Naw. It was a bug. Instead of extracting the real spine texture it extracted the texture that belonged to the rifle.
That’s interesting.
Anyhow, my point still stands: Nihilanth and his minions were slaves of the Combine, but then they escaped to Xen, a place among worlds; they are not Xenians per se. They are inmigrants, and when the hole to Earth opens, Nihilanth cannot believe his luck: he can escape to a safe world and never again be a slave of the Universal Union. Of course, that plan backfires, both for him and for humanity… eventually even for the Combine. All of this is mentioned by Marc Laidlaw in many texts, e-mails, etc. It’s all written down in a lot of forums by the name of “The Marc Laidlaw Vault”.
My point is: it wouldn’t be non-canonical to see some Combine tech. Or well, Combine-looking tech.
A lot of the xen creatures and even environments were designed to look like they were bio-mechanical, with flesh stretched over metal. It was just part of Chuck Jones’ art direction, I think.
Oh, I didn’t know that. It’s a pity that that ‘pipe’ was just a bug because it destroys my lovely cyborg tentacle theory. But thanks for clearing this up.
Well in my opinion most of the xenian invasion forces were composed of Combine. The alien grunts are Vortigaunt equivalents of HL2 trans-human Combine Soldiers and alien slaves are something close to stalkers but in addition to being used as workers they are also meat shields. Nihilanth is xenian dr Breen on steroids. On Xen (Interloper chapter), the player encounters thumper-like machines resembling the ani-antlion thumpers later seen on Earth.
Of course back in the days of Half-Life 1 the idea of the Combine faction did not exist, however now, after playing Half-Life 2 and its Episodes, the classic story can be interpreted in a different way.
It would be non-canonical:
Yes, that information is taken from the OverWiki, but still…
it can be some form of technology (maybe to make it survive in a rocket test silo) but i dont think its combine tech
after all the nihilanth did make cyborg-like alien grunts and their own controller braclets
on a sidenote: i have a minor suggestion for one of the gib of the bullsquid to be its eye
Well, the tentacle most likely isn’t one of Nihilanths minions, it’s Xen wildlife, which got to Xen by different means than Nihilanth. So Combine tech wouldn’t fit on it.
Yep – you’re right, it doesn’t make any sense; the tentacle seems to be part of the wildlife. But that explanation easily goes for every Xen thingie. Like, the mechanical parts of Nihilanth, for example.
Steppenwolf, I’m not sure how that matters. I think I’m misreading it, but… really, he clearly said “We’re their slaves” and other similar stuff. Appart from what Marc Laidlaw has stated. They escaped indeed, but they had to be in contact to create a conflict, and even more so to be their slaves.
Also, in HL2 one of the lines of the Vortigaunts is that they have been slaves of the Combines for eons… obviously it’s not literal, but still, it has to be a long time, right?
I’m just intepreting what they give us… I may very well be doing it wrong, but the proofs I stated are pretty much self-explanatory. I’m confused now.
ent_fire !picker setspeed 0.5?
It is alluded to that he Nihilanth probably was enslaved by the Combine, it doesn’t say anything about his minions.
I’d like to see dust clouds near the vort thumpers on Xen.
I know there weren’t antlions in HL, but that’s a good explanation for why there the moving towers- to keep the (as of yet un-thought-of) antlions away from that area of xen. They could even be more advanced than the combine ones, as the vorts practiced antlion husbandry. Plus, it explains away the lack of antlions in any part of that island.
Now that is a suggestion I support 
It allows speculation, BUT it doesn’t say directly “HEY, THERE ARE ANTLIONS HERE!” Love it!
He says “We are their slaves” and repeats it over and over again. Of course, he doesn’t say “We are the slaves of the combine”, but of course, combines weren’t actually invented yet; but it’s more than confirmed (again, the all-knowing Laidlaw) that that “bigger threat” was the concept when sitting to invent the combine. It was the basis. That’s like slight-retconning, isn’t it? I’m not sure, because they’re just giving a name to something that already existed… but it gets a MUCH more important place in the story, after being just refered to in one or two sentences in the first, so… well, they could’ve made HL2 without that “bigger threat”.
My point is: they were slaves of the combine. The person who invented the story said so. It should be enough for everyone. Had they thought about everything beforehand? Of course not. Does it fit? Yes, it does.
Marc Laidlaw said that Antlions are from Xen. I’m not making this up. Look it up in that “Marc Laidlaw Vault” I mentioned earlier 
It’s alluded to, he doesn’t specifically mention the Combine, and “we” could simply be the Nihilanth’s race. Since he uses the Vortigaunts and Agrunts as slaves himself, I don’t think he really cares enough about their well-being to include them with himself. And the Xen wildlife like Gonarch, headcrabs, etc… are just that, wildlife, they’re not part of the actual Xen military.
The only creatures that are sort of on the same level as the Nihilanth are the Controllers.
I agree, actually. But hell, it’s not a contradiction. As George Carlin put it, America was funded by slave-owners who wanted to be free. Nihilanth might very well be concerned for both himself and the controllers (intimately), and his slaves too (as an asset).
Read my edit, BTW:
This. A million times, this.
They probably already make dust.
Wasn’t that part of Xen just a big rock floating over nothingness? There were no antlions on it, and the rock was pretty isolated, so why did it need a thumper then?
To keep any antlions that might be inside of it away from the important stuff. It was pretty big after all, it had some tentacles and a gargantua on it.