Half-Life: Alyx - Combine Soldier Analysis 

it's so funny for no reason

Funny stuff

and in EZ2,developer add an achievement named this😊

When?

@@soggybubble 6:02

And dehumanizing

Doctors with guns

Ehh I like your sentiment....but I would offer a different opinion... militaristic jargon evolved out of humanity, the need for common language when it matters most, sleep deprived hungry cold tired and high on adrenaline that common language that to many makes you sound robotic is in actuallity the exact oposite. With the combine we see that without humanity, not to stay calm stay focused, not to build a team. Merely any aspect of humanity the combine sees as useful at any given moment even at the most extreme end of Unit 3650 but they dont really know or care why it existed previously. Kinda makes the whole thing funny, as in my mind these combine soldiers use the language backwards. using the strict radio jargon when calm and not using it when the chips are down and its life or death. Just always been a cool part of the lore to me that humanity is no different than the striders to these guys, and breen good or bad was able to offer up a twistd bundle of scraps of humanity the combine found interesting enough to preserve. Always felt like even the eletes were not yet really judged as trustworthy or good enough for off world real combine missions, but I am on a rant.

I think the way their codes are mishmashed words is really cool. Instead of some obscure word its things like wallhammer, and bouncer, making them feel alien yet grounded.

That's the point when you consider the combine operate off of an "organism" mindset. They're all part of one major whole, and operates as such. The most clear example is that they refer to Gordon specifically as "the individual", alongside various codes and terms treating them almost like white blood cells.

Not just chess, but 4D chess, 6 moves set across 4 points of layered theoretical timespace. The end goal is to create a check across all 4 points in time, thus true checkmate.

It's actually chess??

De que están hablando. Es verdad?

it could be poker? idk

A dystopic take on the common trope of soldiers gambling with other soldiers, i like it.

kinda sad the commentary path didnt include some height in the terrain to see how they would react to that. the footstep prediction is already amazing but what if there was a change in height? commentary says something about it, but we cant see it in action which kinda sucks

pretty sure they used real time animation(porting video to animation). But if they did animate all of that, they need to get higher pay.

​@@Picercian you mean motion capture? They also used it for half life 2, no game studio makes their animations by hand

​@@epicorp I mean you gotta make some of the animations by hand. Some.

@@dj11o9er a small percent, yes but on the larger scale it is basically mocap

the thing about the cries being played in reverse is that the only reason to reverse them in the first place would be to make them unintelligible. the people aren't alive; the brain would literally be the first thing the headcrabs would mangle and/or eat. plus the chest is torn open so there's no blood pressure, also necessary for conscious thought. something about how the headcrabs make their victims move just makes their vocal chords move too. the zombine make actual words because they're so heavily modified. the combine probably use preprogrammed vocoders that similarly respond to whatever the headcrab is doing

@@MenachemSchmuel regardless, it's horrifying. Half Life (particularly Half Life 2) can feel jovial when you meet up npc's, lonely when you're traveling, and badass when you're in combat, but the true horror of Half Life can only be found when you dig into the lore. I believe Breen Grub is the best example. After Wallace Breen's body is destroyed in the explosion at the end of HL2, his consciousness, or at least a copy of his memories is implanted into one of those psychic combine grubs. Many of the times he awakes, he can tell that someone is altering his mind and memories to better serve the Combine Empire. This concept is absolutely horrific to me. Breen, reprehensible as he is, has lost his humanity and his mind, his very being has become an experiment to be tampered with and permanently altered at the behest of someone else. Truly terrifying. Good thing we have people like Russel in HL: Alyx and Alyx in HL:2 to reassure us in game lol

@@MenachemSchmuel Headcrabs "ride" their victims like parasitic puppet masters, it is never established that they consume the brain in its entirety, hence the ability of zombies to walk, talk and attack you. That requires at least minimal brain function. Clearly some part of the victim's personality remains, however scrambled.

