Not to be an asshole… but in games where you can customize your character, they often have a similar feature. Oblivion for example… I could be wrong, but it’s more of an engine-specific thing. Maybe Oblivion’s engine (whatever it is) was built with this in mind, while Source was not.
Maybe the way they made it is indeed revolutionary, I don’t know… But the concept itself isn’t something totally new.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up in future Valve / Source games though 
Well, the principle was used in Oblivion and Fallout 3, but still the NPCs kinda looked like they are all from the same template. Most of the Fallout 3 Raiders, for instance, looked far too stunningly sexy. The BM npcs look like actual people. Not like clones bred for Hollywood movies.
actually with Fallout 3 you have 9 or 10 set faces which it cycles through for the random characters that’s why you see the same few faces for every raider
I wasn’t saying that it wasn’t the same kind of system just saying that Bethesda in general likes to cut corners(its even worse in Oblivion when bandits re-spawn as the same exact bandits you last killed 
)
I was basing what I said off of this which I read on the site
that makes me think that each NPC is going to look different, not the Bethesda only NPC’s that are important look different everyone else is from a pre-set group of faces system, in truth since there really is no point with respawning NPC’s in the original Half-Life (none I remember at least) so this is possible in Black Mesa.
But BM is only working from a pre-set group of faces, in terms of texture, too. It’s just that each head is adjusted to change the shape of the facial features, so the texture is stretched over a differently shaped head.
all it takes is a little modeling difference to change one face into an entirely new face even if it has the same texture Mass Effect is a good example there are only three actual textures for male models faces then there are hue changes of those textures combine with the countless ways to edit the face you get thousands of possibilities so in theory if done correctly you wouldn’t even notice it was the same texture because the face itself has been changed enough.
I’m suprised that with all this talk about smoking HECU soliders noone’s remembered the LD Cigar guy. You know, the solider head that always had the AR grenades?
Also, while I do appreciate the awsome Head customization, Look at the guy on the right, picture three. He looks a bit too friendly to be a ruthless HECU solider. On the other hand, the guy on the left looks a lot like the generic seargeant, which is good.
I remember someone talking about the cigar guy, maybe not on this thread, but I clearly remember. I also do remember someone responding that it would be not really advised to smoke in a hazardous environnement such as Black Mesa. As for the HECU guy, maybe he looks a bit too friendly, but I’m pretty sure that this is not the final face generator build.
I really like the friendly HECU Marine. Has it never occurred to you that many of the soldiers you have to mow down during the course of the game are actually maybe rather nice persons in their civilian lifes? Good pals? Nice to their dog, loving to their wife and children, polite to their neighbours?
They are just doing their job. Or at least trying to. Their job is to obey orders and to kill for their government. They try their best to fulfill it. That’s all. Had Gordon met some of them in a bar instead of a gunfight, he would certainly have enjoyed having a beer or twelve with 'em. :freeman:
“I killed 12 dumb-ass scientists and not one of em fought back. This sucks.”
Yeah, pleasent.
:meh: maybe that was the ONE asshole in the squad talking?! No? Aw, shucks! 
HECUs are grunts who have no family, no pets, no past, no present and no future.
what about shepard?
Aw man… shooting nice persons would be so much more fun…
The cigar smoking grunt was a nod to the movie aliens, and his head is also used for the (unused) minigun grunt, the gun of which looks like the aliens minigun-like weapon.
reminds me of that austin powers henchman gag…
omg only 143 days until black mesa 
I can almost taste it
Yep , thinking the same thing…They talk like G-man with huge pauses and like they rly need to crap… MOVE…IN!
They only said “…that all u got” normally, the others sounded bad.
I just hope they include a reference to Aperture Science.
Not that I looked at the Steam community page, then went to see which of the devs had played Portal in the hopes that if enough had, they would include a reference. (Slide show would be epic.)
Nope, I certainly did not do something as vaguely creepy as that.
The Wandering God
Thats not creepy, though the fact that you chose the Avatar as your avatar kinda is.