@@Say-What i have no idea the combine synth's have always sounded extra dimensional to me. But that the strider would go as far as to start saying things that 1 could translate. I'm not sure, the vortigaunts spoke their own language something they called flux shifting. It seems like other species couldn't understand it because of a differing auditory anatomy. Not sure if the same could be applicable to the strider.
@@WLRmarko that is probably unlikely. That is like saying that the language the combine overwatch voice is speaking is the combine language. The combine is composed of a lot of species.
Yeah, I always thought the striders were just cybernetic animals, but a lot of these new sounds do seem like speech. Maybe they’re smarter than I thought.
Seeing Striders complete construction tasks in HL:A and the way their vocalizations are more diverse makes me think that they have a degree of intelligence not seen in Half-Life. Some of these sounds seem almost like some sort of alien speech, and I like the idea that Striders aren't just dumb brutes; they're intelligent beings absorbed by the Combine at some point, and are capable of (albeit alien forms of) speech, intelligence, and maybe even emotion.
They are, the striders have brain and blood, but have been bioengineered by the combine. Its their MO..conquer planets, enslave the strongest species, and modify them to serve as soldiers. Rinse and repeat.
well duh, all life forms absorbed by the combine have very high intelligence when viewing them outside of combat, otherwise there would be no point in absorbing them. a creature needs to have some basic intelligence in able to graft weaponry onto it/modify its body in ways like the strider, hunter, gunship, dropship, etc. otherwise there'd be no point in making the synth, because it would have no idea how to use its weapons, its new body functions or anything, and it wouldn't be able to distinguish from friend/foe targets.
@@ariabritton9669 My distinction, put more carefully, was thus: Striders seemed in HL:A to have human-like intelligence, whereas in HL2 they seemed more on par with, say, a dog or a cat. They were capable predators and experienced distress when attacked, but they did not give the impression that they understood strategy. In HL:A, as noted in my above post, it seems they possess some form of language and can perform complicated construction work, which would mean their intelligence was far more versatile than I thought before. A comment below: "Yeah, I always thought the striders were just cybernetic animals, but a lot of these new sounds do seem like speech. Maybe they’re smarter than I thought." sums up my thoughts.
They have full emotion, and intelligence. Hunters and striders communicate to eachother. Striders still have shown emotion as when they die you hear a wavy louder roar than the default bass boosted grouches. like how someone would scream until their voice ran out of air as they died.
They aren't all that different (except for the apparent lack of whale-like whines). HL2 striders made those robotic techno noises too. Feels more like a re-polish than a change.
I could be the Minority here but I genuinely like the newest sound themes for the Strider Makes it clear that these creatures/synths are once a sentient species of beings (2:42 sounds pretty organic tbh)
Sometimes I think that these are original strider sound, but maybe it is a very weird specie that sounds like dupstep for us. after half life 2 they are a lot slower and has a long woooooo probably because the combine modification stuff.
Fairly sure they filtered the normal combine voices even more heavily. If you really wanted, you could probably go thru all the combine voice files and line them up with whatever the strider is saying around 3 minutes in.
@@TheBGProductions1000 The music kills a lot of the sounds we have in the game, if you search here on youtube for the city 17 ambience you'll see how good it is, though it just goes unnoticed. At the beginning there's also that a weird noise making the city ambience inaudible too.
If you look at it, you notice that most if not all of the "transformer esque" sounds are made by the maintenance striders at the start, the one later has much more high pitched sounds as well as some slightly edited sounds from half life 2.
Probably because construction striders had to communicate back and forth as well as warn citizens, well, less warn but more shoo them away so they don't impede operations too much. I think Combat Striders only listen to orders, while Construction Striders probably had to report maintenance data and whatnot
To be honest, the Striders in HL2 sounded completely unique. I have not heard anything like them before or since. These sound generic sci-fi, I swear they use some of the same sounds as the aliens in Crysis 2 or Decepticons in Micheal Bay Transformer movies.
I agree to an extent, the sounds in the beginning were really good. However in the game they sounded like Reapers from Mass Effect series, kinda hoped for the signature sound to come back in a new fashion.
@@vonbraunprimarch in half life alyx I feel like they wanted to flesh out the combine and make them more realistic to a actual alien invading force. The striders your hearing in this video are human controlled and controlled by electronics presumably, therefore they sound different. They are even classified as a differation to regular striders in the game files
What people here don't realize is that striders are a combine recreation of the original creature, meaning it is meant to sound robotic, probably the reason it sounds so weird is that this is before HL 2, meaning the technology for the strider isn`t perfected yet.
God, these types of comments are so f*cking annoying. You are literally just making shit up. The Striders aren't new technology like human soldiers, there's no place for this endlessly repeated excuses for all the changes that "ooh, it wasn't perfected Combine technology". Like, STFU. Striders were perfected Combine technology long before they came to Earth. And even if they were made from Earth squirrels or whatever you think, what evidence do you have that they were perfected over time? Combine soldiers are at least obviously more advanced in HL2 than the grunts in HLA, but you think Striders are more advanced because they sound different? Come on
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 Ted Backman disagrees… “According to Ted Backman, Striders that are seen on Earth are not biological creatures with cybernetic implants but, rather, synthetic copies of their natural counterparts that were retrofitted for the needs of the Combine. Backman states that Striders are scanned in their natural environments by the Combine and the data acquired is used to build their synthetic version that is used for the Combine war machine, as well as maintenance and building.”
