Marc Laidlaw expanded on the enemy's origins, remarking that Stalkers were one of the earliest creatures put into Half-Life 2, and the developers tried them in several gameplay environments. It is more horrific to have to deal with an insane hostage than something that just wants to eat your brains.” - Ted Backman Instead it was something that presented a moral dilemma every time you had to deal with it, which I think is a more interesting problem. I was hoping to put enough humanity into the things that it wasn't just a scary monster. When you face them, they are these crazed half-human things that you can't help but almost pity. We took a half-baked idea and turned it into something more horrific because the Stalkers are really the victims. “The Stalker idea came from wanting something that crept around in the shadows and then lunged at you.
The developer who created and featured it in his levels proposed that a 'black skeletal character that can hide in dark shadows and leap out at you as you got close' be included in Half-Life 2. The horror aspects of this concept were then further developed. They are servants, mindlessly operating machinery and guarding the core in the Citadel.Īccording to Ted Backman, the enemy's designer, the Stalker was inspired by a black version of the Half-Life Skeleton multiplayer model. Unknown Stalkers are humans who have been drastically altered, both physically and mentally, through extreme, brutal Synth engineering by the Combine.
