From Black Mesa: Wiki

The HECU marine as he appears in-game.

Overview

The HECU ("Hazardous Environment Combat Unit") Marines are among the primary antagonists of Black Mesa. They have been given orders to contain the Xenian invasion and to silence the Facility witnesses at any means necessary. They play a huge role in the story, as of setting a challenge for Gordon Freeman and personnel trying to escape, trying to control the events inside Black Mesa, and Black Mesa's demise.

Marines are human soldiers of average height and build, equipped with body armor and helmets. They are usually equipped with either an MP5 or SPAS-12 to fight aliens and execute Black Mesa personnel. Some may be equipped with Mk2 Grenades and M203 centrifugal-based contact grenades used to defeat crowds of enemies or flush them out of hiding. The Marines introduce many weapons, vehicles, and weapon emplacements to the facility shortly after they arrive.

Behaviour

Found in many parts of the game after they are first encountered in the chapter We've Got Hostiles, the Marines are hostile to every non-military NPC they encounter.

They use squad tactics to attack enemies, and may throw grenades to flush their target out of an area instead of rushing in. The Marines also dodge grenades thrown by the player, run from mortar strikes, avoid tripmines and satchels [2].

Sometimes they talk to each other to call for backup [3]; and if one marine in a squad spots the player on his line of sight, he will alert his comrades and relay the player position to them [4]. Notice that in Black Mesa they do this using their actual voices; different from Half-Life, where they talk to each other by radio transmissions [5].

Some of the Marines' common sentences:

• "SQUAD, QUIET DOWN" (when looking for you)
• "STAMP HIM OUT" (when assaulting your position)
• "SHIT, SHIT, MEDIC! SHIT!" (when wounded)

Face close-up of a Squad Leader.

Variants

The Face Creation System gives to them a large variety of faces as well as a variety of potential accessories including various ammo packs, berets, sunglasses, various helmet types [6], cigars [7], night-vision gear and more. They will not have ski goggles and balaclavas like they did in the original Half-Life [8].

In addition to the standard marine, two other variants are seen in Black Mesa:

• Commander Marine, or Squad Leader: A specific separate entity with better stats and a different voice to the standard marine [9]. They will have slightly more health, deal slightly more damage, and direct any other nearby grunts. They have a distinctive red beret [10]. Any change to behaviour of HECU squads when the commander dies has not been confirmed.

• Medic: Contrary to Half-life, they do make an appearance in Black Mesa and can be seen healing their teammates or Squad Leader as well as engaging in combat.

All variants can also possibly come in hurt body types (like the security guards or scientists after the Black Mesa Incident), but it has not yet been confirmed [11].

Media

Render of the Marine, with the old MP5 model.

Close-up.

Marines fighting houndeyes at the bottom of an elevator, in the chapter Power Up.

A marine and a commander guarding an area in the chapter Power Up.

Trivia

• When they die, soldiers and squad commanders drop their berets and cigars (if they have one).
• The HECU leaves behind RPGs in a few different locations in the Black Mesa Research Facility, but they are never seen using them.
• Though Medics were not seen in Half-Life, they were mentioned by the announcement system. In addition, soldiers would sometimes call out "Agh, medic!" when wounded. Medics were also featured as an ally in the expansion pack, Opposing Force.
• Although capable of avoiding tripmines, Marines will never jump or duck them. [12]

Redesign History

Artificial Intelligence

Unlike some people usually think, the Marines do not use the AI from the Combine; however, they use some of the same behavior code (a separate code that can be used by more than one NPC). According to James Kane, the Marine AI "rely on behaviors more than the Combine, so not only other NPCs can share the behaviors, but we have cleaner code too". In comparison, the Combine AI is over 4000 lines of "spaghetti code" where the Black Mesa's Marine contains only 500 lines. [13]

The developers are using as much existing code as possible to avoid redundant code, but they also have implemented custom behavioral aspects which the Combine do not have. The code was built from scrach using Valve's default Behaviors [14]. Marines also use Source's response system to issue context-sensitive commands like the Combine soldiers in Half-Life 2 do [15]. This command is a pre-recorded sentence that is triggered when a special event happens, for example the sentence "SHIT, SHIT, MEDIC! SHIT!" when wounded.

A commander shooting at Gordon with a Glock.

The Backup Weapon: Glock

Initially the marines had a limited amount of ammunition for their MP5s and SPAS-12 shotguns, what could make them pull out a backup Glock 17 once they'd exhausted their main weapons. They were too easy to fight this way; so the use of Glock was dropped, and now they only have MP5s and shotguns with unlimited ammo. [16]

Combat Armor

The design for the Marines' uniform is based on the cutting edge Crye Precision range of body armor/apparel [17] and other real army accessories (for example the armored backplate in the marines' armor) [18]. This is to give them a more realistic and elite feel as opposed to using the fictional Powered Combat Vest that appears in Opposing Force. Over the course of development the developers tried a number of color schemes and settled on the current one [19]. Ironically, the camouflage chosen for the Marines was specifically chosen both for its iconic look and its ability to make the Marines stand out in combat, rather than blending in [20].

Given the way the Face Creation System works, goggles and other accessories are possible but balaclavas are not. So, the "Shotgun-Marine with balaclava" model wasn't added due to a technical decision: if balaclavas were added, all the face variations for human NPCs should be discarded. [21]

Redesign Gallery An early version of the marine model. In-game screenshot of the early model. The high-poly source model for the marine. A very old render of the marine model. A WIP Gasmask - which design is based off the M40 Field Protective Mask [1] - along with an early marine texture iteration.

The HECU's Insignia

The HECU's insignia (seen on the Squad Leader's beret) is different from the one in Half-Life, which featured a Black Shield with a Red, White, and Blue stripe headed from the bottom left to the top right. In Black Mesa it is a Green Shield with a lighter Green Horse's Head. This will not be fixed in the final version because of its low relevance, either to the Half-Life story [22] or the mod gameplay [23].