In the beginning of half life Alyx there is a certain combine soldier i see throughout the game, they use shields have more heavier armor, would it be possible to upload the dialogue from those as they sound a lot different
They're the same exact lines as grunts with different post processing, I included it in the download of the overwatch files. Unless you really just want a video, I can post one.
@@janglejingle5937 Certain lines are definitely a different person speaking but they reused a lot as well through every combine unit. There are some files like the idle01-09 that are actually different or just cut differently. Also some types have a few files specific to them, however every type of combine have lines were they refer to themselves as suppressors... never actually use them in-game like that though. The combine soldiers probably have had as much time into them as the main characters when it came to voice acting lol.
I don't know, they sound "cooler" but the high tech sound they make feels a bit generic compared to the original, the original striders were menacing as fuck the first time you fought them, but I can't play hl:alyx since i'm too poor to have a powerful enough pc+vr headset so who knows maybe in game they are way better
2:41 it sounds like the strider before being transformed by teh combine trying to reach out to other striders in their native language, or something like that. But in hl2 they have been stripped of everything except combat roots
I loved Mike Morasky’s scores and sounds for _Left 4 Dead_ and _Portal 2._ It was inevitable when Kelly Bailey left Valve, that there will be changes if another Half-Life game was to be made. I know the Industrial music genre was already niche when it peaked during the 90’s and 2000’s so I wasn’t counting on it returning, so I was grateful to hear many of Kelly Bailey’s recognizable tracks make a return. But why do the synths and robots now have to sound like Bayformers? The synths are biomechanical machine animal hybrids, but they now sound like pure robots out of Portal. Why do so many of the sound effects seem like they were generic sci-fi tracks taken from free libraries? What was the point of replacing Merle Dandridge when she sounds the same, wants to reprise her role, was already recording lines (A bunch of Merle’s versions are still in the files for the game that dataminers found.) and is bigger than ever with BAFTA, Golden Globe, Tony, and Emmy nominations and wins and starring in her own award winning show opposite of Oprah? I know Robert Giullaume had sadly passed away a while ago, so unfortunately y we were never going to hear his soothing voice perform anything new again. But could they not have found a voice that sounds remotely like him? I just don’t understand these decisions. Am I being too picky and spoiled for complaining about this?
I don't think you are. I too am scratching my head over these decisions. I think we're upset because such a huge amount of detail was put into the game's art direction, so why didn't they do the same for it's sound design?
You are asbolutely not being picky, I really am perplexed about these transitions. They had this unique Alien sound in the original, here they sound like generic sci-fi tripods. And transformer decepticons for some reason
@jou taama The classic Strider fought near the end of the game makes the exact same sounds as this newer Strider which just looks like a regular Strider wearing equipment.
a lot of people seem to misinterpret valve's saying they wanted a younger voice as them saying Merle's voice sounds too old now in comparison to when HL2 was released, but i don't think that's the case. as i understood it, they wanted a voice that's even younger than *that*, because in HL:A, everything is set in the past, and Alyx is 19. of course you'd want a bit of a younger sounding voice for someone... younger
@@Wallhammer480 They're actually synthetic copies of the real aliens. The devs confirmed this after HLA, but we already had evidence suggesting this in hl2
I am a huge fan of Half Life, i loved the HL2 strider sound but this one is more dark and oppressive, i like it a lot It makes the strider way more badass
To those saying that these striders sound ‘robotic’ compared to the HL2 striders I say… where? The only sounds striders made in HL2 is the creaking of their legs moving, and the screams of pain. This one clicks, and chirps, and bellows, and roars. They sound about as robotic as I would expect an animal encased in a metal exoskeleton would. I will agree, I like the old warp cannon was much better, but the suppressing fire sounds great.
12 years ago someone made a mod that did replace the hl2 strider sounds with me3 reaper sounds, and it's exactly like that, you can look it up on youtube
the only combine synth with no visible eyes is the dropship, actually. hunters have a cluster of pale eyes underneath the lower flechette launcher, on one side, and striders have 2 or 3 pairs of eyes along their sides. shield scanner has a camera, and gunship should go without saying
Some of the sounds sound like they're trying to say something but they just can't due to how modified they are by the combine. Like the sounds around 3:36 it sounds like they're trying to say something but end up failing.
This game's sound design is some of the coolest I've ever heard. It's surreal hearing all these iconic sounds from a decade and a half ago be updated like this.
