Everything you wanted to know...

A giant worm that can shoot a laser out of its eye has to be the stupidist aspect of Op4.
 
Yeah, I got WAY confused, what I meant then was. . . ugh, I'd have to go look up on Wikipedia, and I'm not in the mood right now -_-.

All I know, is that most of the Race X enemies, seem Xen like, and some seem completely new, there is hardly any consistancy, which pisses me off, damn you Gearbox. . . <Random> I just remember a long time ago, I drew a shock trooper. . . then I drew what it would look like as a combine Oo. Sorry, random, anyways, I lost my OP4 disk, so even if I WANTED to go off and play through to realize WTF I'm talking about, I can't. . . this is what happens when you move in with your Girlfriend for a few weeks, Karma, WHY?!?
 
Darkside55 said:
*snip*
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You keep trying to relate them to the other creatires from Xen, but doing so is rather pointless in light of some of the things Laidlaw has said.
As for Race-X being from Xen, I'm not sure any of the aliens
we've seen were actually from Xen originally.
Click to expand...

Especially when you try to relate them to the Nihilanth and his lot seeing as we know they're not from Xen.

And you mention Xenian conventions in creatures. The only one I really see is yellow blood. What Xenian conventions do you mean? What conventions are there between antlions and bullsquids and houndeyes and snarks?

The way I always saw Race-X is that the shock troopers are the actual sentient race and the pit drones and voltigores are trained animals. I think the OP4 strat guide says something about the gene worm being some sort of super factory so maybe that's something biologically engineered. The pit worm is probably just some wild animal. There's nothing to show that it's related to Race-X in any way.
 
I think he was referring to the behaviour of some 'Race X's that seem consistent with Bull Squids an Houndeyes, like those <Insert name here> That seem to be about 3 feet tall, have scyth arms, and flat head (Physical description lacking) and the fact that Garg's, Controllers, Grunts, and so on can all control energy like the Voltigore (Which I think has a third arm as well)... Anyone understanding this? I have no idea what I'm saying, or referring to Oo
 
riomhaire said:
You keep trying to relate them to the other creatires from Xen, but doing so is rather pointless in light of some of the things Laidlaw has said.

Especially when you try to relate them to the Nihilanth and his lot seeing as we know they're not from Xen.
Click to expand...
Well, yeah, we know NOW that nothing is from Xen. But back then when Gearbox designed the creatures, I think for at least the voltigores if not the gene worm, the shock roach, perhaps to a very very slight degree the pit drone, they were going for a Xen-like look. By that I mean they look similar to things we'd already seen.

But now in a story context it's compounded further by the fact that absolutely nothing came from Xen originally. So you have to throw that out the window and start looking at it like, "Why do these creatures look similar? How can that be possible?" For example, the voltigores could've originally been from the Xenians' homeworld. Nothing prevents that. Same with the gene worm and the like. It's certainly possible, even plausible. The shock troopers being from the same world however would be something highly implausible. That's just right out.

And you mention Xenian conventions in creatures. The only one I really see is yellow blood. What Xenian conventions do you mean? What conventions are there between antlions and bullsquids and houndeyes and snarks?
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There's a certain look to all these creatures. It's funny the first ones you mention, antlions and bullsquids, because originally they looked real similar.

Currently, antlions are mainly brown and have only minor markings on their bodies, sometimes having a green tinge or four red spots on their wings, which are kind of like the faux eyes a cobra has on its hood. Now ORIGINALLY, antlions were red, and they were decked out in Rorschach-like yellow splotches. They looked very much like a bullsquid's markings. Obviously that's gone now, but it was there.

And bullsquids and houndeyes can be compared because of their bright colorations. It's not much of course but it's there, and you couple that with the old antlion design and you see a pattern. Animals from Xen have a look to them.

You can also take a voltigore now and put it next to an antlion and say, "This is a similar creature." Look at a voltigore and an antlion guard. And I mentioned the fluorescent gills on both the voltigore and the houndeye. These things interlock; they're all more than just coincidence, they were designed to have this kind of look.