I'd play half-life:Alyx over and over during summer vacation, I didn't use subtitles so it was hard to understand what the combine were saying. One day I was at the top of that construction silo right before you crash the vault. There was one combine grunt remaining, and things were silent. When I landed the finishing blow on the grunt I heard him say "Alyx" Then fall to the ground. My name in real life is Alex, and I never heard a grunt express remorse before, so it really shocked me. I just stood there for a solid half minute.

@@shbeebo1176 VR can feel so unbelievably real sometimes.

His ally was such a snitch.

@@ninjaguyYT Any thing for social cred

I feel bad for him if I was one of the combine I would entertain hi,

​​@@glados-ox2nbI know right? I kinda feel bad, they have like no entertainment. What do they do on break? Do the Combine troops even have a break?

@@declanjones8888probably not no.

Human is just resource to the Combine. If the Combine want, they will just cut off the head and stick some computer directly into the spine or something like that imo.

@@DOSFS interestingly enough this video convinced me that the combine must recognise somthing useful abou humaness because they allow the supressor type to be more human then the others. Anyways I agree but its weird how they do allow some autonomy like "memory wiping" is voluntarily triggered. Why?

@@eccod5637 Ordinal is cold and emotionless, as the leader that makes sense, leader needs to keep the mission in mind and make decisions calmly. Charger and Suppressors are more aggressive, given their jobs that aggressive inclination, natural or perhaps enhanced or directed by whatever chemical or cybernetic means the Combine use, would prove useful under Combine guidance. The memory wipes are mandatory. From what my gut tells me, Overwatch overwrites the memories of the soldiers every so often to prevent PTSD from what is probably a high casualty rate when dealing with Zen creatures, nevermind constant CQB search and clear missions of human habitation areas, as well as probably 24/7, or near enough, deployment as needed, hence why you hear lines about stim deployment as well.

@@eccod5637 Well, you wouldn't want to trigger a memory wipe mid-combat. Memories of a previous life must be wiped long before a soldier is ever deployed, so the chances of one deciding not to refresh once an opportune time comes would be incredibly low. As for what the Combine recognize? Existing hardware. Something Alyx revealed is that underneath all their sleek black metal structures, even their computer terminals utilize bioengineering for the actual computing substrate. It's entirely possible that they never had a digital revolution the way we have IRL; they just repurpose brains into biological computers, are great at reading that output (the advisors are psychic after all) and find that more efficient or effective than investing in mineral-based CPUs. They literally don't even have mechanized vehicles in their home dimensions--what they have on Earth are designs from us. Their tanks are striders and hunters, their artillery is filled with headcrabs, their gunships are giant insectoids. On the rail through the citadel at the end of HL2 you can see they have giant crab tanks. It's a safe bet that even the drones and manhacks have little rodent sized brains hiding away somewhere in there. Think about it from the perspective of a sociopath with infinite resources. What's more likely to work: a true/false based logic system that would take decades of tinkering to teach it how to respond to every situation, or just stealing what evolution has produced after millions of years that is preprogrammed to figure out how best to respond to any situation right on the spot?

@@MenachemSchmuel this "existing hardware" idea is brilliant. I imagine you're right when you say that this is how the Combine look at the resources of the universe. The whole concept of Half Life is control and puppetry. Gordon isn't free to do as he pleases, regardless of how the resistance view him. The combine grunts are practically hard wired into the Combine network, to be controlled by Overwatch. And as you say even the manhacks may have brains inside them. It makes me wonder who or what is at the very top of the chain. What sort of creature would view everything this way? The lore has confirmed that it isn't the grubs. Or at least it didn't start with the grubs.

the best line

Dissonance doesn't have to mean remorse or second thoughts about their assignment. It could just be a logistical question, ie "where is my position in the formation?"

@@abhaybhatt4286 It probably refers to Cognitive Dissonance though, where your experience doesn't match your preconceived beliefs. Also, the second line is like, every update ever nowadays.