Let's not forget this were the striders before half life 2. Even the line worker strider seems to twitch a lot, meaning it's not entirely controlled. In half life 2 striders are completely stupidifed, all they know is shoot rebels. Striders must've been a new addition to the combine arsenal when they invaded earth, and since they must've been trying their best to remove their intelligence. Judgning from the fact that the strider can speak here, it means that it was an intelligent creature, probably like a vortigaunt, which made it hard to remove its conciousness. Just like humans, the grunts while being modified, still had their memories, so removing all memories to get the combine soldiers we had in half life 2, it must've taken them years to achieve it.
That first time when you recieve the radio and go out and you see the giant strider made me scared af. Like I am not really scared by horror games, only jumpscares make me jump, but I literally just ran back in. It reminded me of one of my nightmares as a child.
you know how combine voices sound like garbled somewhat electronic messes (sometimes), thats probably why striders sound like dubstep aswell they tryna communicate normally but their new synth "voiceboxes" ig cause their voice to be this shit
I noticed that the striders have different animation for crouching, rather than spread their legs to the side like in HL2 their legs bend backward then the knees bend fore to meet the ground beside the strider
I wish they kept these for the construction striders and used the original sounds for the normal strider. Strider sounds are way too good to be replaced by generic robot sounds.
What I think is very interesting is that the HLA striders may be completely different versions than the ones seen in HL2. These early prototypes had all the key features, but they were much stronger and acted more as an elite unit. Then by Half Life 2, the chance of rebellion became less and less likely, so they switched to the weaker, less armored variations. I also believe that the one from the train station in HL2 EP1 is a strong variation bc it has heavier fire power and it is much stronger.
That's possible. If we can follow an idea of temporal cannoncity. The combine seen in the game are probrably prototype transhumans before the combine double down on the models they need. Mass production models galore. Not to mention the strider could be a much newer model than we give credit for as it could be a modification of the hound eye along with the hunters. As both are referred to under the strider designation in halflife 2. One mini one just strider. They could be specifically designed for different regions. Hunters/ministriders for forested regions for pack hunting like wolves. Urban enviornments for striders to gain height advantage. Those seen in HLA are probrably test units for hl2s models. Which were converted from halflife's houndeye.
never seen this much sympathy and wonder about the feelings of an enemy character in a video game. every video about the sounds synths make has lots of people showing sympathy for them and talking about how they must feel. honestly amazing community
Wish they used the old firing sound for the main gun but gave it even more of a thump. Speed it up a little and lower the pitch a tat, and it sounds even more like the fleshtearing gauss particles the striders cannons are, AND it would still have that iconic feel to it. There's only ONE firing sound like the Strider firing sound of HL2 in all the games I've ever played.
I don't understand why the devs paid extra attention to all the NPCs to sound like the originals, except for the Strider. The OG Strider had such a unique sound that really added to its character. Now it's just a generic alien robot sound... why did they do this to my boy?! 😭
Well the one's you see at the start of the game are fully mechanical being driven by the combine and seem to only be used for construction not organic like the HL2 varient so it makes sense that the sounds are more robotic.
@@SirBlues-wz7ld I can understand that. But there's no excuse for the one you encounter before you enter the vault, as that one doesn't have the robot exoskeleton.
@@SirBlues-wz7ld yeah I know right! I was quietly telling myself after the intro that there's nothing to worry about and they're just mechanically enhanced versions. But then after the final encounter my worst fears were confirmed 😅
3:34 You cannot tell me this isn't some language, alien or otherwise. It almost sounds like English, just with a distorted synth voice. Maybe they know English to allow the other Overwatch forces to communicate commands? It is at least alien... It could just be my monkey brain hearing English from nothing, but there could be a reason why they would speak it and not some other language. I don't know if Combine really wants to be too multilingual, at most knowing the most prominent language(s) of the world they're conquering, until it's probably no longer useful to them. That's just my theory, and it could be full of holes but from my knowledge of Half-Life it makes sense to me.
It is English, I heard something about "Casualties" when it hits Russel's drone. It's just very distorted, maybe they didn't intend it as a voice, but as sound effect.
What if the metal-ly sounds are vocoders, since they'd have to communicate back and forth, meanwhile the sounds in half life 2 are more like their more original vocalizations
I think I actually prefer these sounds over the og HL2 strider sounds. I still think the HL2 ones sound unique and threatening, but I think they sound a lot more terrifying in Alyx.
+Mauricio Jara there were two differentiated variants of Striders in HalfLife Alyx - Perhaps these Striders were more Original and still had the capacity of limited intellect before being completely integrated into combine universal union
Man a lot people are saying the new sfx suck but to me they are sfx of pure gold to. keep in mind that it could be a different version of the strider this game takes place before the second game
also combine get creatures from other planets and make them into things like the strider so i think that the creature before it was turned into a strider could have been a bio mechanism
These definitely would fit for the construction strider or maybe an elite strider, but i feel like the regular standard combat strider should have revamped sounds more akin to hl2
Never thought I'd hear a strider talk 3:36
The strider literally sounds like a transformer now though
Do you think it's there own native language or like some sort of combine language?
@@Say-What i have no idea the combine synth's have always sounded extra dimensional to me.
