Cremator

"Keep it clean... or he will"

- Combine propaganda poster

The Cremator is a transhuman enemy cut from Half-Life 2. "A Combine janitor of sorts", it was originally intended to remove corpses from the city and (possibly) fight the player occasionally.

Overview



 * The Cremator was to be some kind of janitor, breathing heavily and disposing of dead bodies through the use of its Immolator - a large cannon capable of spraying a green beam of acid or plasma, which would disintegrate organic matter upon contact. It was intended for the player to obtain an Immolator, which would have been effective against organic enemies.


 * Cremator heads were to be constructed by children in the Cremator Factory located in the Combine Factories area in City 17. It is therefore unknown to what extent the Cremator was to be transhuman, since it has at least human arms and hands, although with only four fingers. It also has a Poké Ball-like sphere located on its belly, which was probably to be connected to an external device for unknown reasons.


 * The player was also to be able to pick up Cremator heads and throw them at enemies, as part of the Brickbat weapon.


 * Although the Cremator's NPC has no AI (no coding related to it can be found in the leaked source code), no clear fight animations and was mostly intended to clean the streets, sound files indicate that it was to notice the player, invalidating the theory of the Cremator being more of a dynamic prop than a real NPC, like the Boid in Half-Life. Another sound file indicates it was to be seen dying, indicating it was to be fought and killed by the player or Rebels, allowing the player to use its weapon and pick up its head to throw it at enemies. It was likely to be passive at the start of the game, and turn against every non-Combine NPC during the Uprising.


 * In its model, its eyes and "mouth" textures are incorrectly displayed, although they are properly rendered in the Brickbat's Cremator head.


 * Both the Cremator and the Alien Assassin bear some similarities. They have an identical orange sphere on the back of one hand, looking like some sort of lid (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 Alien Assassin). This suggests they were to be related in some way.

Maps
Several WC mappack maps, such as " " or " " (which features a building seen in " "), feature areas of the American-like City 17 of the first concepts where some Cremator tests were conducted by the development team. The map " " involves a run-down area in fire with two Cremators, while " " involves a normal area with Cremator squads protected by Metrocops and a brick tunnel filled with wrecked cars, Manhacks and Ceiling Turrets, all attacking the player (this tunnel was somehow recycled into the Half-Life 2 chapter Anticitizen One and the Episode One chapter Lowlife). It also contains several door/guard towers, also cut from the final game.

Half-Life 2 appearance
The Cremator partially made the final cut as an Easter Egg left in Eli Vance's lab at Black Mesa East. There can be found a Cremator's head apparently preserved in formaldehyde on the table located to the right of the teleport. Eli mentions that Alyx brought it in, stating "We still don't know 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 possible, though quite improbable, that Cremators exist in the Half-Life universe, as burnt bodies are often discovered in-game, located in places where Overwatch execute their clean-ups. But Eli Vance does not know what is in the jar and would obviously know, had Cremators been a common sight in the Half-Life world.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life 2
 * Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar