Post

Did you know that Half-Life 2 drew inspiration from Studio Ghibli while in development? In Raising the Bar, you can find an early image of a Combine Helmet with a description from Ted Backman (Half-Life's creature designer): "Early Combine helmet design was influenced by the work of Hayao Miyazaki." Looking at the comparisons between this helmet and some of Miyazaki's designs (he worked on a lot of Studio Ghibli films), you can see that their design language somewhat overlaps, although Miyazaki's work is a lot more cheerful than Backman's, for obvious reasons.