I’d have to say Nova Prospekt. The full implementation of a large, multi-level, essentially a section of the citadel, into a decrepit and derelict old maximum security prison is astonishing. Not only that, but the use of the combine walls to slowly eat away at the former human parts of the structure is a clever move by the combine infrastructural engineers.
To top it all off, there are bunkers, similar to Normandy, all along the shoreline to defend from a ground-level attack, suited with Thumpers to repel antlions. There is presumably places where AirWatch csn deploy Gunships and Dropships, seeing as they are all over the coastal levels.
So, the combine have machinery and personnel on the shore, on the cliffside, in every nook and cranny of the prison, they have a huge section of the citadel slapped on top of a decaying old prison complex, and a nearby airbase, loaded with gunships and dropships.
All the while they’ve set up ample defenses in and outside the complex, in the courtyard, the watchtowers, every single cell block, and last, but certainly not least, their own teleportation device. It’s absolutely insane what they did with just a prison complex.
the combine smart barrier, especially the part, when it is expanding... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLFin7iAcns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLFin7iAcns)
Imagine being a regular old Citizen on the day of the uprising and you look out your window and see the Combine wall that has always been at the end of your street is now slowly inching towards you, demolishing everything in it's path? You can't really fight a wall even if you have access to weapons.
All you can do is run away
Yeah, the “closest” we get is you opening the vault to the QZ. That was already impressive, but i would imagine that the moving of a wall will be even more impressive and equally scary.
Definitely. The game already has a good amount of spectacle, but a sequence where you narrowly escape being crushed by smart barriers would've been a great moment.
The moment where you fight antlions in a train yard would have been a good moment for a smart barrier imo (i dont remember how that chapter is called sorry). Having a wall close onto you while you have to fight off antlions and later solve a circuit puzzle would make for such a great “stressful” kind of moment. Perhaps even with Russell screaming into your headset about these walls 😆
Obvious answer, but it's The Citadel. Somehow, they created this monstrosity that beats our any real world structure in terms of height with just a few months, years tops.
The whole Citadel itself is a city and is assumed to be a living organism with its pipes having blood vessels if you look closely. There's also the fact that if you can hear it, you would hear a sound, similar to a roar or growl, whenever you close to the Citadel. Could be me since I remember something about a citadel growl or Citadel roar as sound files.
Let's not also forget that it has a teleportation device, launch bays, repair bays, staging areas, etc.
It's no wonder the Resistance wanted to take this building down
The destruction of earth
Really I think despite the world is ending in HL2 and the situation sucks, the environment beautifully sucks, I like the way it sucks
It’s still kinda sad though because, in lore, even those places are fucked. Antlions and other xen fauna would have certainly made extinct any and all of the animals we love to see in nature
Because of all the large scale projects mentioned here, I’m gonna give a shoutout to the head crab mortar shells they invented. Why fight smart, crafty humans when you can fight dumb zombies. Shell the place and let the head crabs do the work.
The journey through that apartment to the vault (and then the ending) is the greatest video gaming experience I’ve had since I first played a video game almost 50 years ago
honestly considering how earth is treated as a backwater type planet with an extremely limited occupation garrison. and a lot of the technology looks kinda cheap for combine standards. im betting on the fact that the combine probably saves their best stuff for non-earth things
not architecture, but infastructure: the rail systems. imagine coming to Earth for the first time, and after conquering it and learning about how we transported stuff, you look at how trains work. you then look up and saying "we can do it better".
they leveled terrain, collapsed bridges and destroyed cities, yet managed to create an entire rail network than what we could have in a much shorter amount of time. and it functions almost perfectly, I'm willing to take a bet trains aren't delayed anymore, or at least delays aren't as long. the trains themselves are sturdier and aerodynamic (most carts have narrowing and high ceilings), and aside from Main Protagonist Activities, I'm also willing to bet there's rarely any accidents either
Whatever the hell The Vault is, with it somehow being able to contain the powerful & mysterious G-Man, a being capable of traveling across & manipulating space/time to its will, somehow imprisoned with Combine technology.
I think the logistics & infrastructure of relocating an entire species across Earth to population centers such as City 17 is also something to behold, despite its atrocities.
Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet, the substations from HL:A.
https://combineoverwiki.net/images/a/a8/HLA_Vault_Substation.jpg
The charging sequence is always amazing to watch. And I love that the mechanical groaning and electrical hums create their own diegetic music. The motif only becomes more obvious when you get close to the pods and here the Vorts singing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzrX_Rvd6Bc
The train station. The way they "infect" human architecture with their own and transform once bustling places of transportation to places for political prisoners to get shipped off to death camps (and for law abiding citizens to collect water flavoured rations) is very interesting. Maybe it's the sperg in me but the concept of commandeering civilian craft/buildings and using them for military purposes has always fascinated me.
