Location from Half-Life 2 by Valve
The Combine's prison and conversion facility — where troublesome citizens go in as humans and come out as Overwatch soldiers.
Nova Prospekt is where the Combine's occupation stops pretending to be governance and reveals itself as processing. Citizens deemed uncooperative are shipped here by train. What happens inside is the worst-kept secret in City 17 — everyone knows, nobody talks about it. The conversion process is industrial and irreversible. Subjects are sedated, surgically modified with Combine implants, chemically treated to suppress identity, and reactivated as Overwatch soldiers or, for those deemed less useful, reduced to Stalkers — mindless cybernetic husks that maintain Combine infrastructure. Gordon's assault on Nova Prospekt — using antlion pheropods to command a swarm against the garrison — is the spark that ignites the City 17 uprising. The explosion of the facility's teleporter creates a temporal anomaly that Alyx and Gordon ride back to the city, arriving a week after they left to find the resistance already at war.
A massive concrete prison complex on the coast, brutalist and imposing, surrounded by high walls and Combine energy fencing. Guard towers with automated turrets cover every approach. Inside, the original prison structure has been retrofitted with Combine conversion technology — surgical bays, memory-wipe chambers, and holding cells. The deeper you go, the less it resembles a prison and the more it resembles a factory. Stalkers shuffle through maintenance corridors. The lighting is fluorescent and merciless.
Also known as: Nova Prospekt, The Prison, The Facility