But that the strider would go as far as to start saying things that 1 could translate. I'm not sure, the vortigaunts spoke their own language something they called flux shifting. It seems like other species couldn't understand it because of a differing auditory anatomy. Not sure if the same could be applicable to the strider.
That's probably the combine language
@@WLRmarko that is probably unlikely. That is like saying that the language the combine overwatch voice is speaking is the combine language.
The combine is composed of a lot of species.
Yeah, I always thought the striders were just cybernetic animals, but a lot of these new sounds do seem like speech. Maybe they’re smarter than I thought.
Seeing Striders complete construction tasks in HL:A and the way their vocalizations are more diverse makes me think that they have a degree of intelligence not seen in Half-Life. Some of these sounds seem almost like some sort of alien speech, and I like the idea that Striders aren't just dumb brutes; they're intelligent beings absorbed by the Combine at some point, and are capable of (albeit alien forms of) speech, intelligence, and maybe even emotion.
They are, the striders have brain and blood, but have been bioengineered by the combine. Its their MO..conquer planets, enslave the strongest species, and modify them to serve as soldiers. Rinse and repeat.
well duh, all life forms absorbed by the combine have very high intelligence when viewing them outside of combat, otherwise there would be no point in absorbing them. a creature needs to have some basic intelligence in able to graft weaponry onto it/modify its body in ways like the strider, hunter, gunship, dropship, etc. otherwise there'd be no point in making the synth, because it would have no idea how to use its weapons, its new body functions or anything, and it wouldn't be able to distinguish from friend/foe targets.
@@SirKolass no, they are quite literally alive. hence in episode two when dog rips the brain out of one, it dies.
@@ariabritton9669 My distinction, put more carefully, was thus: Striders seemed in HL:A to have human-like intelligence, whereas in HL2 they seemed more on par with, say, a dog or a cat. They were capable predators and experienced distress when attacked, but they did not give the impression that they understood strategy. In HL:A, as noted in my above post, it seems they possess some form of language and can perform complicated construction work, which would mean their intelligence was far more versatile than I thought before.
A comment below: "Yeah, I always thought the striders were just cybernetic animals, but a lot of these new sounds do seem like speech. Maybe they’re smarter than I thought." sums up my thoughts.
They have full emotion, and intelligence. Hunters and striders communicate to eachother. Striders still have shown emotion as when they die you hear a wavy louder roar than the default bass boosted grouches. like how someone would scream until their voice ran out of air as they died.
1:07 Love it.
I dunno it feels weird hearing their new sounds. It's like changing the sounds of a TIE fighter in Star Wars.
They aren't all that different (except for the apparent lack of whale-like whines). HL2 striders made those robotic techno noises too. Feels more like a re-polish than a change.
@@msfritz9158 agree
it still feels weird to see any NPC, and not have the basic half life 2 animations, same with the graphics, still getting used to that
2:54 tho
@Falbert ALBUS but game is made AFTER hl2
Too bad there wasn't any of the iconic wails when it died
That would have been great
Not gonna lie man, I'm actually really upset about that 😔
I am so fucking upset about that
On my second run through of the game I actually did hear parts of the old death sound when it died. But they were seriously subtle
The death sound was there
3:35 "armature"
3:36 "detecting" something
3:37 "ades"
3:38 "lets see" or "proceed"
3:40 "targets moved"
3:42 "yeah boss"
3:43 "scanning for" something
Strider intelligent?
@@williamking1081 it sounds like its actually saying words right
@@somerandomguy9292 yes that is what is sounding like to me too
@@williamking1081 i haven't seen a single commet that did the line of the stiders. Me and you are the only ones that can here words
@@somerandomguy9292 it cool tho' to think the striders had some form of intelligence instead of being big brutes.
3:40 Oh, they talk cool.
@Temuulen Och ?
Indeed
They seem to say « proceed ».
Colossus from sc2
I could be the Minority here but I genuinely like the newest sound themes for the Strider
Makes it clear that these creatures/synths are once a sentient species of beings (2:42 sounds pretty organic tbh)
Kinda sounds like whale calls
Sometimes I think that these are original strider sound, but maybe it is a very weird specie that sounds like dupstep for us. after half life 2 they are a lot slower and has a long woooooo probably because the combine modification stuff.
@@sgtmartinez1723 The HL2 striders sound way more like whale calls than this
Bro 2:42 doesn't sound organic at all, it's a very robotic electrical sound
@@vibaj16 whales and dolphins also made chirps and trills that the strider makes, too
I'm pretty sure these sounds are vocoder-based, so that makes me really curious whether and what the original voice was saying...
It says "How do awesome to voice im still vocodeddddd"
Fairly sure they filtered the normal combine voices even more heavily. If you really wanted, you could probably go thru all the combine voice files and line them up with whatever the strider is saying around 3 minutes in.
Heavy compression (mostly ott) with distortion, overdrive and something like disperser or a vocoder^^
There's another video of these Strider sounds where a guy in the comments said it was speaking Russian.
3:38 it almost sounds like the Strider is saying "We'll see" if you listen hard enough
wussy
3:36 *TRANSFORMERS MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE*
Transformers more than meets the see
He's kicking it.