Now, the closest thing to the snark is a gargantua. I will always believe that the snark and the gargantua are related creatures if not the SAME creature, one in larval form and the other a matured adult. If not that, then they are at least from the same family tree. Those two beasts have vague common traits with other beings on Xen...the single eye, the carapace, bright coloring on the snark, the insectoid form. Tiny chest arms on the gargantua. A four-legged design on the snark similar to the four legs on an antlion. It's a stretch, of course, because they really are sort of the "odd man out" creatures of the bunch, but they still fit into what you could imagine a working Xenian ecosystem would have.

BTW every time I say Xenian I of course refer to the entire collective race from whatever world they came from, not Xenian as in "local to Xen."

The way I always saw Race-X is that the shock troopers are the actual sentient race and the pit drones and voltigores are trained animals. I think the OP4 strat guide says something about the gene worm being some sort of super factory so maybe that's something biologically engineered. The pit worm is probably just some wild animal. There's nothing to show that it's related to Race-X in any way.
Click to expand...
The pit worm is related to stupid, that's what it's related to. Seriously, everything else works. I can even believe the geneworm works, a creature with a portal in its chest. I can believe that works in the same way a nihilanth works. But the pit worm? IT SHOOTS A LASER OUT OF ITS EYEBALL. How the hell does that work? It's retarded.

And yeah, pit drones = dogs. They're a shock trooper's best friend. I don't know about voltigores being trained...they seem more wild than anything. Although, they don't attack shock troopers, do they, so...maybe they have reason to fear them. But when set loose upon the facility they automatically set up a nest and begin breeding, as animals would. It's not exactly trained behavior.
 
Darkside55 said:
And bullsquids and houndeyes can be compared because of their bright colorations. It's not much of course but it's there, and you couple that with the old antlion design and you see a pattern. Animals from Xen have a look to them.
Click to expand...

THANK YOU!!!
I was beginning to think that no one else even CONSIDERED that.
And I'd doubt that the Garg and Snark are related, maybe environment wise, but physically wise? I doubt it =\
 
V-Man's correction on his plea

Could someone upload the Vortigaunt file, when I pleaded I meant the one that got deleted off of rapidshare.:(
 
Omega11 said:
And I'd doubt that the Garg and Snark are related, maybe environment wise, but physically wise? I doubt it =\
Click to expand...
They were supposed to be the same creature. The old Half-Life manual had a concept art picture for the gargantua, and it was a giant snark (minus the eyeball). Had the same jaws and everything though, same carapace, four legs instead of six. It even walked on four legs, but it could stand up "like a bear."

But then the gargantua became what it is today, and the design for the old gargantua was made smaller, used for the snark.
 
You can see already though that they had a commonality to them. And those designs were modified...the jaws of the squeak grenade became more like the jaws of old gargantua. Its proportions changed as well. Meanwhile they were both given a single eye to fit in more with the other Xenian races, who, with the exception of the grunts, bullsquids, crabs, and chumtoads, have one main eye.
 
Headcrabs, vorts, grunts, controllers or Nihilanth aren't brightly coloured. Darkside, I really think that you're just grasping at straws.

Earth has ants and penguins which have very little in comon that's obvious, so let Xen have some diversity without trying desperatly to draw connections between them all.
 
Maybe they had brighter skins in their own home world. We don't know for how long they are living on the border world, they might have been changed physically to live there. The Nihilanth's skin colour also supports this theory.

I think there is more than one sun effecting the border world, and there is a giant ocean, which reflects the suns (see skybox textures). Some of the species share the same physical look, but I don't think they are related. It would be just silly to compare Headcrab and Vortigaunt in the same group.
 
Yeah, the Xenians (as we naivly refer to them) could have lived their for millenia, though the feeling I got was that it was one big rush.
 
riomhaire said:
Headcrabs, vorts, grunts, controllers or Nihilanth aren't brightly coloured. Darkside, I really think that you're just grasping at straws.

