Would it not be the pinnacle of awesomeness if, once Black Mesa is released, some samaritan were to use Black Mesa art assets to retcon HL2 to be more consistent with HL1? For example, all antlions would be replaced with bullsquids, striders would be replaced with gargantua, combine and elites would be replaced with Vorts and Agrunts, and so on. :freeman:
I think the 2 gargs from half-life 1 were quite enough.
Your idea of awesome varies considerably from mine. I happen to like striders, combine and antlions. Besides, BM won’t be official HL canon.
Would be nice just to mess around with, ja. Would also work nicely the other way around. With antlions storming the hallways of BM and the HECU replaced with Combine soldiers.
^ Didn’t they delete those scripts? If not I’d LOVE to give that idea a try…
Three Gargs. One in Power Up, one in Xen (or whatever chapter that was) and one in the Nihilanth’s final portal chamber after being sent there two or three times.
I’m glad we saw the Ichthyosaur in HL2, shame we didn’t see the Bullsquids though.
Also, I’ll be okay for this, as long as nothing like this happens.
I think it’d be pretty epic if some sort of uber Ichthysaur gets out of the water and starts nomming a gunship or dropship.
Nitpicky 'eh. 
Well, let’s make it four then. One in the train depot in “Power Up”, one in a parking garage at the end of “Surface Tension”, one in the beginning of the second level of Xen, “Interloper” and finally one in a chamber Nihilanth can teleport you to.
I think this is a really bad idea.
Half-Life 2 is designed around the concept that the combine are draining earth’s resources. Would you have the HECU drain earth’s resources instead? This makes no sense. Xen aliens then maybe? Then why would everything they use have a combine design even though most of their world and buildings are purely organic? Also makes no sense.
Plus, maps in a videogame are made in such a way that combat with the enemies is fun. Let’s take the antlions for example. They cannot reach you by walking in many sections of the game, but luckily they can fly short distances. Bullsquids can’t do this, so in many sections of the game they won’t be able to reach you. This would be a problem.
You have devices which can keep antlions at a safe distance in Half-Life 2, so you can have a little ‘pause’ inbetween battles. But, bullsquids can ‘fire’ at you from a distance, so keeping them at a distance would be quite pointless. Again, a problem.
If you want to do this and actually create an enjoyable game, you have re-think gameplay mechanics of the entire game and re-make entire sections. But this doesn’t really count as ‘retconning Half-Life 2’ I think.
People are COMPLETELY missing the point here. This is just something that would be funny, not at all something that would make sense in the Half-Life universe. If someone made this, I think that it would be really fun to play.
Nitpicky indeed. Note I didn’t say anything about HECU in the OP - although using them as a replacement for basic combines could work. Sticking with the plot from HL2, we can simply say that the Combine is controlling Agrunts and HECU (why not) in the same way and for the same reason it controls human combine soldiers in HL2. So the level design wouldn’t really be out of place at all.
It’s just about re-adding all the classic monsters from HL1 back into the series.
Not to nitpick, but the “bullsquids can ‘fire’ at you from a distance” statement somewhat nullifies the “bullsquids can’t fly” argument… but otherwise, good points.
Yeah, I was reminded of that just before seeing this, and just knew there would be a reply saying this when I got here.
Me R Dum.
Well, but there was a reason for half-life to only include 2 or 3 gargs.
Imagine certain HL² level, like the museum/bank with multiple gargs attacking you.
Strider ≠ Garg :hmph:
It would be epic.
No, it would be dumb.
No, it would be epic. :mono:
No, you’re epic 
epic shmepic