Overwatch says stop kicking it.
Spoiler:
I was disappointed at when you kill one of the striders it didn’t make the famous ‘WOOOOoo WO WO’ sound.
It did, but it was really subtle.
@@STRAIGHTEDGEDOMINATIONHad to replay to confirm and it does make the classic death noise but the music is super loud.
Is it in this video?
Soup42 oh right oof
@@TheBGProductions1000 The music kills a lot of the sounds we have in the game, if you search here on youtube for the city 17 ambience you'll see how good it is, though it just goes unnoticed. At the beginning there's also that a weird noise making the city ambience inaudible too.
I miss the old strider sounds
We all do 😢
The strider you fight at the end sounds almost identical to the HL2 striders tho
@@afungai1649 only when it dies tho nigga
@@afungai1649 no it doesn't. It only makes a very vague OG Strider noise when it dies and even then it's nothing like the OG death noise.
I like how these things actually sound like cyborgs but I’m not disagreeing.
If you look at it, you notice that most if not all of the "transformer esque" sounds are made by the maintenance striders at the start, the one later has much more high pitched sounds as well as some slightly edited sounds from half life 2.
The Striders you see being used for construction have a lot more mechanical parts and electronics slapped on them too.
Probably because construction striders had to communicate back and forth as well as warn citizens, well, less warn but more shoo them away so they don't impede operations too much. I think Combat Striders only listen to orders, while Construction Striders probably had to report maintenance data and whatnot
To be honest, the Striders in HL2 sounded completely unique. I have not heard anything like them before or since. These sound generic sci-fi, I swear they use some of the same sounds as the aliens in Crysis 2 or Decepticons in Micheal Bay Transformer movies.
I agree to an extent, the sounds in the beginning were really good. However in the game they sounded like Reapers from Mass Effect series, kinda hoped for the signature sound to come back in a new fashion.
I believe the new construction striders have different sounds, where as the normal strider canonically sounds the same
@@vonbraunprimarch in half life alyx I feel like they wanted to flesh out the combine and make them more realistic to a actual alien invading force. The striders your hearing in this video are human controlled and controlled by electronics presumably, therefore they sound different. They are even classified as a differation to regular striders in the game files
@@gootar5045 fair enough
@@gootar5045 Realistic alien invasion?
What people here don't realize is that striders are a combine recreation of the original creature, meaning it is meant to sound robotic, probably the reason it sounds so weird is that this is before HL 2, meaning the technology for the strider isn`t perfected yet.
No, combine synths are modified biologial beings, just like the soldiers
God, these types of comments are so f*cking annoying. You are literally just making shit up. The Striders aren't new technology like human soldiers, there's no place for this endlessly repeated excuses for all the changes that "ooh, it wasn't perfected Combine technology". Like, STFU. Striders were perfected Combine technology long before they came to Earth. And even if they were made from Earth squirrels or whatever you think, what evidence do you have that they were perfected over time? Combine soldiers are at least obviously more advanced in HL2 than the grunts in HLA, but you think Striders are more advanced because they sound different? Come on
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 Ted Backman disagrees… “According to Ted Backman, Striders that are seen on Earth are not biological creatures with cybernetic implants but, rather, synthetic copies of their natural counterparts that were retrofitted for the needs of the Combine. Backman states that Striders are scanned in their natural environments by the Combine and the data acquired is used to build their synthetic version that is used for the Combine war machine, as well as maintenance and building.”
HL:A takes place before HL2?
@@kazuma8486yes, how could you not know that if you’re already enough of a half life fan to be watching this video?
TECH NOISES
Tech RUclipsrs noise when the new iPhone comes out
In the beginning of half life Alyx there is a certain combine soldier i see throughout the game, they use shields have more heavier armor, would it be possible to upload the dialogue from those as they sound a lot different
They're the same exact lines as grunts with different post processing, I included it in the download of the overwatch files. Unless you really just want a video, I can post one.
That'd be nice
@@TheBGProductions1000 if that's the case, why are they credited to different actors?
@@janglejingle5937 Certain lines are definitely a different person speaking but they reused a lot as well through every combine unit. There are some files like the idle01-09 that are actually different or just cut differently. Also some types have a few files specific to them, however every type of combine have lines were they refer to themselves as suppressors... never actually use them in-game like that though. The combine soldiers probably have had as much time into them as the main characters when it came to voice acting lol.
They're also known as "Wallhammer". (Only the Combine call them that.)
They're also known as Combine Chargers.
These strider sound are more menacing like the tripods from War of the World
I don't know, they sound "cooler" but the high tech sound they make feels a bit generic compared to the original, the original striders were menacing as fuck the first time you fought them, but I can't play hl:alyx since i'm too poor to have a powerful enough pc+vr headset so who knows maybe in game they are way better
@@willful759 these are worker striders.