Windows 11 in the next 5 years

I thought of that too, good touch

Yeah I agree with you. In the military we have status "codes" for things and check ups that each squad send to the platoon commander at certain points. Like, we have "Detroit check" which means the patrol vehicle has been been checked for damages, fuel level etc, and "Sibir check" wich is only applicable during winter time out in the field, where we check each others feet, fingers and face for frostbite. The radio communication for these would go something along the lines of: "This is platoon command, all squads status update" Where Alpha squad starts out; "Detroit Ok, Sibir OK, Las Vegas Negative, out of batteries for the NVGs" and so on. For the combine soldiers, the numbers thing being that kind of status checks seems more probable than a chess game.

​@@Edimonde I can't believe "Detroit check" doesn't mean "has everything been stolen?", so disappointing.

​@@theonlybilgedetroit was big in car manufacturing.

@@Alex_Vir Alright, sure, but: can't have shit in Detroit.

Well good thing that was written down

Knowing how much effort Valve put into making the Combine's design purposeful, it's probably meant to drown out their pained screams and any internal bleeding spitup that might happen while they're in the process of... expiring. Again, the attention to detail Valve put into HL:A is unsettling to the extreme.

@@KiraSlith It's crazy, I love when devs put such detail into unnverving designs. I feel the same way about the Combine as I do some of the enemies in Elden Ring.

@@KiraSlith it could also be to prevent squad mates from hearing their fellow soldiers screaming in agony in terms of PTSD and morale

@@collinthegamer510 That's another way of saying what I said, yes. Doesn't make it any less unsettling.

Check out TheParryGod's Anti Citizens video. It shows the Charger doing just that and it's just as you'd expect.

Basically space marines

@@Rawmel But less religous

@@gamingwolf6735I don’t know…with the way Dr. Breen talks about their “benefactors”, you could convince me that they’re actually just an inter-dimensional cult.

@@RescoeZ their fault for aggravating the charger

Nah would have killed people with heart attacks

​@@Memeguppy tis' the point!

TheParryGod's "ANTI-CITIZENS" has a scene showing what that would look like. Can confirm, goddamn terrifying.

​@@toaster_toaster2398to be fair, he did tell them to not resist

Wulululu

I imagine these guys are BARELY above Civil Protection on the totem pole. They’re some untrained volunteer shoved into the QZ to deal with headcrabs and oversee hazmat workers.

God can only imagine what the Suppressor must look like? Is there even a head under that mask?

@@aydinmakesthings yeah... their eyes are super far apart and also jutt outward. I would honestly love to see what they actually look like under.

@@aydinmakesthings recognizable as human only so far as the residual human elements that we can see. A vortigaunt would probably be unable to tell where the natural components end and artificial begins, like how we see other combine synths.

@@aydinmakesthings*…So have you ever seen Sloth from the Goonies?*

☠🤩💀😱☠😐🤤😱🤨🦶😭🤓😣💀😐😍🤩🤨😍🇮🇱😭🤤🤩🤨🤢🤩🤨😏🤩😐😍🤩😭🤤🇮🇱👨‍🔬🤢🤩😭🤤🤢☠😔💀😔🤱🗝🖐🥰

I guess the lack of laces is for reducing the amount of contagious elements that gonna get caught on the laces flapping about

@@lambn25 well I think the military tucks their laces in somewhere anyways

@@collinthegamer510the laces are usually pulled up and tucked into the pants sleeve

@@collinthegamer510 the laces may be tucked in the boot, but usually, they arent, a twistie is placed under the lace then the trousers are tied over the twistie Basically the trousers go over the boot and cover the lace If the trousers are tucked in the boot, usually the laces are too

Give it ten years

American healthcare be like

Cyberpunk be like

​@@PineappleDealer37 It's a nightmare that most aren't even aware of.

Welcome to the capitalist paradise

I agree with your take there, the combat felt.. Lacking, in HLA, compared to the soldiers in hl2 and episodes

@@Brick9 from what I have heard, like with the manhacks, they slowed the pacing down quite a bit because all of the combat was VR based, so if they had the same initiative to push the player like they did in HL2 it would have been a way harder game especially in closed environments where combine AI excells

@@knockrotter9372 That's what I meant, even hard mode felt easy

Ordinal is still most likely a man, in spite of the female VA.