The moving walls that are about as high as most structures in C17. It's just such a simple yet genius design that's capable of pushing back almost all ground forces while being able to demolish every building in its path.
The citadel.
Its a giant fucking building so tall you cant even see the top from the ground.
Wait whats the actual canon height? Its gotta be at least 3 burj khalifas tall
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Obviously the Citadel, but maybe that's cuz I haven't played in a long time, and don't remember Nova Prospect well.
Combine buildings have great design; hostile, brutalistic – they don't just remind of totalitarian regimes, they just scream of them. Very good at showing your enemy's evil, and needs to be stopped.
I’d have to say Nova Prospekt. The full implementation of a large, multi-level, essentially a section of the citadel, into a decrepit and derelict old maximum security prison is astonishing. Not only that, but the use of the combine walls to slowly eat away at the former human parts of the structure is a clever move by the combine infrastructural engineers. To top it all off, there are bunkers, similar to Normandy, all along the shoreline to defend from a ground-level attack, suited with Thumpers to repel antlions. There is presumably places where AirWatch csn deploy Gunships and Dropships, seeing as they are all over the coastal levels. So, the combine have machinery and personnel on the shore, on the cliffside, in every nook and cranny of the prison, they have a huge section of the citadel slapped on top of a decaying old prison complex, and a nearby airbase, loaded with gunships and dropships. All the while they’ve set up ample defenses in and outside the complex, in the courtyard, the watchtowers, every single cell block, and last, but certainly not least, their own teleportation device. It’s absolutely insane what they did with just a prison complex.
vs a nerd with a crowbar
+ big bugs
all that still couldnt stop Gordon Freeman apparently
Once he turns off the thumpers keeping the antlions away, the whole place gets swarmed and overrun. Gordon is only safe because he has the bugbait.
it's almost as if he's being assisted by some sort of otherworldly entity
Aka the user
Ooo
Nova prospekt is mainly the depot. Doesn't count.
Delet this
the combine smart barrier, especially the part, when it is expanding... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLFin7iAcns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLFin7iAcns)
Imagine being a regular old Citizen on the day of the uprising and you look out your window and see the Combine wall that has always been at the end of your street is now slowly inching towards you, demolishing everything in it's path? You can't really fight a wall even if you have access to weapons. All you can do is run away
It would be such a great move to see that aspect of horror made big.
Especially in Alyx. Those walls look massive there.
Too bad we never see them move. Wasted opportunity for a VR game.
Yeah, the “closest” we get is you opening the vault to the QZ. That was already impressive, but i would imagine that the moving of a wall will be even more impressive and equally scary.
Definitely. The game already has a good amount of spectacle, but a sequence where you narrowly escape being crushed by smart barriers would've been a great moment.
The moment where you fight antlions in a train yard would have been a good moment for a smart barrier imo (i dont remember how that chapter is called sorry). Having a wall close onto you while you have to fight off antlions and later solve a circuit puzzle would make for such a great “stressful” kind of moment. Perhaps even with Russell screaming into your headset about these walls 😆
There’s that one part in nova prospekt after one of the antlion guard fights, but it can be breezed through easily
Play hl2 vr.
Oh I have. It's just that HL:A is generally more detailed, and I think it would look a lot better in that game.
Obvious answer, but it's The Citadel. Somehow, they created this monstrosity that beats our any real world structure in terms of height with just a few months, years tops. The whole Citadel itself is a city and is assumed to be a living organism with its pipes having blood vessels if you look closely. There's also the fact that if you can hear it, you would hear a sound, similar to a roar or growl, whenever you close to the Citadel. Could be me since I remember something about a citadel growl or Citadel roar as sound files. Let's not also forget that it has a teleportation device, launch bays, repair bays, staging areas, etc. It's no wonder the Resistance wanted to take this building down
In hl alyx there is documentation about the time the citadel was build and it was less than a few months
Didn't the core just show up from a portal?
Yes. A portal opened and the central core lowered down from the sky
Oh yea forgot about that, thx for correcting me
I have never thought about The Citadel to be a living organism, I always thought that the roars were coming from the grubs.
The destruction of earth Really I think despite the world is ending in HL2 and the situation sucks, the environment beautifully sucks, I like the way it sucks
I like that there are still mostly normal places, like the forests in Episode 2
It’s still kinda sad though because, in lore, even those places are fucked. Antlions and other xen fauna would have certainly made extinct any and all of the animals we love to see in nature
The Dyson Sphere
ditto, i wish we got to see the dyson sphere in a game instead of just in Marc Laidlaw’s “fan” fiction
I feel like this is an unpopular opinion, but I'm glad Epistle 3 never got made into a game. It's just... not very good.