@@anormalhuman9329 the strider you encounter at the end isn't a worker, and that sounded like a generic robot too 😩
@@AldenDoble Maybe the combine changed the sounds
2:41 it sounds like the strider before being transformed by teh combine trying to reach out to other striders in their native language, or something like that. But in hl2 they have been stripped of everything except combat roots
3:35 Striders sound like the Ceph from Crysis 2 & 3 when they talk.
Thank You! Been waiting for this one most of all!
I loved Mike Morasky’s scores and sounds for _Left 4 Dead_ and _Portal 2._ It was inevitable when Kelly Bailey left Valve, that there will be changes if another Half-Life game was to be made. I know the Industrial music genre was already niche when it peaked during the 90’s and 2000’s so I wasn’t counting on it returning, so I was grateful to hear many of Kelly Bailey’s recognizable tracks make a return. But why do the synths and robots now have to sound like Bayformers? The synths are biomechanical machine animal hybrids, but they now sound like pure robots out of Portal. Why do so many of the sound effects seem like they were generic sci-fi tracks taken from free libraries?
What was the point of replacing Merle Dandridge when she sounds the same, wants to reprise her role, was already recording lines (A bunch of Merle’s versions are still in the files for the game that dataminers found.) and is bigger than ever with BAFTA, Golden Globe, Tony, and Emmy nominations and wins and starring in her own award winning show opposite of Oprah? I know Robert Giullaume had sadly passed away a while ago, so unfortunately y we were never going to hear his soothing voice perform anything new again. But could they not have found a voice that sounds remotely like him?
I just don’t understand these decisions. Am I being too picky and spoiled for complaining about this?
I don't think you are. I too am scratching my head over these decisions. I think we're upset because such a huge amount of detail was put into the game's art direction, so why didn't they do the same for it's sound design?
You are asbolutely not being picky, I really am perplexed about these transitions. They had this unique Alien sound in the original, here they sound like generic sci-fi tripods. And transformer decepticons for some reason
@jou taama The classic Strider fought near the end of the game makes the exact same sounds as this newer Strider which just looks like a regular Strider wearing equipment.
like with some of these i can understand because its a earlier version of strider, and i don't mind the new alyx voice? but yea it's really weird
a lot of people seem to misinterpret valve's saying they wanted a younger voice as them saying Merle's voice sounds too old now in comparison to when HL2 was released, but i don't think that's the case. as i understood it, they wanted a voice that's even younger than *that*, because in HL:A, everything is set in the past, and Alyx is 19. of course you'd want a bit of a younger sounding voice for someone... younger
They sound more mechanical in this game
Isn't that part of what a strider is? Flesh and steel?
@@williamking1081 steel and steel
@@SirKolass I thought the strider was just still an alien but “combinized”
@@Wallhammer480 They're actually synthetic copies of the real aliens. The devs confirmed this after HLA, but we already had evidence suggesting this in hl2
@@SirKolass ok thanks
ASMR starts here: 1:27
*Future noises*
@@tigran010 no it was strider voice
@@hhbkawaii ( ͡° _つ ͡°)
@@hhbkawaiiNo they future noises stfu
People who dont get the joke
can the City 17 Workers Union please hire me so I can drive one of these please.
Sounds more futuristic and terrifying. Also deep bass in headphones.
Indeed
They sound quite generic now IMO.
@@tompeck5495 well, that's IYO. IMO even generic is cool and likeable.
@@tompeck5495 :)
@@timur5241 Fair enough :)
You can hear it saying "Target hostile moved" and "Target hostile hospitalized" in some point of the video, around 3:40
Never thought I'd hear a strider speak proper english.
3:34 strider trying to make dubstep?...
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I am a huge fan of Half Life, i loved the HL2 strider sound but this one is more dark and oppressive, i like it a lot
It makes the strider way more badass
I agree,this sounds a lot cooler
So glad i grew up with "UuuUUaUauu" but damn this is better
I still don't see how this is better
Miss the old sounds for nostalgia :(
Yesh
This game is prequel so it tell us how was is like before gordon freeman arrive
@@sosnoketupon7213 before freeman was alive? jesus christ wtf are you saying man
@@ShotokanEditor sorry about that must be my cousin reply a year ago he doesn't know much about the lore though
Sounds more like Reaper sounds from Mass Effect
To those saying that these striders sound ‘robotic’ compared to the HL2 striders I say… where? The only sounds striders made in HL2 is the creaking of their legs moving, and the screams of pain.
This one clicks, and chirps, and bellows, and roars. They sound about as robotic as I would expect an animal encased in a metal exoskeleton would.
I will agree, I like the old warp cannon was much better, but the suppressing fire sounds great.
Warp cannon is the only think I didn't like in Alyx. Everything else I liked. Reminds me a lot of the Hunters.
1:28 imagine hearing this in generation zero
When a strider apear in the game, I think I’m watching a transformers movie because of the sounds that it produces.
It’s like the tripods from war of the worlds.
