City Voice Announcement

[Lawnmower233]

While I was playing Half life 2 Single Player last night for the 4th time I reached the part in Nova Prospekt where you are greated by an Antlion Guard in some sort of sanitation/lavatory facility (ie. It was a big shower block with sinks and urinals and such).

At this point I usually sprint to the exit and unblock it with the gravity gun by smashing all the wooden laundry baskets and benches used as a blockade. I then usually proceed on to the next area. But since this was my second time playing it on Hard I decided to kill the Antlion Guard and then proceed. Once I had killed it I noticed a Computer Announcement (Overwatch woman). What she said was muffled by the ambient noises. So I saved the game and exited.

In GCFScape in Source sounds/Hl2/sound/npc/overwatch/cityvoice I found the announcement and it was far clearer.
The file name was fprison_deservicepoliticalconscripts.wav

Anyways to finally get to the point it said roughly:

"ATTENTION NOVA PROSPEKT INTERNAL CONTAINMENT TEAM, DESERVICE ALL POLITICAL CONSCRIPTS IN BLOCK A7. PROHIBIT EXTERNAL CONTACT."

So I resumed the game entered the next area which i assume was block A-7. I took down all the overwatch and in a force shielded room I saw a collared vortigaunt after being killed, sitting in a chair. It appeared he had been tortured. So not to labour my point, I think the city_voice woman announcer was suggesting "political conscript" is synonymous with vortigaunts and the overwatch were given orders by her to terminate him so as to not allow him to talk or have any contact whatsoever with Gordon Freeman.

I just found this announcement interesting as it was different to all the other overwatch announcements dealing with "exogen incursion" and so on. I also thought maybe no-one else had noticed this and it also may create more questions as to the vortigaunts relationship with Overwatch and thereby the Combine.
Such as why does she address their type as political conscripts. Conscripts meaning they were drafted after the 7 hours war/ portal storms into the overwatch ranks. And political meaning god knows what.

I was hoping the fine members of this forum could come up with theories as to why she says political. I myself think it hints at the fact that their IS a connection between Xen and the Combine Universal Union after all, due to the fact that political might suggest the Vortigaunts, in the combines eyes, are political asylum seekers that fled from Xen to Earth.

 

[capteeni]

While I was playing Half life 2 Single Player last night for the 4th time I reached the part in Nova Prospekt where you are greated by an Antlion Guard in some sort of sanitation/lavatory facility (ie. It was a big shower block with sinks and urinals and such).

At this point I usually sprint to the exit and unblock it with the gravity gun by smashing all the wooden laundry baskets and benches used as a blockade. I then usually proceed on to the next area. But since this was my second time playing it on Hard I decided to kill the Antlion Guard and then proceed. Once I had killed it I noticed a Computer Announcement (Overwatch woman). What she said was muffled by the ambient noises. So I saved the game and exited.

In GCFScape in Source sounds/Hl2/sound/npc/overwatch/cityvoice I found the announcement and it was far clearer.
The file name was fprison_deservicepoliticalconscripts.wav

Anyways to finally get to the point it said roughly:

"ATTENTION NOVA PROSPEKT INTERNAL CONTAINMENT TEAM, DESERVICE ALL POLITICAL CONSCRIPTS IN BLOCK A7. PROHIBIT EXTERNAL CONTACT."

So I resumed the game entered the next area which i assume was block A-7. I took down all the overwatch and in a force shielded room I saw a collared vortigaunt after being killed, sitting in a chair. It appeared he had been tortured. So not to labour my point, I think the city_voice woman announcer was suggesting "political conscript" is synonymous with vortigaunts and the overwatch were given orders by her to terminate him so as to not allow him to talk or have any contact whatsoever with Gordon Freeman.

I just found this announcement interesting as it was different to all the other overwatch announcements dealing with "exogen incursion" and so on. I also thought maybe no-one else had noticed this and it also may create more questions as to the vortigaunts relationship with Overwatch and thereby the Combine.
Such as why does she address their type as political conscripts. Conscripts meaning they were drafted after the 7 hours war/ portal storms into the overwatch ranks. And political meaning god knows what.

I was hoping the fine members of this forum could come up with theories as to why she says political. I myself think it hints at the fact that their IS a connection between Xen and the Combine Universal Union after all, due to the fact that political might suggest the Vortigaunts, in the combines eyes, are political asylum seekers that fled from Xen to Earth.

nice stuff!

i thing there combine just wanted to ask vortigaunts information about resistance politically and interrogate was leaded by someone we know or just something, because vortigaunt is dead or combine tortured poor vortigaunt to death or they killed it because vortigaunt resisted them...i dont know there is a thousands of things of it. keep it up!

 

[Solver]

Vortigaunts are 'political'. In Soviet times, everyone who opposed the regime was a 'political enemy', a 'political criminal' or something else 'political'. Likewise, Vortigaunts are called political conscripts. Why conscripts? Because the Combine make it sound like the resistance have bribed them or something. They don't want to make it seem that Vorts fight for what they believe is right, as that would undermine the Combine position. Showing them as greedy aliens who serve the resistance because they were 'conscripted' is in line with the Combine propaganda.

 

[Cons Himself]

or perhaps once captured by the combine they are called political conscripts?