Earth has ants and penguins which have very little in comon that's obvious, so let Xen have some diversity without trying desperatly to draw connections between them all.
Click to expand...
I think you're mistaking what I'm saying. I'm not trying to say they're all related or connect them all to some common ancestry that makes them all have bright colors. What I'm saying is they all have a sort of design that's uniquely Xen.

I'm not sure how I can explain this...it's just that when I look at a creature from Xen I can tell its from Xen. Does that make sense? If I take a stukabat and I place it near a boid, I can draw a parallel between them. If I take a chumtoad and put it near a panthereye, I can draw a parallel between them. I can take those same creatures and see connections in the design to other creatures. In fact that only real "odd men out" of the Xen group, despite what I said previously about the snarks and gargantua--because you CAN see the Xenian design in them--would be the kingpin and Mr. Friendly. I dunno what's up with them. They seem to be the most un-Xen-like creatures of the bunch. Good thing they were cut.

Look at an archer. Look at the fast walker. Look at the antlions. Look at the voltigores because I'm going to start considering them part of the Xenian fauna. They've all got basic principles to them that the artists must have had in mind. Don't forget that Valve wanted to make it look like they had a working ecosystem with real creatures.

And as for the bright colors, well we know from nature why that is. The things with the bright colors are usually dangerous, they want other creatures to stay away. Or perhaps the colors are used for other things like mating, whichever has the showiest pattern or what have you. No real sense then for one of the evolved races to have it. Humans don't have peacock feathers, after all.

But you can look at a bird and then look at a lizard and be like, "Oh, they're from Earth." Commonality of design. Does that make sense?

Stealth edit: Yes I'm aware there are things on Earth that look like wtf aliens and don't fit in quite so well with everything else. Things from the deep especially, creepy-ass oceans spawning their monsters.
 
On kingpins and friendlies: I always thought they looked a little bit like headcrabs (The HL1 crabs more than the HL2 ones). They all have the same sort of fleshy colours.
 
Not anymore they don?t.
The kingpin reminds me of a mutated scorpion, or a little bit of the hydralisk.

And mr.friendly is downright ugly. And those whip-like appendages it has.
It's made of lose.

The first time i saw saw them in-game, was in USS darkstar.(a mighty good mod might i add), second time Poke646(one of the best:D).

Darkstar: I thought the antlion guards were based on the Voltigores...
 
Ok the only thing you need now is a cross section (a 3d model that is cut into showing outside as well as inside) on the headcrab. Now that would be great.
 
Has anyone seen that Alien Planet Presentation on Discovery???

Or read the 'book' Expedition?

When I got to Xen the first time, it reminded me of those. You should definitely look into, it has lots about possible Aliens and such. It's interesting because it HAS aiens that are brightly colored and some that are more 'camo' related. It's an interesting concept. Bleh, good stuff ^^.
 
That was awesome!

That is the single most detailed, accurate, awesome headcrab page ever! Heres to you:cheers:
 
you know after reading or "skimming" over that, i now wondder, can the headcrab get AIDS? i think so
 
Good stuff. Somebody needs to write one of these on the happening with the g-man guy, and why all the sudden gordon is working with aliens, and why gordon was chosen for 'employment' by the g-man.
 
This page is offically awesome!!
 
Hey guys, i dont know if somebody discovered it here before, but...

http://www.city17***/news/gman-bak.jpg

http://www.city17***/news/hl-freeman.jpeg

Those pics talks by theirselves
 
Thanks for ruining the thread.
 
Why? this is an half life mythology thread, i didnt ruined it, instead of you posting that pointless reply.
 
Gambini said:
Hey guys, i dont know if somebody discovered it here before, but...

/cut images

Those pics talks by theirselves
Click to expand...

Actually I did see the lower one on another website. Pimp-productions.com. Perhaps you've heard of it.
 
This thread would've eventually gotten resurrected again. I've got a few more of these articles I've just been sitting on now that I got my old HD working again (they were all on there and I didn't have access to them until recently).

Vortigaunt one's pretty much done and updated for Episode 2. Just sittin' on it.
 
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