That actually makes a ton of sense. They probably expect a high turnover in the QZ anyway (judging by the amount of combine worker corpses everywhere).

Idk if that guys even human. I wonder if its an alien-humanoid.

Basically, they turned his head into a naval rangefinder.

Gas station weed.

Sid the Sloth lookin headass XD Dude looks like he came straight out the shallow end of the gene pool

If their eyes have been replaced with cameras they don't need to be any different from the grunts under the mask. The wires and the cameras are just placed differently.

Laugh of other types of soliders is distored

The Combine hasn't invented boredom suppression biodats yet. That's why they have no choice but to play

I think it's a play on the trope of soldiers gambling on their free time

Boredom is truly a powerful thing that not even the combine know how to stop

Or maybe a code they have to say among themselves To see if there is a imposter amogus Like how Barney is at start of hl2 Prolly a code they have to say a intruder would not get it and they would catch em

I mean, this is a prequel so maybe they're still trying to figure out how to modify them into cold murder machines that follow orders like loyal dogs

@@ADcommenter It's either that, or it's just a facet of the combine's absolute pragmatism: They have a complete inability to give a damn about design perfection as long as what they're doing gets the job done resource-efficiently. Meaning, a lot of the guys they put in the quarantine zone are just disposable schmucks with the bare minimum gear they need for their tasks - Under those conditions, the quantity of warm bodies matters more than the quality, so there's no point wasting time and resources putting all of them through the full conversion process (like the Ordinals, who might actually be what the "standard" soldier augmentation looks like). That might also explain why they're forcing "updates" on them constantly - These grunts weren't really built for sustained confrontation against capable enemies, the stress of fighting against people is making them dissociate, and so overwatch is essentially "overclocking" them to compensate.

@@BackwardsPancakeI feel the combine needed some kind of experimentation and field testing to see humanities capabilities as soldiers. Grunts are just mild experimented humans, likely promoted civil protection officials or people who signed up for better benefits. While Overwatch was being set up, they likely relied on Ordinals to bark orders at multiple units. Perhaps an adaptation of humanity’s own military ranks? Maybe after the citadel was finished, the combine had done enough experimentation (and enough cleansing) to determine and implement the standard augmentations for human soldiers.

Yeah, I like that, helps to reinforce the idea that they just take people and turn them into this, they all look and sound pretty uniform, but underneath the armor they could be anyone.

I think it's a mistake actually, I've read a discussion long ago that it was the Overwatch voice actress, not ordinal.

​@@Pllayer064 Overwatch is Ellen Mclain

Hochi mama!!!

@@rawpowerjaggso that’s why overwatch sounds like me huh

We can see in Half-Life 2, the bare upper body of a combine soldier with the face of "Eric". He was replaced by the Combine's artificial organs, from his original organs.

maybe the ordinal was attacked by a poison headcrab?

It's nice seeing you here in the comments, i remember previously having a nice conversation with you about HL2 lore.

It's possible that the body may be slightly bloated from the process of decomposition aswell as the other reasons mentioned, if the body has been "dead" for a longer period of time.

Well some of the Ordinal are women.

Also, I would LOVE to see the units from HL2 have the same amount of personality as the HLA units, it makes them a hell lot less boring

3 year anniversary of hl:a is this Thursday, rumors is that's when they are dropping cs2 and revealing another hl game on top of there new game call neon prime

i hope they don't until their obsession with vr blows over because i really don't want another index tech demo

Also what obsession with VR? It's literally just one game

​@@vividclarities7860 he probably just meant VR in general, I have an oculus, but I'm not gonna get another half life game unless it has the option to play it on a monitor, it just feels right to me.

Just the idea of the Overwatch Voice getting annoyed with the soldier kicking it and telling his partner to stop him is hilarious.

True. A stand-out.

It's more human if u ask me even tho they are barely human.

@@RescoeZ I think the way the chargers activate their shields is that the wires going into their arm is headed to their brain and when they want to activate it they simply think about it

Yeah it's quite a sight isn't it? Now just imagine what the Suppressor might look like...

