Cremator

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Cremator
General information
Faction	Combine
Type	Cleaner Short range assault
Individual information
Weapon(s)	Unknown plasma- or flamethrower
Game information
Entity	npc_cremator
Designer(s)	Dhabih Eng

 

"Keep it clean... or he will"

― Combine propaganda poster

The Cremator is a Combine unit cut from Half-Life 2 and Half-Life: Alyx. "A Combine janitor of sorts", it was originally intended to remove corpses from the city streets, cleanup Wasteland trains coming into the city from any wildlife that might have held on to it during the journey, as well as patrol some parts of the Wasteland, such as train depots. It was also designed to occasionally fight the player.

Overview

The Cremator factory.

The Cremator was tasked with disposing of dead bodies through the use of its weapon - a large cannon capable of spraying fire or plasma, which would disintegrate organic matter upon contact. The weapon was apparently usable by the player, as it has a viewmodel.

Visually, the Cremator is a tall humanoid, approx. 2.3 meters in height, wearing a heavy protective coat with a high collar, and large boots. It has a metal head and long pale arms. It has four long fingers on each hand and is wearing gloves. Its spherical belly is connected to its weapon via a hose, possibly providing the fuel for the weapon.

Cremator heads were to be prepared by children in the Cremator factory located in the Combine Factories area in City 17. The rest of the process of the preparation of Cremator units was apparently not to be seen. It is unknown whether the Cremator is a transhuman or a fully alien Combine unit, though its huge height, odd proportions and four-fingered hands make the former less likely. Additionally, Eli's slideshow portrays the Cremators exiting the Citadel right after its arrival.

Abilities

Although the Cremator's AI remains unknown (no coding related to it can be found in the leaked source code), there are indications that Cremators weren't exclusively cosmetic or neutral NPCs:

• The scripting in the map cremator_034 shows a Cremator named 'tower_guard' burning the Guard Tower entered by the player, as well as Cremators being put in the same AI squads with the Metrocops;
• The sound files include audio for being alerted by the player, being 'mad', and dying;
• The animations include firing the weapon, the weapon jamming, flinches, and limping;
• The source code includes a table of AI relationships, showing the Cremators hate the player, Xenian fauna, Conscripts, Rebels, and Vortigaunts, and are neutral toward all Combine units, pre-Uprising Citizens, and Earth fauna.

Thus, it is likely that Cremators were passive at the start of the game, and would turn against every non-Combine NPC during the Uprising.

Maps

Cremator in the WC map pack map cremator_039, with Combine Door Tower and barricade behind.

Cremators can be found in several WC map pack maps, mostly in the test/demo maps from 2001-2002. Some notable examples include:

• cremator_006, 034 and 039, last edited mid 2001, feature an industrial/warehouse area of the American-like City 17, separated into zones by Combine barriers with watch towers looking over the streets. An abandoned car tunnel features hostile Manhacks and Ceiling Turrets. The cremators patrol the streets, protected by Metrocops.
• cremator_street01 and 02, last edited July 2001, has Cremators walking in and around a destroyed building in an area similar to cremator_006.
• toxic_pit03, last edited June 2001, features a landfill or a shallow canyon filled with debris; numerous Cremators stand atop of the walls while several Headcrabs occupy the ground level.
• wasteland_depot, last edited August 2001, includes a Cremator standing on the train platform of the early Depot.
• Several versions of the E3 terminal map from April-May 2002 include Cremators in the parade sequence.

Behind the scenes

A Cremator head in the jar in Eli's lab in Half-Life 2.

• The Cremator partially made the final cut as an Easter egg left in Eli Vance's lab at Black Mesa East. A Cremator's head can be found apparently preserved in formaldehyde on the table located to the right of the teleport, but green-colored, instead of the original white. Eli mentions that Alyx brought it in, stating "We're still not sure what that does. Alyx brings in the strangest things". A nearby computer screen with some sort of scan of the Cremator head on it also suggests it is studied by Eli or someone else (it is also featured in the Half-Life 2: Deathmatch map Steam Lab). Early Half-Life 2 footage also shows that the Cremator's head was originally not contained in a jar.
• Early in the development of Half-Life: Alyx, an updated version of the Cremator was planned to appear as one of the Combine clean-up units that specialized in combating invasive Xen fauna in City 17. The Cremator was cut from the final game, with its role in the story being given to the Combine Hazmat Workers instead. However, the Combine Hazmat Workers are only ever encountered by the player as corpses or Zombies throughout the game.
• The Immolator, a cut weapon that would serve as the Strider's alternate attack, shares some similarities with the Cremator's weapon, namely being focused on burning things. However, it is not known if the Immolator started as the Cremator's weapon, was related to it, or if the similarity was incidental.

Trivia

• The player was also to be able to pick up Cremator heads and throw them at enemies, as part of the Brickbat weapon.
• In both the full-body model and the separated head model, the eyes and "mouth" textures are incorrectly displayed due to broken unwrapping. They are properly rendered on the Brickbat's Cremator head model.
• The Cremator bears some similarities to the Alien Assassin. They both have an identical orange dome-shaped device on the back of one hand (the left hand for the Cremator, the right for the Alien Assassin, in lower resolution), similar arms and hands (except that the Cremator has only four fingers), and also lines on the hands (although the Cremator has them on its gloves instead of the skin like the Alien Assassin).
• The Half-Life 2 leak's FGD file for Hammer includes several keyvalues for the Cremator: HoseMaxRange, HoseBurnDuration, HoseReloadDuration and HoseArcScale, suggesting a spray or beam-like attack.

Gallery

Half-Life 2

Pre-release

• 

  Concept art.

• 

  Propaganda poster reusing the previous concept art, and originally used in Half-Life 2 as the older version of paperposter002a.

• 

  Cropped, higher resolution version of aforementioned concept art.

• 

  Whiteboard with doodles of an early enemy roster, including the Cremator.

• 

  A Cremator in a 2002 build of Half-Life 2.

• 

  Ditto, with weapon visible.

• 

  Model leaked as part of the 2016-2017 leaks featuring the same twin-barreled weapon seen in concept art, with missing texture sheet replaced by a generic one.

• 

  Ditto, side view.

• 

  Ditto, closeup of the weapon.

• 

  The Cremator factory in the WC map pack.

• 

  Cremator in the WC map pack map cremator_street02.

• 

  Ditto, in the destroyed building.

• 

  Cremator in the WC map pack map cremator_039.

• 

  Cremator and Metrocops.

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Cremator posters in the map c17_old07, with one using the middle part only.

• 

  Closeup of a Cremator in the map toxic_pit03.

• 

  The Brickbat, Cremator head version.

• 

  Cremator head.

• 

  The weapon.

• 

  The Cremator's right hand, with the orange sphere.

• 

  Orange sphere texture, from the Cremator texture files.

• 

  Child Citizen carrying a Cremator head.

Retail

• 

  The Cremator's head on a computer screen in Eli's lab.

Half-Life: Alyx

• 

  Concept art of an updated Cremator cut from Half-Life: Alyx.

List of appearances

Main games

• Half-Life 2 (First appearance) (As an unidentified head and on a computer screen)

Other

• Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar (First identified as Cremator) (Non-canonical appearance)
• Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (Non-canonical appearance) (On a computer screen)
• The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx (Non-canonical appearance)