Looking for more information

[Combine4ever]

Hi all , sorry if I did anything wrong regarding posting place or reopening a topic but I simply have to ask you a lot of question.
I am a huge Half-Life 2 fan and trying to buy 7hour war book but cant find it for ages .
My biggest interest is HL2 beta , I mean , unites in there (combine guards,cremators,assasins,alien soldiers,...)
I took my free time and was searching all over web for new info how it all started (waiting for HL2-black masa remake).
There are a lot of things going over my mind right now so Ill post question post by post .
So lets start with first question: how did the combine manage to conquer world so fast ?

and any idea how can I get beta maps for hl2?

Thank you all and sorry if I made a mistake , just point me .

 

[GiRoX]

Well, I honestly never read the book, but Its probably because when the Combine invaded, Earth was scattered and already fighting all the creatures from Xen. Not to mention they were more advanced than us.

Thats what I think.

 

[Polaris]

There is no 7 hour war book and hl2.net is really not a good place to seek informations about HL2 beta...

 

[Laivasse]

The book you're probably talking about is Raising the Bar. It's an art book primarily about the creation of HL2 (with a little bit of info about CS:S), from concept through to development. As such it has some background info about the story - such as story elements that didn't make the cut, explanatory quotes from Valve staff, etc. - but not an incredible amount. It is still a VERY lovely book, if you can find a copy for a less-than-insane price.

I believe the beta is still kind of a taboo subject around here...? Not sure, don't really know or care much about it.

 

[Combine4ever]

I tought raising the bar was story , nvm .

The question about beta , im only interested in seeing cremators,combine guards and old ravenholm .
Btw why were they cut?they are not overpowered as people say (invasion is ment to be hard to defeat) and with what soldiers did combine attack earth (striders,hunters,gunships and combine alien soldiers?)?