I’m think it would be amazing to mix old and new sounds for new unique and at the same time nostalgic effect
That's literally what they did. Listen to the stuff around 2:40
And the death sound has the hl2 death sound mixed in.
the strider sound like reaper from mass effect 3
12 years ago someone made a mod that did replace the hl2 strider sounds with me3 reaper sounds, and it's exactly like that, you can look it up on youtube
maybe that "talking" is some kind of alien echolocation. There are no eyes on most synths, so it'd explain why they're so noisy
the only combine synth with no visible eyes is the dropship, actually. hunters have a cluster of pale eyes underneath the lower flechette launcher, on one side, and striders have 2 or 3 pairs of eyes along their sides. shield scanner has a camera, and gunship should go without saying
Some of the sounds sound like they're trying to say something but they just can't due to how modified they are by the combine. Like the sounds around 3:36 it sounds like they're trying to say something but end up failing.
:(
Even if they could speak, what made you assume they speak English?
@@Pendemic1 this message was from a year ago. i honestly don't fucking know
@@questarcher7921ambatufakinnat
I think seeing as they're aliens, we don't have much indication on whether or not they're speaking as successfully as they'd like
*I loved this Strider version because it gave off this eerie Michael Bay feeling! Amazing!*
They sound allot more robotic, in HL2 Striders sounded more organic and more like living creatures
at 3:44 the strider says; "Weapons Primed", I can't figure out the others though,
at 3:38 it could be saying “where is she”
This game's sound design is some of the coolest I've ever heard. It's surreal hearing all these iconic sounds from a decade and a half ago be updated like this.
This reminds me of war of the worlds
I’d like to see 500 striders vs 500 of the martions
Basically the same story
I’m pretty that’s what the striders are based off of.
3:38 WASAAA
Let's not forget this were the striders before half life 2.
Even the line worker strider seems to twitch a lot, meaning it's not entirely controlled.
In half life 2 striders are completely stupidifed, all they know is shoot rebels.
Striders must've been a new addition to the combine arsenal when they invaded earth, and since they must've been trying their best to remove their intelligence.
Judgning from the fact that the strider can speak here, it means that it was an intelligent creature, probably like a vortigaunt, which made it hard to remove its conciousness.
Just like humans, the grunts while being modified, still had their memories, so removing all memories to get the combine soldiers we had in half life 2, it must've taken them years to achieve it.
Never in my life would i have thought Striders could speak intelligibly.
Sounds like Vocoder + Serum dubstep presets :D
I looked for this comment, I swear these sounds make me wanna study Sound Design
I'm obsessed with these new sounds
Sounds like Warpers from Subnautica
I agree
Since you've been rummaging around in the game files, do you know what that person is riding the new strider? Is that some kind of combine worker?
Yeah, it's the combine workers, the model has 2 of them on there, but in game it's only 1 from what I can tell.
That's the maintenance srider
the "transformer" like sounds seems to be some kind of way they are communicating with Overwatch
That first time when you recieve the radio and go out and you see the giant strider made me scared af. Like I am not really scared by horror games, only jumpscares make me jump, but I literally just ran back in. It reminded me of one of my nightmares as a child.
Dark Souls 2 intro type beat
Crazy to think a strider was once a creature
Ya maybe thay were with the combin for the start
shanemartin31 no they were once a creature now a cyborg husk of itself
YES! This is what I wanted! Thank you so much
you know how combine voices sound like garbled somewhat electronic messes (sometimes), thats probably why striders sound like dubstep aswell
they tryna communicate normally but their new synth "voiceboxes" ig cause their voice to be this shit
I noticed that the striders have different animation for crouching, rather than spread their legs to the side like in HL2 their legs bend backward then the knees bend fore to meet the ground beside the strider
i think the reason the strider sounds like this is that it was damaged in the procces of the rubble from the vault falling
These were cool in the setting of the game but I gotta say the sound design for the original was so much cooler and more terrifying
Na man new game striders are way more scary!
@@williamking1081 interesting point
@@ambientvirtual well thanks to VR it just make them so intimate and huge!
@@williamking1081 true, i havent experienced it in VR.
Intro 0:00 Idle 0:03 Alert 0:04 Damaged 0:15 Stomping in distance 0:19 Idle 2 0:36 Controlling Stirder 1:01
0:11 2:47 0:15 1:21 2:25 2:35
2:41
3:35 1:07
2:51
I wish they kept these for the construction striders and used the original sounds for the normal strider. Strider sounds are way too good to be replaced by generic robot sounds.
That's literally what they did
@Infamous_Val_05 didn't they change the one for normal?
What I think is very interesting is that the HLA striders may be completely different versions than the ones seen in HL2. These early prototypes had all the key features, but they were much stronger and acted more as an elite unit. Then by Half Life 2, the chance of rebellion became less and less likely, so they switched to the weaker, less armored variations. I also believe that the one from the train station in HL2 EP1 is a strong variation bc it has heavier fire power and it is much stronger.
That's possible. If we can follow an idea of temporal cannoncity.
The combine seen in the game are probrably prototype transhumans before the combine double down on the models they need.
Mass production models galore.
Not to mention the strider could be a much newer model than we give credit for as it could be a modification of the hound eye along with the hunters. As both are referred to under the strider designation in halflife 2. One mini one just strider.
