Factions, organisations and loners

DEATH eVADER

DEATH eVADER

Space Core
Joined
Nov 10, 2003
Messages
8,142
Reaction score
19
Going back to HalfLife, I noticed that the battles were not three-way (lab personal/marines/aliens), but was in fact much more complex (The aliens such as the bullsquid were killing the headcrabs, and the other day a shock trooper from op4 was shooting the garg at the dam). The battles and the factions in the battles are getting increasingly complicated.

Now with the emerging fact that there will be around 50 enemies in HalfLife2, what do you think will be the factions relation,(vortigaunts are on your side, and the antlions attack anybody with strange odours) one idea is that some combine soldiers defect to your cause for reasons unknown. what do you think the structure will be like
 
It's kind of hard to say, seeing as how we only know of about ten or so enemies out of the fifty. I don't think that the Combine will defect, but I have a feeling you might be fighting alongside them at one point, maybe to repel a greater threat.

It could work the other way too; the vortigaunts are on your side now so maybe more Xen aliens (grunts, controllers) will join your side to fight the Combine. Although, I think that the controllers and grunts might still be against you, and the controllers are probably exceedingly pissed at the slaves for "defecting." The grunts are mindless, so they just follow what the controllers tell them to do.

As for bullsquids attacking headcrabs, actually, they attack ANYTHING that gets near their area. They're extremely territorial animals; in fact, I once saw a bullsquid tail-whip another bullsquid into gibs.

Also, I wonder how the rebels will take to the vortigaunts. You fight alongside the rebels, so you're their ally...and the vortigaunts join your side (which is probably due to your unintentional freeing them, after destroying Nihilanth), so they're your allies as well. But how will the rebels react to the alien slaves? Will they accept them as friends, or will they view them with skepticism (maybe even hostility) because they're aliens?
 
I like the idea of a truce. Ha, for some strange reason it reminds me of that soccer game that was played at christmas during WW1.

There are these things called the prowlers I think. From the concept art provided, I guess they're combine, but who knows. They might be an experiment that wen't wrong and you and the combine have to fend them off.
 
Darkside55 said:
but I have a feeling you might be fighting alongside them {combine} at one point, maybe to repel a greater threat.
Click to expand...

I have the feeling that the combine are the greater threat in this game.

But then again......who knows right now.....
 
Yeah, in the original games there were the Marines, the Black Mesa Staff, the sapient Xen, Race-X and the Black Ops... And then there was the Xenian wildlife, which seemed to disagree with everything...

My guess is that we'll see quite a few factions this time round. The Antlions strike me as being more Xenian wildlife, still with the tendency to attack everything...

And there's an interesting point... if the Vortigaunts are now on your side, where does that leave the Controllers/Xen Masters and the Grunts?
 
I think the prowler will be like a ninja
cuz look like a strange ninja
or something like that
 
<RJMC> said:
I think the prowler will be like a ninja
cuz look like a strange ninja
or something like that
Click to expand...

A ninja that has gotten out of control
 
An out-of-control ninja with clawed hands and a weird gas mask that sticks into its eyes.
 
Darkside55 said:
An out-of-control ninja with clawed hands and a weird gas mask that sticks into its eyes.
Click to expand...

didn't the prowler look like it was wearing stockings as well in the concept
 
DEATH eVADER said:
didn't the prowler look like it was wearing stockings as well in the concept
Click to expand...

*Me checks his supplemental "Making of HL2" booklet from PC Gamer*

Yeah, it does, actually, hehe. And it doesn't seem as if its legs end in feet either...they're just kinda stumpy-looking, and there's a sketch line that looks like a claw coming out of the foot there...weird-looking guy. The shape of its head doesn't even look human, the more I look at it. More elongated.
 
Brian Damage said:
And there's an interesting point... if the Vortigaunts are now on your side, where does that leave the Controllers/Xen Masters and the Grunts?
Click to expand...

It's a toss-up, really. They were Nihilly's pals, but they were also much smarter than the slaves.
I'm guessing that the slaves have been re-ensaved by the G-man.
So, it depends (to me) on wether or not the other guys were slaves too.

One thing I've been wondering:

Is Garg one of Nihilanth's cronies? Or is he just fauna?

If it's the former, he might end up on your team. :)
 
Seems just like fauna to me. A big-ass beast like that can't possibly be tamed or controlled effectively. Otherwise, they (the aliens) would have most DEFINATELY used him in concert with other forces. They would've used him like a tank to clear out human forces, and put him as the front-line assault machine in front of the grunts and slaves.

The grunts are mindless; I'm sure of it. I happen to think that they're clones, things that've been genetically engineered to be warriors and that's it. They don't even have the good sense to employ real tactics like human marines do; they just smash through obstacles, stand around, and fire their hornet guns. So, of course, the grunts are blindly loyal to Nihilanth and the controllers.

The controllers are the brains of the Xen forces. They're likely the ones who created the grunts, and enslaved the vortigaunts. I think the vortigaunts are probably pretty smart though...they were used as labor for operating the Xenian factories, so they must be smart enough to understand and operate machines. Plus, they learned English really fast ("Die!"). :p
 
That makes loads of sense. The Nihilanth and the controllers are probably part of one race and they have enslaved the Vortigaunts, who are the indigenous "Alpha Race" of Xen. The grunts are genetically engineered, as they were the product of the factory on Xen. The Vortigaunts are probably about as intelligent as humans, as they seem to employ the same fighting tactics as the human grunts. I think Garg is a robot, or maybe a combat suit, probably created by the controllers/Nihilanth- the controllers shoot stuff out of their hands similarly to the Garg, so maybe the gargantua is just an encounter suit that controllers wear. The only time we see the controllers in their natural form on Earth is in the teleportation labs right before Xen.
 
I think they may all be related (the slaves and the slavers). They all have the characteristic "small arm in the middle of the chest", and the "multiple red eyes, with one in the centre of the face"

The reason why I thought garg might be one of them was that he has the one-eye thing too. He doesn't have the middle arm though.

The controllers also pop up on earth in Decay. Both times tough, they are centered around very powerful teleport energies, so they may need that to get through.
 
They probably all share similar traits because they all evolved from a common ancestor. If you think about our evolutions, we share similar physical characteristics with primates. We all have five fingers and toes, for instance. The more intelligent forms of life on Xen all possess three arms.

Most mammals evolved to have forward-facing eyes to have high visual acuity; the Xenians eyes seem to be designed to be able to capture all the details going on around them (the slave has six eyes, for instance). The grunt has three eyes, with a similar "main eye" centered on its head, like the slave. This makes sense since the grunt's forward eye, and two sideways-facing eyes, can capture images on all sides of himself during combat. He can't be flanked (although they've got a real blindspot when you come up behind them).
Controllers, on the other hand, have a "visor" for an eye. Gargantuas also have this "visor." These creatures both probably have a "widescreen" perspective of view, which maybe deforms their vision to look kind of like a bubble. I once put a friend's glasses on, and his perscription was so strong that everything in front of me was brought RIGHT INTO MY FACE, with crystal clarity, but it made it look like I was looking through a bubble. :LOL: I imagine that's what they see.
Also, most Xen creatures' eyes are red, so they're probably seeing in a much different spectrum than ours. You notice how the sky was always dark, with those bright illuminated nebula bursts in the sky? Their vision probably compensates for that.

I like Gergor's idea that gargs are suits for controllers. Reminds me of the movie Independance Day. It'd be cool if that were the case, but unfortunately, I don't think it is. Actually, I kind of have a theory that gargantuas, the biggest (aside from the tentacle, who is really probably a sentient plant rather than an animal) Xenian creature, probably evolves from Xen's tiniest creature, the snark.

Snarks, as a weapon, have probably been genetically engineered by the controllers. That's why they live such short lifespans, before they go "pop." But an unaltered snark probably goes into a metamorphosis and becomes a garg or a baby garg (like the ones in Sven Coop). Snarks and gargs share very similar traits. Namely, they both have the one eye thing (although the snark's eye is round, and not a visor), but they've got the same hard, layered shell on their backs like the gargs do, that make them sort of look like a rolly-polly bug (pillbugs). Also, while the snark initially has six legs, and the garg has two bipedal legs and flame-spewing arms, it also has two diminuitive arms that do absolutely nothing. They look exactly like a snark's legs, too; probably a leftover after the transformation.
Finally, the original design of a gargantua was that of a four-legged beast, who could stand on two legs if it wanted, with telescoping jaws. When Gordon sticks his finger out towards the snark, what does it do? It extends its mouth and attempts to bite his finger.
 
