"7 Hours"- Odd looking Ant-Lion?

[Mediocrity]

(The title of this thread won't make much sense until you've read the opening post.)

A while back, I made a thread about a piece of concept art in the HL2.net media section, specifically this one. Looking at the image, it seems to show a pair of human soldiers and some oddly-shaped creature climbing up the wall nearby. Initially, I thought it was simply an Ant-Lion seen from an odd angle.

Looking at this image (a piece of HL2 concept art), you can see a similiar looking creature near the bottom, in front of what seems to be a

Spoiler

Crab Synth

.

Odd, no? I'd speculate the thing is (or was intended to be) a Combine 'foot-soldier', an infantry version of the larger Synths.

 

[NJspeed]

Just looks like some concept art of what we've actually seen in the game.. Nothing new there imo. Looks like two combine on top of a hill, with an antlion crawling up it.

 

[NJspeed]

Ok my bad I missed the second picture for a second. It says "Synths" on the drawing but it still looks like Antlions to me?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

If you buy Raising the Bar you'll see ant lions were adapted into many positions, flat, upright (mainly) then a mix with the flat front and raised abdomen. This concept just looks like the flat one. The other pictures i recognise from raising the bar, so expect a mod to 'snip snip' that link soon!

edit: i could also pick apart differences in the synth and the shadowed creature. e.g. the frontal legs/fangs are bent and the others are straight. The legs go over the back in an arc, the others are straight with a gap between the flat legs and the over hanging joint...things like that. Perhaps a different kind of synth? who knows.

 

[NimChimpsky]

Maybe this means that ant lions were originally intended to be biomechanical like the synths or that they are biomechanical.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Nah they are organic. I dont believe they were meant to be mechanical at all, as far as i know they were released onto earth as means of rounding people up into big cities so the combine could just take control of a city and have everyone in one place. Just as they used headcrab canisters to cleanse towns e.g. ravenholm which worked out pretty well!

 

[noQ]

hmm..speaking of which..is there a possiblity to spawn crab synths or synth mortars ? I would like to see how big the crab synth really is.
It would be golden to fight them in an official expansion.

 

[Asknoone]

The concept art shows a very early version of the antlion design, and it cant be two combien soldiers on top of the hill, because the soldiers werent around during the 7 hour war.

And i dont think it looks like crab synth, afterall, crabsynths are huge

 

[Scotsman]

I'm guessin things got changed, as this is concept art. Just look at the ol Star Wars concept art. Darth vader and the droids don't look quite the same.

 

[NimChimpsky]

hmm..speaking of which..is there a possiblity to spawn crab synths or synth mortars ? I would like to see how big the crab synth really is.
It would be golden to fight them in an official expansion.

use the model viewer to see how big they are, and I guessyou use the npc_create command to spawn one, but I don't know how.

 

[Is This Tea]

Does the gasmask on the figures in the first pic remind anybody else of the gasmasks from the early concept art of the propaganda posters on page 201 of Raising the Bar?

 

[Walter]

I think they'll put that ''kremator'' into hl3 ( and hydra too ) .

 

[Asknoone]

Does the gasmask on the figures in the first pic remind anybody else of the gasmasks from the early concept art of the propaganda posters on page 201 of Raising the Bar?

Yesh, yesh it does.

 

[Is This Tea]

Yesh, yesh it does.

I think that bolsters you’re position that we are looking at early concept art images of ant lions here.

 

[Sid Burn]

Maybe its an evolved new species of the mighty Antlions!!!

 

[jimmyjam]

that concept art is for a single player mod called 7 hours, about the 7 hour war
a hl2.net staffer is working on it

 

[hi_ted]

The first pic is not by a Valve staff member, it's concept art for "7 Hours"

The second pic IS by a Valve staff member, it looks like the one of the things you see in the Citadel. Keep in mind that concept art changes, sometimes dramatically.

 

[cky]

How did you find that? i Wouldn't have thought that an english guy would visit a danish site.

 

[EVIL]

1337 haxxor