I love these different Combine designs. I definitely imagine that having current day cp designs just wouldn't make sense for the early occupation. Something like this works a lot better visually: if HL2 civil protection were the police force, these guys are the conscripted soldiers - their families taken hostage so they'd comply. Working fearfully towards the cause to transform the remnants of a war-torn Earth into a fascist dystopia, starting with the simple task of clearing any xenian contamination out of future civil habitats.
This simple image opened up a lot of possibilities in my eyes, I could definitely see a Half-Life 2 prequel set in the early occupation period following this style, with cps and combine soldiers swapped out with these conscripts and the rare Combine super soldier like you see in the concept art (see below), which I imagine everyone would be fucking terrified of due to the extremely recent and extremely traumatic 7-Hour-War.
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I love these different Combine designs. I definitely imagine that having current day cp designs just wouldn't make sense for the early occupation. Something like this works a lot better visually: if HL2 civil protection were the police force, these guys are the conscripted soldiers - their families taken hostage so they'd comply. Working fearfully towards the cause to transform the remnants of a war-torn Earth into a fascist dystopia, starting with the simple task of clearing any xenian contamination out of future civil habitats. This simple image opened up a lot of possibilities in my eyes, I could definitely see a Half-Life 2 prequel set in the early occupation period following this style, with cps and combine soldiers swapped out with these conscripts and the rare Combine super soldier like you see in the concept art (see below), which I imagine everyone would be fucking terrified of due to the extremely recent and extremely traumatic 7-Hour-War.
Hot damn that is BEAUTIFUL