Very true. I was going to post the garg-snark similarity before, but forgot.

One thing that sort of goes against that, however, is that the Garg is one of the few Xen aliens that Snarks will try to kill.

It's very amusing to toss fifteen snarks at a Garg. :)

Also, I'm pretty sure that Snarks only have four feet. I might be wrong though.
All in all, the Garg and the Snarks just seem too different to be related.
The only major similarity that I can see is their domed carapaces.

Garg, on the other hand, has limbs similar to a Grunt, and the face of a controller.
Plus, In the Xen level where you encounter him, I think he won't attack the slaves or the grunts that you find there. Grunts are also the only other guys with that sort of metal plating. I'd say garg has more in common with them.
 
Yeah I noticed that, about the snarks attacking gargs. Funny stuff...I can imagine the garg thinking, "Hey, cut it out! That tickles, you annoying little insects!" :LOL:

But I think snarks don't attack slaves or grunts because they've been engineered not to. I dunno about the garg not attacking grunts or slaves...I usually dispatch all of them before I go to meet the garg over in that area. You're talking about near the tentacles, right? Where the grunts and slaves are monitoring those...I dunno, they look like drills to me, pistoning into the surface of Xen. I usually kill all those guys waaaaay beforehand.
Which brings up another thing about the garg/snarks...in that area, when you lure the garg out of his cave area, and hide in that tiny crack in the wall, I think you find snark packs. So what would snark eggs be doing in the gargantua's lair?

Maybe they're just a very similar creature, but not really related. *Shrug*
 
Snark nests just seem to grow in stuffy places. Vents and crevaces.
It's like how a Headcrab's natural habitat is the vent-like tunnel systems in Xen.

Also, I would not like to know how the garg would fit into that little hole in the first place. :p

The snarks not being engineered to attack Nihilanth's team makes some sense, especially if you remember those Xen-style tripmines that let out a barrage of snarks when set off. Snarks and Nihilanth appear to be friends.

Or, since they explode when annoyed, the snarks simply decided to leave the Xen guys alonein exchange for not dying a gooey death. :)
 
Sounds like a good tradeoff to me. Also, argh, I hated those Xenian tripmines! I remember once I set two satchels under it just to make sure the snarks wouldn't live long enough to come after me.

And a friend and I in IRC were just discussing how snark eggs can get into the tiniest little places. Aside from my suggestion that the "legs" on the snark packs can walk, hehe, I figure maybe the easiest way to explain how snark packs get where they are is that they're teleported there, randomly. They just happened to 'port into a vent.

And the garg probably pushed the eggs into that little hole. :p

There's another similarity: the gargs, when you encounter them, always opt to be in cave-like places. Before on-a-rail, the first time you meet a gargantua is in the train station, where the architecture--with its archways and high ceiling--is cave-like. The second time you meet him is in the parking garage, a dark, enclosed space. Finally, the third time is in Xen, where the garg resides in an area of Xen that's pretty cave-like...it's not enclosed, but it has some arches going over the top of it, if I'm not mistaken. Note that I'm not including the fourth time you MAY meet the garg, when Nihilanth sends you through a portal. Although...that place is kinda cavelike too. It's dark and underground, anyway.

And snarks like to be in enclosed, tiny spaces. Vents, crevices, etc. They have a similar like of atmosphere. So even if they're not the same creature, they sure are very similar.
 
I have composed a list! I think you may be right btw.

- Gargantua: I have a feeling htese are used as walkign tanks by the Xen armies, only they often go out of control like that one in Xen. Since it's obvious that the Xenians use indeginous creatures as well as they're actual armies, this could be intentional. Although a lot of indeginous life got teleported through before the Xen armies came through on purpose, I think they might use headcrabs etc to their advantage.

Houndeyes - attack/guard dogs. You find them both running wild and guarding Xen facilities so they are the equivalent of german shepherds. Natrual habitat, as far as I can tell from Blue Shift (where the entire Xen section is like a big nature reserve) is upland rocky areas and scrub.

Bullsquids - indeginous life. Will attempt to eat anything it can't mate with and vice versa. Just attacks anything and everything (I have tested this on the level editor - put it in a room with any creature except the G-man and it will atempt to attack it). Also seems to spit headcrabs, thought maybe it just chucks them about. It's just that I have often faced a Bullsquid to see a headcrab flying through the air (much faster and longer than it's normal jump) at me. Natural habitats? Lakes and river. In HL you always seem to find them in water or in toxic waste. I'm guessing these things hunt animals that come to drinkat water holes or rivers.