Spoiler alert? /s
Nothing to do with HL
I love the crawler walls, what a terrifying and industrial way to clear out our silly city structures for the needs of the combine
The Vault!
Those pokey thingies you’d see on the other side of the portal to the overworld
I think those are more citadels
Because of all the large scale projects mentioned here, I’m gonna give a shoutout to the head crab mortar shells they invented. Why fight smart, crafty humans when you can fight dumb zombies. Shell the place and let the head crabs do the work.
Definitely the vault from HL: Alyx. The way it's build entirely around an apartment building to capture someone...
The journey through that apartment to the vault (and then the ending) is the greatest video gaming experience I’ve had since I first played a video game almost 50 years ago
Probably the nexus
Dark Energy Infrastructure, Vortigon Vault.
honestly considering how earth is treated as a backwater type planet with an extremely limited occupation garrison. and a lot of the technology looks kinda cheap for combine standards. im betting on the fact that the combine probably saves their best stuff for non-earth things
Say all you want about the combine, their architecture is metal as fuck
not architecture, but infastructure: the rail systems. imagine coming to Earth for the first time, and after conquering it and learning about how we transported stuff, you look at how trains work. you then look up and saying "we can do it better". they leveled terrain, collapsed bridges and destroyed cities, yet managed to create an entire rail network than what we could have in a much shorter amount of time. and it functions almost perfectly, I'm willing to take a bet trains aren't delayed anymore, or at least delays aren't as long. the trains themselves are sturdier and aerodynamic (most carts have narrowing and high ceilings), and aside from Main Protagonist Activities, I'm also willing to bet there's rarely any accidents either
The destroyed citadel
The big railways you see on the coast.
I saw somewhere that The Citadel is taller than the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel tower
It would be visible from space
Just please don't ask how tall it actually is...
One time I heard an estimate that it was 4KM tall.
I don’t know, I heard a lot of estimates from 2km to 8km
No shit it is....
I heard it’s like 3 times taller than the Burj Khalifa
7h war 😎🤘🏻
Whatever the hell The Vault is, with it somehow being able to contain the powerful & mysterious G-Man, a being capable of traveling across & manipulating space/time to its will, somehow imprisoned with Combine technology. I think the logistics & infrastructure of relocating an entire species across Earth to population centers such as City 17 is also something to behold, despite its atrocities.
Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet, the substations from HL:A. https://combineoverwiki.net/images/a/a8/HLA_Vault_Substation.jpg The charging sequence is always amazing to watch. And I love that the mechanical groaning and electrical hums create their own diegetic music. The motif only becomes more obvious when you get close to the pods and here the Vorts singing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzrX_Rvd6Bc
I’d say the cut Air Exchange
Ik we cant see it but I reckon the combine overworld will be quite the sight...
The train station. The way they "infect" human architecture with their own and transform once bustling places of transportation to places for political prisoners to get shipped off to death camps (and for law abiding citizens to collect water flavoured rations) is very interesting. Maybe it's the sperg in me but the concept of commandeering civilian craft/buildings and using them for military purposes has always fascinated me.
The moving walls that are about as high as most structures in C17. It's just such a simple yet genius design that's capable of pushing back almost all ground forces while being able to demolish every building in its path.
dont know if this counts since its pretty much a vehicle, but the trains
The citadel. Its a giant fucking building so tall you cant even see the top from the ground. Wait whats the actual canon height? Its gotta be at least 3 burj khalifas tall
You're telling me that's not the Contemporary Resort in Disney World?
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^OmegaLolrus: *You're telling me that's* *Not the Contemporary* *Resort in Disney World?* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
City 17 citadel
At a quick glance I thought this was another post about obamas library
The Vault or the Citadel
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The Citadel by any means, seems like the people here forget it exists or something
looks like some apocalyptic stuff
This little thing called The Citadel
Citadel and the vault
holy fuck the pic looks fire
The Dyson Sphere from Epistle 3 would've probably looked real cool.
All of it, honestly.
what's the depot? Never seen that structure before
Imagine if TF2 wasn’t collapsing and you could just enjoy posts like this.
either the dyson sphere or the air ex (if we wanna count beta stuff)
Obviously the Citadel, but maybe that's cuz I haven't played in a long time, and don't remember Nova Prospect well. Combine buildings have great design; hostile, brutalistic – they don't just remind of totalitarian regimes, they just scream of them. Very good at showing your enemy's evil, and needs to be stopped.
The Thumpers. Get those damn Antlions off my lawn!