​@@RescoeZ Imagine It would have a normal human face...

@@RescoeZ Id imagine it would look like a grunt underneath and the eye parts are just wired to the brain

I only discovered TheParryGod a few weeks ago but their animations are incredible. Anti Citizens is my favourite but I love the new Combine soldier introduced in Patient Zero.

@@RescoeZ yeah the new soldier, referred to as Spikewall, is Parry's interpretation of bridging the gap between the Charger and the Shotgun Soldier from Half-Life 2 even though the model itself for the Spikewall unit is based on HLA concept art for different Combine Soldier types.

​@@EnclaveRemnantFanboy-118 spikewall is such a badass nickname

Spikewall closely resembles the third vortigaunt capture squad combine concept within the first set of concept art shown in the vid, which I find to be really interesting

I won't lie, I trip up on some 10 codes every now and again, but when you're using 1 through 99, some get used all the time, others get used almost never.

@@SayVandelay reasons why I just use plain english to be honest.

I wonder if the Ordinals having infrequent British pronunciation is from them mimicking the way the Overwatch voice speaks in HL2.

​@@dickc.normus2406Mainly because their VA is British but I think this headcanon is nice :O

Ordinals and Suppressors are likely volunteers. Grunts and Chargers are likely conscripted out of Civil Protection. Valve sucks at world-building. Half-Life will never have a library's worth of lore like Warhammer 40K, despite the potential for it...

​​​@@scowler7200 "Valve sucks at world- building." *Look! We got ourselves a comedian in this comment section!*

@@carinhatube3727 Just saying, it'd be cool if we could've followed someone through the conversion process like in Quake 4 or Resistance Fall of Man. And those are supposed to be brainless arcade shooters... Deliberately leaving small details unclear is just lazy writing. Here's an example... What does an Overwatch soldier eat? Do they eat the same rations given to citizens? Is it synthetic paste or is it some Stroyent-like concoction of drugs and the rendered tissues of dead Overwatch soldiers, stalkers, citizens, and Xen wildlife alike? Or is it just rendered-down Antlion grubs? We can assume a member of Civil Protection eats real vegetables at least. We can assume the vegetables we see in Russel's fridge are either grown on rooftops or stolen. But if they're stolen, does the combine grow them in massive warehouses using stalkers, or are citizens put to work on collective farms outside the city? Where does the black market start to form? They DID show us what jobs regular civilians are doing. I liked that. But they don't show us how someone goes from worker drone to hotblooded rebel... Neckbeards looooove to put Valve on a pedestal, but I'm chronically-irreverent. I can keep going.

@@scowler7200 *Literally half of your questions have been answered.* You just haven't searched for it. Also, don't come up with that lazy writing BS. Because only someone who does not play Valve game will say they suck at world building. Valve literally puts effort into putting even the tiniest little subtle details to make their world building feel more alive and rich. Also, this is Half Life. A franchise built trough mystery. Not all questions should be 100% answered. And when they are answered, they are made in subtle details.

@@scowler7200 Explaining away every little detail is lame

Speaking with Combine radio commands should be a recurring meme in half life videos

@@Agent_Schrader Deviation from Overwatch-approved vocabulary will result in immediate memory refresh and replacement.

@@ETIL_ me when i see an anticitizen who wants a malcompliance verdict

@@Bacony_Cakes

Clamp is losing mental game. Overwatch, request faculty refresh for BC-4123.

the animations are so good, i hate how bad they made the ai

@@waffler-yz3gw yea its quite brain dead, shame

I like to think it also implies that the Ordinal is under a lot of pressure to find out who and how many saw the Vault photo, and anyone else who happened to be nearby.