Slaves - what the name says. Native to Xen but enslaved by the controllers by way of endless breeding out of rebellious spirit, shock-collars and psychic stress. I can say nothign that hasn't been said and is very likely about these guys.

Grunts - ditto.

Do Gargs have sex? No, I mean, do they have sexes? Maybe the BIG Gargs are females. Or maybe all Xen aliens are hermaphrodites. Or maybe they have somethign COMPLETELY different since they're aliens. They certainly are very weird, I can imagine their bone and tissue structure being very different from ours.

How do Barnacles, which I stonrgly suspect are wildlife, get on ceilings? Maybe they start as floating spores which anchor themselves on ceilings. Or maybe they're like bactaria to start with, if they're on a ceiling they start to join together to form a being.

As for Half-Life 2 we can only speculate. Prowlers, in the vein of Far Cry, will probably be experiments gone wrong that then escape en masse. Combine hate everything that ain't their's. Racism disapears among the rebels due to predominance of speciesism (thought I can see some rebels being friends with some slaves if indeed they are ever together), bullsquids are the same old crazy lone wolves, headcrabs still infest everywhere and aren't allied with nobody.
 
I still don't think the controllers actually use the gargs as attackers, although they probably see their usefulness. I imagine the thinking of a controller to be something like:

"If a gargantua just happens to teleport to earth..." So they aren't using them as part of the army, but if they teleport one over, or a random rift opens and teleports a garg, I'm sure they're very, very happy. The gargs don't care...they're a big, hulking, presumably carnivorous animal. They're just out to make some barbeque.

Houndeyes - I was going to say that they're probably the same principle as the gargs, but the more I think about it, you might be right about them being attack/guard dogs. They're probably like wild pack dogs, or wolves. They exhibit a certain behavior when they're, "in the wild," but they can also be domesticated and used as a Xenian's best friend. :p

Bullsquids - I dunno about the headcrab launching. I've personally never seen such a thing. Near as I can tell, they hate the headcrabs with a passion because headcrabs get in their territory (and they're too small to mate with and probably unpleasant to eat). An interesting thing I noticed about bullsquids; as I said in an earlier post, I saw a bullsquid kill another bullsquid that was too close to its territory. However, when you first blackout and teleport to Xen, there are a few bullsquids drinking in a pond peacefully. Heh, was just thinking, maybe it's not so much a territory thing, but what I saw probably was another bullsquid getting mad that the other one wouldn't mate with it. :LOL:

Slaves, in addition to what you said about breeding away their rebellious spirit, I think the controllers might've engineered slaves so that they can't breed. The ones that aren't running free in Xen (and there are probably very little of those...but the Vortigaunts probably live in tight, protected communities) probably are all clones. All the slaves we see, likely to be clones.

Grunts, hard to tell if they're just a genetic creation of the controllers, or if they were an actual species at one time. They aren't anymore, that's for sure.

Interesting question about the gargs, and about all the aliens, in fact. Wouldn't make sense for the vortigaunts to be hermaphrodites or asexual (there are so many of them, and as I said before, they're likely to live in communities), so they probably have some form of sexes. Grunts, no. Controllers...probably not. They probably decided they ought to just clone themselves.
Actually, about that, I think they're probably a very egotistical race, and would choose to clone themselves only when they absolutely NEEDED another controller. They're likely to be elitest, not wanting so many of themselves running around, spoiling their own rarity.

Gargs...hrm. Gargs would make sense to be asexual, seeing as how we've never seen more than one at any given time, and the times we see them are so spaced apart that it implies there aren't many of them. Then again, maybe they get together at a certain time...migrate to some place on Xen for a period, then go lay eggs (I still say they're snarks :p ), and live their solitary lives.

I love your barnacle idea, BTW. The thought that they're spores, or that they start as bacteria sounds like the best idea I've ever heard. I'm trying hard to think of this animal we have on earth that's like a living coral reef...saw it on the Discovery channel once. Basically they're underwater creatures who float around until they reach a colony of themselves, and they latch on. Then they create connections with each other, essentially becoming one big living reef. They even eat similarly to how barnacles eat! They wait until something brushes against their feelers...then SNAP! Their mouths extend and they grab their food. I think they eat plankton or something.