They could be specifically designed for different regions. Hunters/ministriders for forested regions for pack hunting like wolves. Urban enviornments for striders to gain height advantage.
Those seen in HLA are probrably test units for hl2s models. Which were converted from halflife's houndeye.
@@josephnigel8811 That was an excellent point with both the hunters and the overwatch. Nicely done.
never seen this much sympathy and wonder about the feelings of an enemy character in a video game. every video about the sounds synths make has lots of people showing sympathy for them and talking about how they must feel. honestly amazing community
Wish they used the old firing sound for the main gun but gave it even more of a thump. Speed it up a little and lower the pitch a tat, and it sounds even more like the fleshtearing gauss particles the striders cannons are, AND it would still have that iconic feel to it. There's only ONE firing sound like the Strider firing sound of HL2 in all the games I've ever played.
These sound effects sound amazing, but when you meet it ingame, your gonna be crying that you would point the gun to your head.
They sound like strogg in HLA and I kinda like it
I don't understand why the devs paid extra attention to all the NPCs to sound like the originals, except for the Strider. The OG Strider had such a unique sound that really added to its character. Now it's just a generic alien robot sound... why did they do this to my boy?! 😭
Its much the much to the mechanical sounds of the original sans the whale like sounds
Well the one's you see at the start of the game are fully mechanical being driven by the combine and seem to only be used for construction not organic like the HL2 varient so it makes sense that the sounds are more robotic.
@@SirBlues-wz7ld I can understand that. But there's no excuse for the one you encounter before you enter the vault, as that one doesn't have the robot exoskeleton.
@@AldenDoble Oh... Well shit there goes that. Wtf didn't they just keep it for the mechanical versions would've made a lot more sense.
@@SirBlues-wz7ld yeah I know right! I was quietly telling myself after the intro that there's nothing to worry about and they're just mechanically enhanced versions. But then after the final encounter my worst fears were confirmed 😅
0:04
MY EARS
Music to mine
3:34
You cannot tell me this isn't some language, alien or otherwise.
It almost sounds like English, just with a distorted synth voice. Maybe they know English to allow the other Overwatch forces to communicate commands? It is at least alien... It could just be my monkey brain hearing English from nothing, but there could be a reason why they would speak it and not some other language. I don't know if Combine really wants to be too multilingual, at most knowing the most prominent language(s) of the world they're conquering, until it's probably no longer useful to them.
That's just my theory, and it could be full of holes but from my knowledge of Half-Life it makes sense to me.
i SWEAR i heard “where is she” in one of the voice lines
It is English, I heard something about "Casualties" when it hits Russel's drone. It's just very distorted, maybe they didn't intend it as a voice, but as sound effect.
the beginning has a half life 2 beta feel to it, very alien in a unsettling way...
Commander Shephard, the Reapers are here, what do we do?
3:36 wtf striders can talk?
It's the human pilot on top of the Construction Striders
Striders were likely once a sapient/sentient species
What if the metal-ly sounds are vocoders, since they'd have to communicate back and forth, meanwhile the sounds in half life 2 are more like their more original vocalizations
Remember that every synthetic alien in half life and every demon in doom was once a race of aliens before being heavily mutated
these new strider noises would fit so much into protoss units in SC2
I think I actually prefer these sounds over the og HL2 strider sounds. I still think the HL2 ones sound unique and threatening, but I think they sound a lot more terrifying in Alyx.
Honestly the strider platform sounds are terrifying as hell.
*Future noises*
They sound like Sovereign from Mass Effect
I suppose they were re-done to fit the new theme/sound of the combine, much more cybernetic robotic whatever sounding, kinda cool.
One question: Lore-wise, why do they find completely different?
+Mauricio Jara there were two differentiated variants of Striders in HalfLife Alyx - Perhaps these Striders were more Original and still had the capacity of limited intellect before being completely integrated into combine universal union
its all find and dandy up until even the strider says heavens
Man a lot people are saying the new sfx suck but to me they are sfx of pure gold to. keep in mind that it could be a different version of the strider this game takes place before the second game
fucking badass
I'm gonna miss the OG Strider sounds.
Sounds like tripods.
Aren't you supposed to force people to pick up cans?
@@user-uz6ft1or3g Gotta slack off once in a while.
@@thatdudemetro6271 Well better get back to it before Overwatch catches you
@@DrSabot-A Shh
Well.. they are huge tripods with plasma miniguns and blasters..
Sounds like if a metal gear tried talking.
totally sounds like reaper mass effect
also combine get creatures from other planets and make them into things like the strider so i think that the creature before it was turned into a strider could have been a bio mechanism
These definitely would fit for the construction strider or maybe an elite strider, but i feel like the regular standard combat strider should have revamped sounds more akin to hl2
This soooooo reminds me of mass effect
some construction strider sounds
Thats right!
This is pure transformers
This horrific thing was created by us cwu
Imma have this sound as my horn in the cybertruck once it arrives! Any day now...
0:18 ok that one is creepy-