This was in half life 2 as well. Shotgunners used different tactics and the squad leader flanked you more often,etc

In hl2 they cut out All lot of enemies to not make the game clutter Now the game looks bland and boring A bit of variety would have been great man Even in half Life hit scanner HECU were fine coz they had startergies like they retreat throw grenades and due to claustrophobic nature of the game it was fun fighting em In hl2 there are only like 3-4 enemy varient and guess what all are hit scanners. Wish Hl2 had less Humanoid enemies and more Alien Ngl fighting the combine is the most boring part of Hl2 Other than that it's a solid game

might just be a radio check

@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413But for a radio check you’d just say “radio check”. And the response would be “5 by 5”. Or “1 by 5” etc etc. the series of numbers they do is very strange

well in that case, the citizen wasn't trespassing nor had he done anything wrong, they were likely interrogating him since iirc this is after the breakout from the armored car

@@waffler-yz3gwThey bully and harass people who aren’t Doug anything wrong all the time. It’s part of the reason people run when they see them. “Hey you. Pick up that can”

@@EggEnjoyerThat was a loyalty check. If you put the can in the trash can he reports it to overwatch and you get some credit

@@Reaper231_ why was bro laughing about it

@@EggEnjoyer because he enjoyed having authority of citizens?

That's probably the best explanation I've heard so far. It also provides a less noticeable advantage; it prevents spoofed communications. Assuming Overwatch keeps a record of unit communications, it can be used to check the situation against recordings, which can then be resolved as such: Spoof unit: (incorrect numbers response) Ordinal: Unit numbers contradict situation. Move to engage.

"Diapers comfortable?" "Negative." "Contact Diaper Chief."

*laughs in Combine*

The "male" Combine Soldier you are referring, the Ordinal, is voiced by a woman, and thus probably not male.

@@xxfalconarasxx5659 Combine become genderless after their transformation of human to Combine.

There is no male or female for Combine anymore. They are abominable cyborg intelligence.

​@@xxfalconarasxx5659bart from simpsons is voiced by a woman

Probably. Civil Protection is the most human-like.

@@PotentialGrimBarney was evident of that. Their work is minimal with only a few tasks.

Eh, possibly true, but remember on once the uprising starts rebel soldiers have no issues in picking up AR2s off of dead combine, and even ditch their smgs for it.

​@@astrotrek3534my theoretical explanation is the resistence maybe found unpaired weapon crates and hacking probably got better so they mass armed the population with their stockpile when the time came.

Given that HLA takes place five years before HL2, it's likely that the Combine had phased out the gene bonding failsafes for many of their infantry weapons for units stationed on Earth due to complications with constantly making such sophisticated technology.

@@tearex8688 the thing is that the Rebels pick up AR2 from dead Combine soldiers, with the Rebel soldiers already armed with AR2's being rare

@robowisanveithasung6022 yea but with new lore. I assume if you shoot a combine you can possibly interupt what terminates connection and use of the gun. And it stays open. Think of it like taking a part out of a computer but that computer is still powered. Bullets i think interrupt such a function.

Thanks, that's really kind of you to say 🙂

The Ordinal isn't just a soldier, but also seems to act as a sort of comms and logistics officer. She(?) carries a large radio device, passes orders to other soldiers, and relays information between them and command. And in real life, while men make up most of the frontline infantry, a surprisingly large number of women in the military are part of communications and administration.

@@xxfalconarasxx5659 what if all combine soldiers regardless of gender are the same looking if you remove the suit. All the stuff are cut off or removed/ hidden

@@CASA-dy4vs It's possible. I'm sure over the course of the transhumanisation process, the Combine do remove features they deem unnecessary. This may include genitalia and mammaries. We know they do this to an extreme degree with Stalkers, who've had a lot of redundant organs removed.