As for HL2 aliens...I'm going to start thinking up some speculations for antlions. How can they burrow so deep into Xen (like they do on earth), when Xen is mostly a mass of floating rocks? Do antlions have a queen? What's their relation to the other indigenous life?
 
Darkside55 said:
I love your barnacle idea, BTW. The thought that they're spores, or that they start as bacteria sounds like the best idea I've ever heard. I'm trying hard to think of this animal we have on earth that's like a living coral reef...saw it on the Discovery channel once. Basically they're underwater creatures who float around until they reach a colony of themselves, and they latch on. Then they create connections with each other, essentially becoming one big living reef. They even eat similarly to how barnacles eat! They wait until something brushes against their feelers...then SNAP! Their mouths extend and they grab their food. I think they eat plankton or something.
Click to expand...

A living coral reef... coral is alive. Would the little creatures you're thinking of be coral polyps, the little things that swim around for a bit as larvae, then settle on a reef and build themselves a limey shell? Or are you talking about siphonophores, the things that are similar, but join up to form things like the portugese man o' war?

Anyway... I reckon the barnacles start as little mobile blobby larvae, and basically squiggle their way around until they slime their way up a wall and stick themselves to a ceiling... ick...

And what about those "Blade Trees" on Xen, eh? Those things were cool...
 
They're what?

I'm pretty sure HL's barnacles resemble Earth's acorn barnacles, or something like that...

On another note, does anyone know why the piece of HL concept art for the barnacle in my book here, "Game Design: Secrets of the Sages", calls the barnacle a "Steroid Barnicle (sic) on crack"?
 
It might be polyps...not sure. I just looked for some pictures of them and those don't look very similar. And thanks, I didn't know all coral reefs were alive. Interesting to know...

And the Xen barnacle does look very similar to the acorn barnacle. I think what your book might've meant is that it's a barnacle on steroids, plus crack. I can't find anything about an actual creature called a, "Steroid Barnacle."

You know, the blobby larvae thing sounds plausible, although I think there might be another way to it. I was thinking about how on the cover art of this new magazine (again, too lazy to dig something up; it's in another thread), the barnacle is lashing its tongue out and grabbing Gordon from far away. Maybe it used its tongue to stick to the wall, and climb up it?

I was also thinking that once a barnacle finds a nice spot to live, they might reproduce asexually, and sort of loll one of those blobs out on their tongue, then slap it to the ceiling next to them. The little blob would then grow into a barnacle. That's probably how they make a group of themselves.
 
Not all coral reefs are alive, but they do grow. Dead coral never really decays, so as the coral grows and dies, the structures keep getting bigger and bigger.
 
Any coral reef that is growing, is alive, dudes... otherwise it's not a reef, it's an underwater lime deposit...

I like the tongue ideas, though...
 
Ooooh... some stuff I just spotted in OP4...

1. At the point where you take a tram ride ("We're Pulling Out!", I think), you see a Vortigaunt running along the bottom of the track tunnel. After a second or so, it starts to grab its head, as if in agony... then it falls to all fours (All fives?) and teleports out... What's up here?

2. When you first see a Race-X shocktrooper, it's teleported into a room with a Scientist and a Barney... the Barney asks "What's that thing?", and the Scientist replies "I don't know. I've never seen that species before!". Is this just a general "That's a monster!" statement, or does it mean "I've never seen that particular species of alien before."...?
 
About the Barnacles...I was thinking of those huge cell blobs you get in caves in America - super organisms that have formed from millions of Amoeba binding together. I still think Barnacles have more in common with plants or bacteria than any other kind of animal.

1. I remember that. It may be a rogue slave who is suddenly and violently brought back to Xen, or just the flux from the teleport messing with it's head.

2. It's just to indicate that it's not a normal Xenian I suppose.

Bullsquids: Well I wasn't sure either. It could be that they whack headcrabs which then go flying. Yes, that's probably it on reflection. As for groups, maybe only the males fight with eachother, wheras groups of females with one male are peaceful amongst eachother.
 