 

[Solver]

Probably not, doesn't make that much sense, and everything Overwatch says is in line with propaganda, like calling you an anticitizen, etc. They don't refer to anything by real names, they call resistance members anticitizens, Gordon anticitizen one, Vorts political conscripts, etc.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Probably not, doesn't make that much sense, and everything Overwatch says is in line with propaganda, like calling you an anticitizen, etc. They don't refer to anything by real names, they call resistance members anticitizens, Gordon anticitizen one, Vorts political conscripts, etc.

Althought sometimes you're called Anticitizen One and sometimes Anticitizen Freeman. Wonder why...

 

[Lawnmower233]

Yeah in one of the sound files your called Anticitzen Freeman, other times your called Anticitzen one. Some of those sound files are real interesting like stuff to do with citizens. THere is this one that says something allong the lines of:
"Citizen Notice: failure to cooperate will result in permenant off world relocation."

Thats strange I thought they only reassigned Trans-humans offworld. Now they're relocating CIVILIANS offworld. Must be a death sentence.

 

[Unfocused]

I didn't know you could proceed without killing the Antlion Guard.

 

[Cons Himself]

lawnmower - prob turn civvies into stalkers/troopers and then send them off world...

 

[Laivasse]

I had heard that soundfile in-game and wondered what it meant. I'm still not sure that she would be referring specifically to vortigaunts, but if not I can't really offer an explanation.

I disagree with this:

Vortigaunts are 'political'. In Soviet times, everyone who opposed the regime was a 'political enemy', a 'political criminal' or something else 'political'. Likewise, Vortigaunts are called political conscripts. Why conscripts? Because the Combine make it sound like the resistance have bribed them or something. They don't want to make it seem that Vorts fight for what they believe is right, as that would undermine the Combine position. Showing them as greedy aliens who serve the resistance because they were 'conscripted' is in line with the Combine propaganda.

...and agree with this:

or perhaps once captured by the combine they are called political conscripts

One possibility is that the Combine seem to coerce the vortigaunts into working for them (vort at station), rather than mod their bodies and make them into Overwatch. This is easily explained by the fact that there aren't enough vorts on Earth to warrant their being made into a branch of the Combine military. This coersion could be what makes the vorts "political" - you couldn't possibly call Overwatch political conscripts because they have no free will, no relation to politicking. Perhaps these vorts have sold out the resistance somehow, and have been convinced to labour under the Combine as some sort of deal. After all, the resistance-sided vorts speak about a choice between triumph or extinction, and they have a collective consciousness, so why do some vorts succumb to slavery?

These are all very very shakey explanations, but the whole thing is kind of puzzling. Could be that that quote was not meant to refer to anything significant. Maybe you don't actually go to block A-7, and the Guards there were being told to just execute whatever resistance prisoners they had.

 

[Lawnmower233]

I disagree with you saying it wasn't significant. i have looked through a few sound folders and the overwatch announcer is saying stuff that has meaning. Although the language is non-evocative it contains subtle hints to what the hell she is really ordering the trans-humans to do: like the message saying something about non-mechanical sexual simulation for credits (ie. you get to get a shag, for those Metrocops who still have genitals, if you kill citizens that are 'non-complient') These little easter eggs really make the game seem more interesting.

As for it not being block A-7... i'm going to skip maps till i get to that one and check the designations of the block with the vortigaunt. I remember I was in block D8 or D7 at the end of Entanglement chapter. Maybe the first block with the vortigaunt will prove to be block A7.

EDIT: Yes it is block A-7. I nocliped past all the guards and found they were torturing the vortigaunt with some sort of dual beam whos intensity was growing with every passing second. Maybe they were preforming a routine operaton on the slave (something to do with it's collar) and decided to kill it when Freeman got too close.

 

[Marx! II]

I've rarely ever been able to hear her, something in Nova about "Sacrifice, Coagulate, Contain" and so forth, and the jabber about remaining units after you take a metrocop.

 

[Solver]

One possibility is that the Combine seem to coerce the vortigaunts into working for them (vort at station), rather than mod their bodies and make them into Overwatch. This is easily explained by the fact that there aren't enough vorts on Earth to warrant their being made into a branch of the Combine military. This coersion could be what makes the vorts "political" - you couldn't possibly call Overwatch political conscripts because they have no free will, no relation to politicking. Perhaps these vorts have sold out the resistance somehow, and have been convinced to labour under the Combine as some sort of deal. After all, the resistance-sided vorts speak about a choice between triumph or extinction, and they have a collective consciousness, so why do some vorts succumb to slavery?

Vortigaunts are a hive consciousness, and you'll notice that the Vort at the station has shackles. Those shackles are used to supress their communication with other Vorts, and essentially leaving them with no free will (just like they had no free will in Black Mesa). So slave Vorts are just like Combine soldiers - no free will.

 

[Cons Himself]

what? non mechanical sex? link to sound file in file structure pls!

 

[NÜk]

source sounds.gcf > root > hl2 > sound > npc > overwatch > radiovoice > reminder100credits.wav

"Rank leaders; Reminder; 100 sterilised credits qualifies non-mechanical reproduction simulation"

 

[Mechagodzilla]

The vortigaunts are called political conscripts instead of political prisoners because instead of being caged, they are shackled and forced to work as janitors and whatnot.
So they're technically conscripted into the combine workforce. Pretty much a fancy term for slave, really.