Overwatch Sniper

Overwatch sniper


First Seen: Half-Life 2, Chapter Six, "We don't go to Ravenholm..."
 * Health total: 125
 * Weapon damage: Combine Sniper Rifle (20)
 * Entity:

Overwatch snipers are highly trained soldiers who hide themselves in high, concealed locations that offer a good field of view. The only way to detect a sniper is by the blue sighting beam and the distinctive crack of his sniper rifle. Typically, these snipers are so well-entrenched that they can only be killed with a well-thrown grenade or other explosive device, to which they will briefly yell "Shit!" in alarm when one reaches their position. The explosion will typically blow the sniper out of his hiding spot, but his weapon never seems to fall to the ground for the player to collect. If spawned during play using console commands, it is possible to see that the sniper doesn't actually carry a weapon, or that its weapon has no model, and that the laser comes out of the sniper's groin; this is probably due to the fact that snipers are usually not directly visible. If the ammo cartridge for the sniper rifle is spawned (with the command "give item_box_sniper_rounds"), a noticeable feature is the texture of the box, which is pink with the repeating words "OBSOL33T" wrapped around it. However, The box of ammo will just stay on the ground as the game does not know what weapon uses it. 

Combine snipers also seem to take the doctrine of "Shoot anything that moves" quite literally; aside from their fellow Combine, they will fire upon anything that moves, including crows, headcrabs, friendly rollermines (in Half-Life 2: Episode One), pigeons and headcrab zombies. Combine snipers can be seen shooting any breakable items around a hiding target, in order to eliminate the amount of additional cover that the target can use.

The player was intended to use a Combine sniper rifle during the game, but the concept was dropped during the development of Half-Life 2, replaced by the resistance-built crossbow.

Early concept art of the snipers reveals that they might have been female at some point, much like the human Black Ops assassins from Half-Life. This version wore a similar stark-white outfit worn by Combine Elites, but was much less bulky to make movement easier, and make less noise which might alert the target to its presence. Another concept that was not implemented was the idea of the sniper being a much more robot-like combat synth with three eyes.

In Half-Life 2: Episode One, Alyx Vance uses a sniper rifle to aid Gordon Freeman in an area of City 17. However, Gordon does not see her holding the sniper rifle as she becomes hidden in the same way as an Overwatch sniper. The sniper rifle itself also emits a different sound in Episode One. The rifle sounds less powerful and slightly quieter in the expansion (perhaps due to a silencer), and a brief recharge period can be heard between each shot.