Talk:Memory replacement

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EP1

Where have you people found this anyway? I've played through EP1's citadel quite a few times and not once have I passed by it, I've even went around the levels looking for it with no luck. Is it not normally accessible or just intentionally hidden?

It's near where you see the drop ship. Where you go into the heavy door that leads to the core elevator, go to the end of walkway and look down the 'hall'. You can barely see them, but they're there. --Fireman^V2 23:45, April 28, 2010 (UTC)

Is there anything connecting the EP1 soldier beds to the Combine's memory replacement processes?

This article currently treats them as one and the same, but I couldn't find any evidence of an actual connection between them. A connection is easy to imagine given the way the soldier's head is connected to the device, but as far as I know, it isn't really suggested anywhere what they actually do. The citation for the page in Raising the Bar doesn't mention this connection either.

I'm not saying there isn't a connection. There could be evidence I'm not aware of, but this otherwise just seems to be a fan interpretation. --Blixibon (talk) 05:57, 27 January 2022 (MSK)

After some examination, I haven't found any indications that this device and the memory replacement concept are related. The model is named "soldier_bed.mdl", and the internal model, material, and animation names don't specify anything any further. In the map, the struts alongside the beds are simply named "strut_array_01.mdl" which is used generically around the Citadel. The only unique map entity near these beds is an info_hint which should theoretically make Alyx occasionally look in their direction, but she otherwise has no specific reaction or comment. I checked the leaked Ep1 VMF files to see if there were any other interesting entities or maybe cut appearances of these beds, perhaps even in other maps, but there simply isn't anything more. The VisGroup these beds are a part of is named "stridersection", and that comprises almost the entire map, nothing specific to these devices. Raising the Bar doesn't identify it, as you mentioned, and I don't think this particular piece of concept art even appears in the uncorrected proof of the book.

I did find one small detail that isn't addressed yet in this article (although it's already somewhat visible in the concept art): In the bed mesh, the "helmet" part of the device has a textured screen that's placed like a visor right in front of the soldier's eyes. There's nothing identifiable on this screen as it's just a generic blue Combine monitor texture, but the soldiers are definitely intended to be viewing something while confined in these devices.

With no other avenue to investigate, the only other possibility is to ask Dhabih Eng directly since that's his concept art in Raising the Bar, so I've gone ahead and shot him a Tweet just for fun. In the mean time, I'll consider what to do about this article if that inquiry doesn't pan out. Marphy (talk) 02:27, 30 January 2022 (MSK)

Dhabih has confirmed the assumed connection here: [1]

I'll update the article accordingly. Marphy (talk) 19:57, 30 January 2022 (MSK)