Oh yes, Ant Lions. Do they form huge and complex burrowing communities? Well, I believe they have quite a few 'Queens': Ant Lion Guardians. Thign is, Xen is also a bunch of very large floating rocks. I would not find it implausable that some of the floating rocks are extremely large, maybe as big as this country (that's the Uk btw) or bigger.

Was it just me or did I hear yous ay you wer going to make a website encyclopedia of Xen flora and fauna. If so, can I help? Please? Pretty please?
 
It could be that antlion are species-X that DONT live on (in) Xen. They maybe come from an unknown planet called Xan or something :). They maybe have queens, the name Ant-Lion, Ant, u know a little annoying bug that lives together with millions of other ants with a queen and guards and stuff......Maybe when u have alien proshfhsf whatever they are called, then they think ur their queen, the alien proshfhsf are maybe the queens eggs!!! just quessing...... :p
 
That has been bothering me...most of the combine aliens we've seen don't look Xen like, or adapted to it. They seem like they come from somewhere more similar to earth. Of course they also seem to be biomechanical in nature, so who knows.
 
Actually the controller does have multiple eyes. 3 to be exact. Theyre just small and close together so it seems like its one eye. I don't think that the grunts were just genetically engineered creatures, but I do believe they are enhanced somehow (built-in armor) for combat, and suspended somehow in those factories until needed for battle.
 
giller_ste said:
OMG look at the link in his sig! Theres children about for Christ's sake!
Click to expand...

Well, well, well, thats rather...odd. that was the first to contain an...odd link. That sig has caused me to.....J-J-J-Jitter like the Gman
 
DEATH eVADER said:
That sig has caused me to.....J-J-J-Jitter like the Gman
Click to expand...

Hahaha, sounds like a catchphrase. "Jittering G-Men!"

Sulkdodds, you can help if you like. :) I'm going to be writing it as if I were a biologist who was employed at BMRF, but escaped before the place went kaboom at the end of Opposing Force. I could write you in as my colleague or some such. Matter of fact if anyone else wants to get in on it, that would be good too. Maybe we could have a "BMRF Biology Team."
First thing's first, though; I need to get webspace and a webdesigner for it, hehe. I know of a person, but I'll probably need to bug him about it. So when that happens, I'll let everyone know...I'll post a thread about it. I don't suspect it'll happen for at least a month, though.

I think antlions are from Xen. They have Xenian markings (very similar to bullsquids), and Race-X creatures lack that. They don't look like Race-X creatures, either. Shock Troopers and pit drones, for instance, seem vastly different than Xen lifeforms. Voltigores, on the other hand, seem like they could be from Xen. That's not to say that Race-X creatures couldn't have been from some very remote part of Xen that Freeman didn't see, however. (Though, that is doubtful. I will say though that it's very suspect that shock troopers and Xenian grunts have similar weaponry: organic, symbiote insect weapons grafted to their arms.)

Back to antlions, they've got to have an ant-like structure, with normal antlions acting like workers (hunters), antlion guards bossing those little ones around, coordinating them with pheromones, and then one or more queens. Their tunnels on Xen must be extensive, too, because as seen in the bugbait video, not only do their holes go far down, but there are a LOT of antlions in them. And they even come out of other places too, like jumping through the windows following the scents. They must be all over the place.

Something interesting I noted: in the concept art, the antlion has a more bullsquid-like pattern on its abdomen. Then, in earlier screenshots, their markings had changed. What strikes me is that those patterns on them weren't random like in the concept art, but rather they resembled something: a pair of eyes. Two large eyes, in fact, and then possibly those four other dots are supposed to look like two more pairs of eyes. Their abdomens are up, also, much higher than their heads. So to a creature on Xen, this might look very intimidating. Reminds me of how cobras open their hoods to reveal eye-like markings on the backs of their heads.

In newer screenshots, however, the antlions lack any markings whatsoever. In addition to that, their color has changed from red to a dull brown. They don't look very Xen-like anymore, IMO. Hopefully they get changed back to how they originally looked.
 
The strider and the antlion look kinda similar to me, like the combine got the idea to the strider from antlions (if the strider even is combine, which it proplary is).
 
Darkside55 said:
Hahaha, sounds like a catchphrase. "Jittering G-Men!"

