Anyone know the reason?

[Combine Hybrid]

Why Valve chose to make City 17 based on Eastern Europe city?

 

[v1p3r]

Why not?

It has more interesting archetecture i guess, which show off the engine in a more varied way

 

[Pauly]

Probably because black mesa was nuked at the end of opposing force and the nuke may have killed a lot of people in the U.S. And the U.S. in arizona( i think) was the site of where the accident happened and where most of the aliens are portaled thru. So eventually people began moving together and it was safer in Europe.

 

[Mevoki]

I am hungry.

 

[kirovman]

Because their lead Artist or something was from Hungary and he showed them some architecture from his hometown. Everyone was impressed, and that's how they got the East Erurope theme.

 

[Ownzed]

It just fits HL2 very good.

 

[RaptornasB]

I think its because lots of easten european places are quite delapedated yet still look very interesting also it allows for more interesting maps I mean who would want a city based on the grid system that would be dull.

 

[Quek]

lol! i think city 17 is inspired by russia and poland in the cold war.

 

[JamesPicard_007]

Because Europe was the key element in Gabe winning the annual game of Risk.

 

[rocket_Magnet]

eastern euorpe has a much better sense of old and new architecture than anywhere in the us, the conceptual artisits went to do research in russia, bulgaria, romania, and prague they wanted to make city 17 interesting, to show the fall of communisim and a mix of 1920s 30s and 70s architecture (from raising the bar, the art book)

 

[Bobcat]

People are tired of seeing America blown to smithereens, time for a change.

 

[diluted]

Maybe there just isn't a lot left on the north american continent, i'd imagine the combine probably hit the USA pretty hard during the '7 hour war' as america has/had the world's strongest/largest military, so they probably completely destroyed much of their major cities and military installations... just a thought.

 

[kirovman]

City 17 is the centre of the administration for Earth. Maybe it suited the combine/Dr Breen better than a US city to have their base here.

Dr Breen mentions he was so impressed by city 17 that he 'elected' to establish his administration there.

But the real reason is one of the people from Valve, Viktor Antonov suggested it and they chose it from here.

prague they wanted to make city 17 interesting, to show the fall of communisim and a mix of 1920s 30s and 70s architecture (from raising the bar, the art book)

Yes I read that in the book. The art work is really good I think. They also said as a rule they never designed something without researching it first.

 

[TomV]

Don't you think City 17 looks great? The landscape is very varied, but the city lags a little on my Pentium 4 1.8 GHz, 512 Ram, gForce Ti 4800 128 VRAM and Sound Blaster Live! :'( Think of how dull the game would have been in the midddle of New York. It's so "flat" there... but City 17 look's great, end of story =D

 

[PvtRyan]

Because, like said above, Viktor Antonov suggested it. But another reason is that Eastern Europe provides the perfect contrast between old (old architecture) and new (combine tech) the past and the future.