry". A SF unit of thousands of men is costly to run.
The G-Man probably pulled some strings to get him assigned to the unit. The Op4 manual references the G-Man being present on base when Shepard first arrives.
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