Half-Life: Alyx - Combine Soldier Analysis

Best part of this video is "He's kicking it." "Overwatch says stop kicking it." "He stopped kicking it."

I love how clinical the Combine dialogue is. It's not militaristic jargon, just cold and uncaring statuses and codes.

Hey, they might have crippling body horror augmentations and their personalities might be reset every couple of hours, but at least the combine lets them use telepathy to play chess with each other.

Hats down to valve's animation department. Even unscripted motions are so human like it's almost as if I was watching a live action movie. Borderline scary.

The fact that the basic combine soldiers feel remorse upon death freaked me out in the same way that it did when I learned that Half Life 2 zombies screams were cries for help played in reverse.

That Echo unit looked so sad when he was told to stop kicking the Strider that was probably his only source of entertainment for the entire day

"He's kicking it" "Overwatch said stop kicking it" "He stopped kicking it" LOVE IT

Seing such a bulky looking enemy run at you full sprint would be terrifying

I believe the number “game” sequence could actually be a personnel check to make sure people in the squad haven’t been taken out quietly, think like a radio silence check or the pager checks from payday, I imagine its for safety not fun, as anyone not part of the unit likely wouldn’t know the number sequence and would be sniffed out as fake or unresponsive, making impersonating them nearly impossible. As for the “your turn” dialogue, that’s simply them passing it down the line.

“Dissonance Resolved.” “Update is live. Acceptance is mandatory.” These lines are so simple and yet speak so much about the Combine and how they operate. It’s chilling.

Yeeeeesh the combine without the masks are super creepy. Just to think that people overseeing them can just remotely shut off their lives because they're hardwired into the combine infrastructure is just crazy.

Something I noted is that during their death screams, it's suddenly cut off by the life monitor beep. That's not because they're finished screaming, it's because the life monitor overpowers it. That beep is probably blasting in their ears and over comms while the dying soldier is still going through their death throes. That would be a terrifying way to die.

It's interesting to me that the lowest rank - whilst already being so thoroughly augmented- still doesn't have their humanity completely removed.

the charger being such a monster of a dude whipping out a stunstick and charging the player would have been so cool

Just a small insight on 7:50 I can offer as a military member; chemical suit boots don’t have laces, and that might be why the Grunts don’t have any. You just wear your normal boots under and slide into the rubber ones over top.

The space between the Suppressor's eyes and its firing pattern makes me think they wanted to give him a bigger range of vision and the ability to target and suppress/engage multiple targets at once without letting up on the trigger. What butchery the Combine had to do to the poor human underneath that mask fortunately remains unknown.

"They are fully dependent on their helmets, and by extension the combine" That part scares me the most. Imagine your employers having ownership of your bodily functions...

6:02 Unironically one of the best Half Life scenes in the series

I'm personally under the impression that the Combine in the QZ are a taskforce meant for just dealing with the QZ. The grunt is under armored and not very well trained because he's expecting to only be fighting xen fauna and the occasional scav. Wallhanmers and suppressors are closer to riot control, equipped to take a bullet, but their tactics leaving them almost always out of cover is telling. The only exception being the Ordinal, who acts like an actual professional. I think she's more related to your OTA soldiers you seen in HL2 and probably actually is, just assigned to the QZ. Would of loved to see a squad of OTA soldiers in HLA, could be a boss fight. Though I am just speculating, this is what fits in my mind

I like the idea that all the soldiers, even the super modified ones, play a number counting game while out on missions, seems funny