Sulkdodds, you can help if you like. :) I'm going to be writing it as if I were a biologist who was employed at BMRF, but escaped before the place went kaboom at the end of Opposing Force. I could write you in as my colleague or some such. Matter of fact if anyone else wants to get in on it, that would be good too. Maybe we could have a "BMRF Biology Team."
First thing's first, though; I need to get webspace and a webdesigner for it, hehe. I know of a person, but I'll probably need to bug him about it. So when that happens, I'll let everyone know...I'll post a thread about it. I don't suspect it'll happen for at least a month, though.

I think antlions are from Xen. They have Xenian markings (very similar to bullsquids), and Race-X creatures lack that. They don't look like Race-X creatures, either. Shock Troopers and pit drones, for instance, seem vastly different than Xen lifeforms. Voltigores, on the other hand, seem like they could be from Xen. That's not to say that Race-X creatures couldn't have been from some very remote part of Xen that Freeman didn't see, however. (Though, that is doubtful. I will say though that it's very suspect that shock troopers and Xenian grunts have similar weaponry: organic, symbiote insect weapons grafted to their arms.)

Back to antlions, they've got to have an ant-like structure, with normal antlions acting like workers (hunters), antlion guards bossing those little ones around, coordinating them with pheromones, and then one or more queens. Their tunnels on Xen must be extensive, too, because as seen in the bugbait video, not only do their holes go far down, but there are a LOT of antlions in them. And they even come out of other places too, like jumping through the windows following the scents. They must be all over the place.

Something interesting I noted: in the concept art, the antlion has a more bullsquid-like pattern on its abdomen. Then, in earlier screenshots, their markings had changed. What strikes me is that those patterns on them weren't random like in the concept art, but rather they resembled something: a pair of eyes. Two large eyes, in fact, and then possibly those four other dots are supposed to look like two more pairs of eyes. Their abdomens are up, also, much higher than their heads. So to a creature on Xen, this might look very intimidating. Reminds me of how cobras open their hoods to reveal eye-like markings on the backs of their heads.

In newer screenshots, however, the antlions lack any markings whatsoever. In addition to that, their color has changed from red to a dull brown. They don't look very Xen-like anymore, IMO. Hopefully they get changed back to how they originally looked.
Click to expand...

Don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but there's already a sort of Xen bestiary out there if you look around... but it's not been updated for ages, and only has about four creatures in it... So I reckon you guys could do a better job...

I think that the Xenians and the Race-X are from the same general area, as they both seem to have the same sort of/same coloured blood... The Antlions are too, I'd say, for the same reason...

hey, what's the bet that one of the game's bosses is an Antlion Queen, if the Antlions have a higher rank than Guard...?

I also noticed the Antlion's differering colouration patterns... I think their bodies also change slightly...
 
If i recall well, some ppl got interested in what the endboss of HL1 said to you.
As far as I could hear he said the following very interesting things: "You are responsible for the extermination of your species" (against Freeman).
"Im not your enemy, it's them..."

It's been obvious for me, even since HL1, that you are fighting ddifferent sorts of aliens. With that I mean, not all coming from the same planet. I mean, you've got 30 foot aliens without eyes, and then you've got headcrabs, and dog lookalikes with 30 eyes... How can these all come from the same planet? Maybe it's rubish, because most of the aliens you saw in the Black Mesa facility, also could be found on Xen. But still, I think there are atleast 2 fractions of aliens.

Nowadays, it has even become hard to define who is alien and who is not!
I mean, what or who is the G-man? What are the combine? Who drained the sea's?
It's like one big conspiracy, all made around and for Freeman. I ask myself, why Freeman? Why is he so special, I mean, it's clear it's was no accident that when hell broke lose in the Black Mesa facility, Gordon just happened to be there. No, I say he was put there, at the right time. But for what reason?

I'm going to finish with something I just remembered, the endboss said something else to:
"It's not you i'm afraid of, it's them, you are the last of your kind."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

hool10
Eve: Dominion trailer (it pwns).
2 3 4
Replies
120
Views
5K
StarBob
StarBob
C
Second Threat Needs Programmers, Texture Artists, and Concept Artists!
Replies
13
Views
1K
Dodo
Dodo
Munro
Hidden: Source (Beta 1.0)
Replies
0
Views
2K
Munro
Munro
Munro
Half-Life 3 Possibilities
Replies
3
Views
1K
Acepilotf14
Acepilotf14
David.Seth2
The need for sleep
2
Replies
79
Views
8K
Pyroxic
Pyroxic
Back
Top