@@xxfalconarasxx5659 It's surprising that Raija actually voiced a combine, but it still sounds nothing like her regular voice and mostly like the typical distorted male voices you hear. So I think people reading into it way too much. But it was actually a female combine in HL2, the combine assassin, but she had a typical female form, with breasts and even high boots to count. She was scrapped tho when that level was removed

@@johan13135 Well, they do speak through a vocoder, so their voices are not representative of the voices they originally had when they were human. And when you are wearing a ton of body armour on top of a bulky hazmat suit, you're female form won't be all that apparent. Not to mention that the transhuman surgical process would probably involve the removal of breast tissue. It could also be that they do some drastic alterations to their entire physiology, that even their build changes to some extent. As for the Combine Assassin. It's a cut enemy from an earlier developmental period. I'm not sure how useful it is to use them for speculation. They do admittidly have a more feminine figure, but they are wearing much more form fitting garments than the other Combine Soldier. However, they actually don't really have prominent breasts though, nor are they actually wearing high heels. I think you might be thinking of the Half Life 2 Survivor model. The ones in the beta wear a rather bulky bullet proof vest, and the boots are flat, but they do have heel springs (like in Portal). In Half Life 2 Survivor, a Japanese arcade game based on Half Life 2, they have a modified version of the model that does emphasise her bust a little more and did give her actual high heels (Japanese people, lol). Lastly, an interesting thing to note... Raija actually has her own RU-vid account (called pusseytat), and has commented on RescoeZ's videos. And one of the comments I found was her correcting another commenter for calling the Ordinal a "guy". Seems that at the very least, she seems to think the Ordinals are female. Of course, she's just the actress, and not the character designer, but it's interesting none the less.

On your second point that's exactly like the HL2 soldiers using the OICW reload for the auto loading AR2

@@VGLounge Yep, and the MP7 uses the MP5K animations.

Timestamp?

@@why-themale0727:37

Not by the time of half life 2

Entropy Zero 2 might be what you’re looking for.

How exactly is this individual picking-off combine troops, though? Scavenged weapons? IED's? Rube Goldberg Devices?

@@scowler7200 By goofing off too hard

@@arathemacaw So all of the above?

​@@scowler7200 with guns probably. Maybe that too.

Imo that doesn't make a ton of sense to me when he still has to a be a CP officer and Overwatch would notice that probably Makes more sense if it's just somebody

They need better pay and hours

​@@SpiffoGaming and their eyeballs back

Universal union workers

Hostile is scrambled 😈

You’re welcome.

Well I try not to make assumptions but I do sometimes theorize about stuff, such as the Grunt's gas tank. One of the things I love about doing these vids is that if I'm wrong or if someone has a different take, it can be shared in the comments and create more discussion.

I think it’s because the prequel’s Combine didn’t catch up with the augmentation technology on humans yet. It’s messy and probably costly.

@@vasiliypupkin3239 Could also simply be different units for different tasks. The Overwatch soldiers you generally encounter in HL2 are the top of the line military forces sent to pacify rebel outposts and hunt Anticitizen One, whereas these guys are specifically for patrolling the QZ. Maybe Overwatch can even hotswap the augmentations and programming as necessary.

i think they just retconned the original combine because fully emotionless soldiers are lame

@@bluegum6438 I love this theory the most, I'll keep it in mind from now on. It genuinely seems like a good theory that's even a bit canonically supported seeing as the TA we see in HL:A look like they're almost specifically designed for the QZ. With logos, things they're wearing, etc.

I just had a quick look and there's several Grunts (masked) and a dead Zombine. However that said, the unmasked Ordinal does exist in the game files and looks just like the Grunt and Charger, but is never used ingame as far as I know. The Suppressor though... who knows what they look like underneath.

@@RescoeZ citicar-ahh skull shape

I feel like I've seen a different analysis like this one but now I can't find it. ... Perhaps the video I'm thinking of focused on HL2

Might have been mild spoilers inside I admit. It's always best be on the side of caution when it comes to spoilers!

@RescoeZ Absolutely! I hope one day I can afford a VR headset so I can stop avoiding spoilers lol Ty for the great info! The concept art having Vort hunters was a neat tidbit!

@@Srcsqwrn Have you yet?

@@kosstarYT Unfortunately no. VR headsets are pretty expensive

@@Srcsqwrn Aww... Don't worry, you will have one someday!

Thanks! Yeah I reckon most casual fans would probably think "Ok buddy too long to watch" but even if just a few watch it it's good enough for me.

> niech niche

It could also be something like a pressure plate in the glove. I notice it almost looks like it clenches their hand into a fist before the shield activates.