Way too detailed analysis of Combine gear in Alyx ( ports )

This guide is a completely unrelated, out of the blue look at the Combine gear in Half life Alyx. I personally find it interesting and I hope you do too, none of this is to be taken serious, since it's only some look at the models etc. and isn't supposed to be real lore or facts. Right now I include all Combine seen in Half life Alyx, including civilians and metropolice. I have all Combine weaponry from Alyx and also all zombified versions of the Combine too. Everything was done in Gmod, sourced from other websites or from YouTube videos. All owners, creators and sources are linked at the end.
Hope you enjoy!

HL:Alyx Metrocop

Here you can see the Metrocop gasmask, it stayed basiclly the same from Half life 2, altough the backend area has more details and is allot cleaner, the two round objects on the sides are probably their hearing intake, which is also connected to their radio via some sort of Combine bluetooth since there is no cabel connecting them. On each side there's a small lever on the circle itself, it may be the push to talk button for the radio. There's a small box on the back of the mask, possibly it's energy supply. The mask has a filter on the front and probably a sound outake on top of it. The eye pieces are just regular tainted lenses. This design shows a less militaristic design, the filter in the middle and the more simplistic comms unit shows that they're a police force that doesn't need perfect co-ordination or a mask that suits aiming of rifles etc. The mask is probably inspired by the soviet PMG gasmask, due to the line you see under the eyes and probably also the GP-5 gasmask.





Here we can see that the white stripes showing on the shoulders are part of the uniform, we can also see a pouch on their upper arm area with velcro on top and a zipper, the previous white stripes that went along the arm were removed since they didn't seem very realistic I supose. I originally assumed the white markings on the CP's are reflective altough we will see actual reflective stripes on the Combine worker later so this isn't the case here. Their armor seems to be inspired by U.S. style riot police armor.




The gloves are more detailed in alyx then in the old Hl2, we can see a strap to tighten them up and yet again white stripes on them.





The torso is rather odd tbh, there's a zipper in the middle which seems to be the same zipper connected to their uniform, altough the straps on the side, under their arms say that this is a seperate vest from their uniform, it seems like there's a V shaped cutout of the vest which is fixed to the uniform itself, were as the vest is seperate.



The CP's wear two belts altough only one has anything on it. The lower belt has a speaker unit and a walkie talkie on the right side, on the left side there apears to be a radio unit which is more bulkier. I assume the bulky one is a long range transmitter to amplify their signal, the speaker unit is probably to act as a megaphone, all the devices being connected without cables but with some sort of combine bluetooth magic. It might also just be that the combine could finally enforce decent mobile connection throughout the world, I mean seriously they wanna make 5G in Germany and we barely have 3G yet allone Wlan everywere smh.


Now finally their pants are green with white stripes which police do irl for some reason too, their boots are high black boots which have a inner and outer zipper in white. In hl2 the stripes just went along the boots without any visible zipper.
In Half life Alyx we can only see Metrocops as background characters, carrying stunsticks, at the beginning balcony, we can watch a Metrocop standing guard at the street below, his hands appear to be holding a weapon altough I noclipped there and he doesn't hold anything at all. I would say it's safe to assume that the CPs in Alyx aren't armed, were as in Hl2 they had the power of a small military on their side. Overwatch Combine soldiers arresting Ely and Alyx at the beginning, were the cps just drive them away, proves this too. If they were too important for CPs to handle then why not fly them away in a Overwatch dropship? Til the Citadel is up, CPs were probably not armed since they could start a rebellion before the combine foothold was done, with the citadel up and the portal to the combine open, their resistance would have been futile...

HL:Alyx Combine Workforce

This is a combine worker's outfit in City 17. We first see these workers on construction striders just after starting the game, we see many zombified versions of them throughout the game, including this one and a recoloured version of this outfit were the grey vest and lower mask is orange. They share their mask with the NBC worker and it is basiclly completely new in the series. It may be loosely based on the combine flamethrower soldier from the hl2 beta, but it somewhat reminds me of a stingray. The mask itself is rather wide, it's faceplate is pretty damn big. The mask has a integrated hearing protection which we can see on the side. The eye pieces have some red lines in them on closer inspection, possibly some sort of interface behind them since only the worker has this. I don't know why this design was chosen besides the ultra cool looks, maybe to reduce damage from blunt impact by providing a big surface. We can also see a openend up collar of sorts that appears to be some sort of gasmask which can be attached to the main mask itself. Russels wears the very same collar in orange. The collar is connected to a extra vest which sits on the workers shoulders. On the right side there's a intake with an arrow spelling "Oxygen diluent". It's quite possible that the collar is a oxygen tank which workers can put on in case their filters don't work anymore, sort of an emergency situation since otherwise I can't explain the large collarlike tube.




