City Scanner

Good

"Oh hell, Gordon! Were you followed again?"

- Barney Calhoun

The City Scanner, also known as Scanner Type I and often referred to simply as Scanner, is a lightly armored, flying security camera used by the Combine to monitor City 17's (and possibly other cities) residents. Its Synth counterpart is the Shield Scanner.

Application


Scanners are equipped with a searchlight and a camera used to take photographic images. The flash emitted when taking an image can temporarily blind a person if they are looking directly at the flash. The scanner also has a spotlight mounted on its top, which is used for illumination and can move independently from its source.

Scanners are powered by a single Combine battery, which can occasionally be salvaged from a destroyed unit and reused for an HEV Suit. Scanners are lightly armored and can be destroyed easily by gunfire, impacting against walls or being hit by objects. A critically damaged scanner will frequently attempt to kamikaze dive into its attacker.

As the name implies, Scanners are generally used only in cities and are rarely encountered anywhere else. They are commonly seen patrolling City 17's Canals, searching for refugees. Other applications include reconnaissance and searching for wanted individuals. Scanners help by locating targets and alerting other nearby Combine units. During emergencies, Scanners can be mass-deployed in thousands from the Citadel, to perform a city-wide, and possibly out-of-city search such as when Gordon Freeman was detected in City 17.

Interestingly, it appears that parts from a salvaged City Scanner were used in one of the more recent additions to Dog, the robot Eli Vance built to protect his daughter Alyx while she was young; both machines have a similar frontal design, though Dog's face possesses three face plates while Scanners have four for unknown reasons.

Behind the scenes

 * While the City Scanner started as a Synth under several variations that made their way into the Shield Scanner, Ted Backman and Dhabih Eng both worked on the Scanners concepts; the first ended up with the Synth version, the second the mechanical one.
 * The Scanner design was initially modeled after the shape and movement of a piranha.
 * The first mechanical Scanner was called "Combot" and was throwing deadly gas as a defense. It is featured in the playable Half-Life 2 Beta.
 * 11 sound files found in the playable Half-Life 2 Beta files also indicate that the City Scanner was to talk directly to people via prerecorded messages. Spoken by a robotic female voice, they include sentences like "Citizen, do not move", "You may proceed", "Hold still for scan", "Hands on your head" or "Violation has been noted".

Trivia

 * In the Half-Life chapters Anticitizen One and "Follow Freeman!", the  console code spawns a Shield Scanner.
 * Both types of Scanner ignore Zombies.
 * Scanners are not directly met in Episode Two; they are only seen on the route to White Forest.

Gallery
 File:Scanner welcome.jpg|City Scanner welcoming Gordon Freeman to a brand new dystopian world. File:Scanner package.jpg|City Scanner following a Citizen. File:Scanner light1.jpg|City Scanner using its searchlight on the Trainstation Plaza. File:Citadel scanners.jpg|The Citadel deploying City Scanners. File:Combots concepts.jpg|Several concepts for the Combot. File:Combot1.jpg|The Combot, panels open. File:Combot2.jpg|The Combot's side. Its tail appears shorter than the retail City Scanner. 

List of appearances

 * Half-Life 2
 * Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar
 * Half-Life 2: Episode One
 * Half-Life 2: Episode Two