Concept art from Valve's unpublished space marine game

[Barnz]

We recently discovered concept art from a space marine-themed Valve game that did not ship. These images were created by Harry Teasley who worked at Valve as an artist and designer until his departure in June of 2002.

The images show the character designs for an alien assassin, a marine with a powered exoskeleton, and other generic human and alien soldiers. One of the images mentions a campaign mode, so it is possible that the game was to feature a single-player mode. The appearance of the characters was to change throughout the campaign based on the player's direction as they gained more experience.

The character designs slightly resemble the space-themed iteration of Team Fortress 2 that was in development around the same time. Harry mentions that he did concept drawing, character design, and texture work for the early versions of Team Fortress 2 on his resume. It should be noted that the alien creatures are wearing what resembles human military gear, something that can also be also seen in Chuck Jones's early Team Fortress 2 concept art.

space_assassin1.jpg

space_marine1.jpg

space_marine2.jpg

space_marine3.jpg

space_marine4.jpg​

Credits

Barney and Marphy Black

Special Thanks

Harry Teasley for the images

 

[Otto-Grainer]

Amazing, amazing, thanks so much for the release. Keep up the great work, Barnz and Rikki. If anything, this looks more in line with that SOB space project they were working on more recently.

 

[Clan Wolf 2]

so this is not stars of blood? i think that was later, but i could be wrong. Also really cool and thanks for sharing.

 

[Tudashui]

Is there any more?

 

[Barnz]

so this is not stars of blood? i think that was later, but i could be wrong. Also really cool and thanks for sharing.

Stars of Blood was a space pirate game.

Is there any more?

Nope.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

That alien assassin looks like it was adapted into the cut, humanoid enemy of the same name in Half-Life 2's production.

 

[Otto-Grainer]

My God, you're right, Tollbooth. But then even some of the TF2 characters had some similarities to their Combine Soldier designs. Perhaps they were passing styles and silhouettes back and forth early in development until they settled on something they liked. The eventual Combine synth designs they finalized have little in common with some of their Beta directions that focused on more organic, cybernetic, punk, stalker-type deformities.