The vest which is connected to the collar goes under the arms of the worker and just sits on his upper torso. It has some strapping in bright colours on it with D rings for attaching stuff. The vest is probably there to reduce movement of the emergency gasmask.







Their uniform is just a regular work overall, altough it's probably made out of some semi-waterproof material due to the rubberlike appearance. It has a zipper going across the entire body, encasing it like a C with the opening being the middle, main zipper. No idea what this could be for, maybe a large pocket were the worker can put his tools. The overall has severall reflective stripes on it, the white markings on the CPs are very obviously not the same. The overall get's dirtier from the chest and starts to be covered in mud when reaching the knees.



The workers wear tipless wool gloves, showing magnificently clean fingers.


The shoes seem to be some random boots, they're well covered in mud so it's hard to tell.


We can see some sort of rubber suit under the vest, which isn't part of the overall. The workers may have a nbc protection suit under their workoverall.

HL:Alyx Combine NBC worker

The combine nbc, nuclear, biological and chemical worker has a hazmat suit which is made to resist all 3, he can be seen throughout the game dead or zombified in Xen infested areas or around headcrab infested areas. We never get to see one that's allive, we find many of them dead without any cause or wounds.



Their gasmask is the same as the worker mask, they seem to wear the collar underneath a hood since their filterpiece at the mouth is much higher then on the worker without his collar. Their hood, as their entire suit, is yellow and appears to be made out of some kind of rubber material, it seems very strong to the eye and fitting for the suit.



Their upper torso shows that their suit has secondary sleeves for the upper arm, or that the lower arm is just tighter to ease any work. They have combine markings on their right arm and a hose intake on their left chest.




Their back has a upside down oxygen tank which is connected to the hose on their front. It's carrying system and design resembles our modern day system, altough the tank has tons of combine markings on it, proving that it is in fact combine made.





The tank has a 30 written on it with a sharpie, I don't know if there are different numbers on tanks of different npcs but I think not. The tank itself has oxygen clearly written on it, it has some blurry text and a chart that I cannot read either, there's combine language and markings on it, altough there are also english markings.


On the right side of the lower stomach area is the combine specification for the suit: "EB-28" and more combine insignia.


The gloves are attached by some sort of mechanism attached to the suit.


Throughout the game we find tons of spare boots laying around, also the gloves tbh.



They wear the same belt as the Combine grunts, altough here it's to aid the carrying of the oxygen tank, the thigh region of the pants is also wider, reminding me of old school officer pants.

HL:Alyx Combine NBC soldier

The Combine NBC soldier is a new soldier variant in Alyx. They have no visible body armor and wear a nbc suit similiar to those of the nbc worker. They have white and black uniforms with some orange and red markings, in previous trailers we saw them having grey instead of white resemlbing a more militaristic style, altough that was scratched for these.






Their helmet/mask combination is obviously heavily based on the one from Hl2 altough it does have some differences. First of all, the mask has a filter on the left side of it and also no port for one on the right, were as in hl2 there was no side filter at all. It's very clear to see that the mask has a helmet in it when looking at the back of it, there's very nice deatil on the right side, were all the comms are at. On the back of the helmet is a tiny box with a antenna and a red button, the red button is the push to talk for their radio. There's a single solid strap on the back of the helmet, probably to loosen or tighten up the helmet to take it off. On the metal disk protecting the right headset is another larger lever, probably to regulate sound or channels. There's also a small headset microphone on it, it doesn't reach the facepiece at all, altough I suppose the dsign enables it to be so small, there's also a tiny lever on top of that microphone, probably to push it up or down when needed. Throughout the game we notice that the lenses are usually blue, altough they turn orange to signal that they're in combat. The lenses themselfs also have a hexagon pattern on them. The white piece of the mask is a detachable piece of the mask, around the part of the game were you hear the mysterious scientist, you can find a secret bed were there are those pieces of the mask and also lenses of the mask. There it is revealed that the lenses have a cable interface on the back, so the transhumans dont have eyes anymore, but cables there. On the left side of the mask is also a cup from the headset altough it doenst have a metal cover and doesnt have any buttons. On the back you can see the outline of a helmet, I'm quite sure the mask has a helmet, it's exposed at the back and covered on the front by the white part. The white part probably acts as a secondary faceshield to stop incoming bullets from hitting the brain, the fact that ingame they can survive multiple shoots by a assault rifle shows that it works well. The helmet seems to be a MICH 2001 design.


