Combine Soldiers

[theholygod]

My only gripe with ep2 is that there weren't enough of the cannonfodder soldiers!

In the few cases where you come accross a nice bunch of them, i thought their AI must have been enchanced, there was that new "orange" soldier, the blood effects are awesome and in places i swear the soldiers would take shots completely relistically, flinching which every impact.

Valve did a great job with the mix of zombies, striders, hunters, etc but i really would love to have some more combine to shoot at.

 

[Asknoone]

Yeah, there was very few, but they were really quite clever on the Inn assault.

 

[Black Op]

I did notice that the Combine soldiers seem to have been used less in EP2. Based on interviews before EP2's release, I was expecting at least one outdoor battle with you and rebels vs. Combine foot soldiers. Remember that stuff when the developers claimed they'd be more than one way to flank these troops in these outdoor fights? Unless that final battle counts, I didn't really notice this at all.

 

[Mutley]

Did anyone notice some Soldiers had red eyes? I'm sure I've not seen red-eyed Soldiers in Ep1.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

I was actually rather impressed with the AI of the antlion worker. The thing retreated, took cover, utilized Antlion soldiers to attack you while it spit acid on you from afar. Very impressive.

 

[Black Op]

Ah yes, I noticed some soldiers had those red eyes. And those Antlion workers are cowardly buggers indeed, they were more challenging than I thought they would be.

 

[AciD]

Red eyes= Sthotgun
Blu eyes= SMG

 

[DEATHMASTER]

How's about that blood? Reminds me of Bioshock's, didn't really like it. But I think that it looked nice and told you if you shot'm from far.

 

[Laivasse]

It might have been my imagination, but the Red-Eyes seemed to be slightly tougher than the standard shotgun troops. They seemed to fire faster and from further away, and the damage seemed higher.

This could just be my imagination, though, brought on by my being impressed at how sinister they looked. At first I was pretty underwhelmed by the idea of a new Combine troop with different eye colour, but when I encountered them I was taken slightly aback by how intimidating it was to see a pair of red eyes peering out at me from a swarm of blue ones.

They also bear the same skull insignia on their arms as the elites do, so I guess they're meant to be another branch of elite troop...?

 

[AciD]

I am not impressed by blood due to playing HL2 and EP1 on Source Particle Benchmark...
White Elites are masters of AR3[joke ]
and Red Elites are masters in shotguns aren't they?
They look more dangerous than normal troops. Actually they look like they came from hell...

 

[Mutley]

I defiantly know those shotguns really hurt! More so Ep1/HL2.

 

[Born Acorn]

I noticed the red/orange-eyed soldiers with the shotguns actually have the Combine elite armband, ie the Combine logo with a skull in the middle.

Are they "country" combine elite? Although there were two or three normal elites at the Inn.

 

[Nitre]

Another cool skin thing was in the antlion battle where the hopper mines had lambda symbols on them, and one of the auto-turrets had a lambda symbol on it and the other the sort of mouth with teeth which you got on WWII fighters. Twas sweet.

 

[leib10]

I think they could've thrown in a few during the Strider/Hunter battle, just to add to the completeness of the assault.

Is it just me, or was there pretty much no difference between the new and old Combine soldiers other than the uniform and the weapons carried?

 

[Asknoone]

I think the idea was to just add variation.

 

[RomeoJGuy]

I think the idea was to just add variation.

I think it was moreso a way to differentiate a shotgun wielder from other combine types. Shotgunners in older games typically charged fast at you firing rather quickly resulting in death if you didn't take them out first in a firefight. Now by having shotgunner's looking different you can spot them from a crowd of combine.

 

[kupocake]

I liked the Soldier's implementation here. Since Highway 17, we've seen hundreds of the bastards, usually as the majority in the fight against you. Thining them out in Episode Two means that in universe terms, the combine are fielding 'the next big thing' to take you out instead of relying on dwindling numbers of incompetant post-humans. And in gameplay terms, it gives an overused combat style a bit of a rest.

I liked the reskining, but don't really understand why they didn't do it before now. In the earliest 'Aftermath' media, there were shots of red-eyed, black uniformed soldiers. Why they never made it in is anyone's guess. Hopefully we'll see another uniform type for the few Soldiers we encounter in the wintery Episode Three... though Elites may just fill the void instead.