Altough they did cut of some of the backend part, probably to favor head movement. I suppose helmets nowadays still want to protect from fragmentation, which is obviously not a problem for Combine since they don't really expect frag grenades, mortars or arty hitting next to them.





The nbc grunt wears a molle bandolier across his chest, I first thought that's the zipper for his suit sicne it's very standard to have a zipper in that position for these suits, but no. Funny thing is that I assume that someone made a mistake there, since there's actually no way to take that suit off. The bandolier has two metallic grenade mounts on it. The top part of the suit is black, with the orange combine logo on the right and some weird logo on the left. The left logo somewhat reminds me of Black Mesa, possibly a special unit for the Gman containment or a anomalous research unit inspired by Black Mesa? The lower arms are also black and they wear black and grey combat gloves with orange edges.




On the back of the belt is also a small utility pouch and on the left side are two metallic pistol magazine pouches, we can find magazines for the pistol there but combine pulse rifle mags show up there too in the late game.






The backpack reveals even more mystery. The explosive tank on top isn't marked with anything, neither is it connected to anything. No idea why they would be carrying that around with them, maybe it's useful for something. On the left shoulder strap of the backpack is some sort of device connected with a hose going to the left pouch of the backpack, that pouch has then a hose to the right pouch of the backpack, which then connects to nothing. It seems like some sort of drinking tube, the middle of the backpack may have a hydration bladder in it and they can stick that thing into their mask in order to drink, in Hl2 we did see that the transhumans have some sort of nice chrome stomach replacement. Maybe that bladder is filled with liquidfied food which they eat and this is how they can then eat, maybe each pouch then contains something different, in Hl2 we do hear the announcer talking about anti fatigue rations of a couple of miligrams, maybe one pouch has that, one pouch has food and the middle has water, the soldier can then switch around with a button on the device. The hydration bladder thing seems quite plausible since real ones look quite similiar.




They also have some molle straps on their thigs, possibly to attach more pouches and the lower leg parts are also black. They wear pretty standard black jungle boot like looking boots, with oddly no rope in the boots, maybe just a design flaw but I gues grunts like their boots a little looser.

HL:Alyx Combine shotgunner

The new combine shotgunner takes inspiration from Half life 2, altough is entirely different when it comes to basiclly everything here.



The helmet is exactly the same as the one from the grunt and from the officer, they share the same design with just different colouring.





They are very easily to distinguish by their very large shoulder pauldrons. This restricts their arm movement by allot, but also provides extensive protection. I couldn't help but notice that these remind me allot of the new protection system employed by lot's of German police departments.


( I know the word "cuck" comes to mind when looking at the woman on the right ) And yeah these helmets look like Deathstar gunner helmets. Altough it can't be denied that this protection system looks awfully similiar. The shotgunner is mostly a military grey with some blue parts, they remind me of the Nova prospect guards too, in contrast to the shotgunner in Half life 2, which has more red elements.






Their torso has the same weird vest as the combine officer. The vest is just a very large front plate which is attached to a belt carrying system with suspenders. This basiclly doesn't exist in real life, but this and combined with their uniform, it reminds me allot of russian stuff. Their uniform is a very dark grey, almost black russian gorka uniform.


The inspiration is undeniable in my opinion, the combine was always supposed to be very russian when it comes to style, their helmet is probably inspired mainly by the M40 US mask:


And the russian equivalent, the PMK:


Many modern masks also bare similiar design choices, here a US military prototype of a gasmask and helmet combination, as seen by the combine:


And also this more refined version, which almost has no simularieties.


Now to their legs.








Their pants are obviously also gorka pants, they have soft thigh armor and also a hard piece on top, just like on their shoulders.

Their unique shield is on their left arm, it can blind the player upon closing, block any sort of attack and doesn't seem to be destructible.

HL:Alyx Combine machine gunner

The new combine machine gunner, or aka combine suppressor has a completely new design and is entirely new in the Half life universe.







His new gasmask is very clearly inspired by soviet gasmasks, just like the metrocop gasmask it covers the entire head but doesn't seem to include a helmet like on the Combine Soldier gasmask.


The inspiration is probably from the SHMS PRWU soviet gasmask, altough they turned this old school mask into something truly futuristic and terrorfying. It seems like the mask has 2 filter options, left and right, were the combine always uses the right one. The main filter in the middle is probably repurposed as their comms unit, since their mask doesn't have any sort of visible headset or radio unit on the sides or back. On the back it's more similiar to the Metrocop mask, with the sort of grey layering, were the overwatch mask has a visible helmet. They also have really small eyepieces, which also have a honeycomb pattern in them just like all the Overwatch soldiers in Half life Alyx.


Here we can see the helmet of the Overwatch mask.


Here the same layering on the back as seen on the metrocop mask.







Their torso really reminds me of the armors in Wolfenstein The new collossus



I'm pretty sure there was atleast some inspiration there, the proportions of the armor are just extremely similiar imo. They wear the same gorka as seen on the Shotgunner and officer, here it is a light grey. Their vest is black at it's base with multiple light grey soft padding and also multiple black hard padding pads on it. They bear the Combine logo and have a symbol on both of their upper arm pad. I couldnt help but notice that their gloves seem to have a gasmask emblem on them, altough I cant really see what it is. The gloves are regular combat gloves like on all the Combine.







Unlike many other combine, they dont have upper thigh armor, altough their boots are reinforced with padding and some pouches, they also have a huge kneepad on ther left knee, it seems to be customizable so maybe they get two but can remove one to their own preference. The boots reminded me allot of the rocket jump boots from Team Fortress 2.

HL:Alyx Combine Officer

The combine overwatch officer is probably the most classic Combine soldier in alyx, he has the most similarities with the former Combine Overwatch seen in Half life 2.






His mask is the same as seen on the Shotgunner and Grunt, altough it bears it's own respective colours. The Officer has a large backpack with a radio which looks like a An/Prc117 or something similiar. The radio would only take up the top half of the backpack, so we don't know what's below that, unless it's the size of a ww2 radio.



The Overwatch officer can probably reach all the Combine under his command from anywere with this, but since the grunts don't have such a big radio and all seem to communicate back to command, it's probably so big so that he can contact Airsupport or re-enforcements from the citadel or the nearest Combine stronghold.






Interestingly enough, the backpack is attached to the officers harness system, which just like on the Combine shotgunner, holds just a front plate and some pouches, here it also holds up the backpack. The odd thing about this is the fact that we don't see any way to take it off, also the officer cannot take off or reach his backpack in combat, so someone would have to do it for him. In ww2 (as seen in previous picture ) a grunt would wear the huge radio for the officer, so the officer can use it. So by logic, a grunt should wear the backpack for the officer, but here he does it himself, so that only a grunt could interact with it. The backpack is completely realistic too, bearing real molle on it and has 2 side pouches and one front pouch with unknown items inside.





They have a protective collar, protective shoulder pads and a protective elbow pad too. The elbow pad is just attached with one strap onto the arm, the shoulder pads are connected to the vest with a strap and are then held down with another strap. We can also see a padding pad on their vests shoulder straps. Both of the arms have the Combine elite symbol on it, altough they have a vortigaunt skull instead of a human one on it. Their vest seems to be heavily inspired by russian Defender vests which have a unique system of having two seperate plates in them, just like the officer has. And also the new Russian Ratnik system vests seems very similiar.




The combine forces were always supposed to be somewhat russian so this does make sense to me.



Their legs feature the two thigh pads as in Half life 2, some new kneepads and also two large pouches which hang down from their belt.

HL:Alyx Zombine

With the help of the headcrab infection system mod

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2051259080

and the ports by

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2034936975

I was also able to get Zombine from Alyx.

Here the Combine Heavy/shotgunner


Here the Combine Officer


The Combine Grunt


The Combine machine gunner/suppressor


Combine worker


Combine hazmat worker


Combine Metrocop

HL:Alyx Combine weaponry

The Combine in HL:Alyx use many old classics but they have tons of new weapons too.

The first new weapon is the pulse smg. It is a smaller version of the AR-2 from Half life 2. It's used by only the grunt soldiers and can be used by ALyx too when she finds a unbinded one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEhP0feJipA






The one the grunts use is just the basic smg with the extended magazine upgrade.

The Combine Officer uses a more advanced version of the pulse smg, his rifle looks almost exactly like the AR-2 but is still much smaller. The AR-2 in hl2 is way too big for real life, guns in reality aren't that massive, so the AR-2 in hl2 wouldnt be same size in newer games, since the huge size would definitly break immersion. Based on that I would say he uses the AR-2.





The size and proportions of the rifle are very realistic and believable here, in contrast to the one from Half life 2.


It may not seem like it at first glance, but it's massively oversized.

The combine supressor uses a huge heavy machine gun.








It's gigantic, allot larger then a real life minigun and would be hella heavy. It seems to have inspiration from the WW1 Lewis gun when it comes to the barrel and obviously from the AR-2 when it comes to the weapon.


The combine shotgunner aka heavy uses a large shotgun that deals massive damage. I remember him saying "sending spikes" in his voicelines, so it may be a railgun that shoots huge spikes like the railway rifle from Fallout 4, it does looks somewhat similiar when it comes to size and proportions.




I also noticed that the shotgun used by the player is the same shotgun used by the Combine shotgunner. It's quite obvious that the "end" piece is the player used shotgun, just with a longer barrel and all the extra pieces attached.












The grenades in Alyx remind me allot of a split in half graphics card, I can't get it out of my head just look at them.


There's also a combine flashlight, used by the Combine Officer/Captain.




And finally the manhack.

HL:Alyx Without helmet

Throughout Alyx we see fallen Combine soldiers with partially or completely exposed helmets. In contrast to Half life 2, the Helmet is permanently attached to the soldiers here, even the eyes themselfs have been replaced with lenses. This idea was probably scrapped by the Combine, since humans dont like having a gasmask screwed into their head and their eyes removed. It probably dehumanized combine too much and made recruitment allot harder, also it's allot harder to treat wounds with a masked attached to your head, it can't be replaced easily too, if the mask fails then the user is blind and cannot take it of either. So making it a standalone piece of equipment is quite logical for the Combine.







We can see that there's a exo skeleton inbedded in the soldiers skull on the front of the head. There's also cables sticking out for the lenses. After witnessing the "mysterious" aka related to a hl2 character :) woman on comms with a advisor. We pass a hidden shelter from some suvivor were you can see lenses with ports in the back for cables, so this checks out. The masks are quite huge in front tbh, idk how a soldier can hold up his head with such a huge thing on his face, they must have some neck upgrade or there's no way they can wear that for longer periods of time, wearing a regular old real helmet and gasmask is already quite exhausting from my experience. One thing that is interesting is the fact that the right, main communication headset piece is part of the outside, while the second, the left one is part of the inside of the mask. Maybe one is for a wider range, while the other is for your own squad mates. The lower part of the mask sits tightly on the face and reminds me allot of Darth Vaders helmets from the inside when you see it being put on Anakin in Episode 3 ( Spoiler allert Darth Vader is Anaking ) if you didn't know that then why do you even exist? There's also two square shaped cutouts at the back of the grunts head, it could only be seen on the grunt and not the combine shotgunner. I gues the shotgunner doesn't require allot of tactical knowledge since he just moves forward slowly to blow your brains out.

HL:Alyx Combine Overall

Dat buttox doe

Sources

The headcrab infection system mod:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2051259080

The HL:Alyx Combine ports:

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2034936975

I also used this weapon reskin mod

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2035609495

And also the HL:Alyx hud mod

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2035527033

All pictures of the Combine were done by me, wiki articles coming soon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEhP0feJipA

The video I got the pictures from the pulse smg from.

https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half-Life:_Alyx#Enemies

Pictures of All Combine weaponry from here.

The Artwork used for the guide is from Katwool, I asked for his permission to use it and it's all his work allone, check out his other content since he is quite talented IMHO!

https://steamcommunity.com/id/Katvool

All the weapons models and much better versions of the Combine were ported by this guy, his models look way better and you can remove everything on their body, he is the MVP right here.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/jQueary

[dsaS]

https://youtu.be/Cx9yP7U7bjI

[dsaS]

https://youtu.be/AnVDEHDpDI4

[idiot 3]

https://youtu.be/-4gJnfs8EMk

[idiot 3]

https://youtu.be/DdmNYNkcwKE

[Some dumbass]

The explosive tank is there because there were meant to be Officers with flamethrowers (or atleast according a comment)

[Ratnik™]

well u can just download the alyx combine mod for gmod and get all the viewpoints u need but your welcome

[dboy]

Thank you so much for this guide. I've been using it for my own metrocop helmet [imgur.com] and I couldn't have gotten the detail and inspiration for it without this guide. You're the best

[Templarhelmet]

*left shoulder

[Templarhelmet]

I think the gas tank at the back of the grunts is just oxygen, and the hose on their right shoulder connects to the bottom front port of their mask

[boxman]

MY DUDE! THIS HELPED A LOT! oh my god, this showed me something i never, ever knew. i never knew Alyx Soldiers had metal plates in their face (if not their body, we don't know and they dont show them stripped). i really like that revelation. thank you.