(edit: sorry typo, I meant 3M respirators, as in the company, not the M3 gas mask)
Yeah, the HL1 masks were probably based on the M3 - them polygons make it hard to tell tho...
IIRC the masks the Combine wear in HL2 were based off the soviet ShMS masks, if those were the ones you were referring to!
I can’t say I’m familiar with a military mask that has like a mono-faceplate.
It's kinda convoluted, but military gasmasks (as in, things designed to protect from chemical weapons) are pretty much a singularly defensive thing - you're never going to send infantry into a big cloud of Sarin or VX, you'd just send CBRN vehicles (or more realistically just blow the whole thing to shit with artillery, it's not like you'd need to worry about civilian casualties...) - and as a result military gas masks are only kept around in case of an emergency. And so the priority isn't "Can operate with a full field of view while wearing it", it's "Make sure the Jarheads don't leave it behind because it's too fucking heavy".
Big clear faceplates, while they give you excellent visibility and are great for shooting through, are terrible at "being stuffed into a backpack". They're just too bulky. There's of course exceptions (the cold war got WILD with designs)
but this is why riot police wear things like this:
because they're pretty much the only example where people go towards big clouds of chemical weapons, and they have the luxury of knowing that they're going to be used so they don't have to lug the damn things around in a backpack thus can use the bulkier-but-more-comfortable-and-ergonomic masks.
The mask I really want is an (MCU-2/P | MSA Advantage 1000 | MSA millennium), which imho are the coolest looking masks ever produced AND an exception to the above rule about mono-plate military masks - though as far as I'm aware they were never issued to combat infantry and were primarily fire-escape or emergency equipment for the military.
Perhaps if I do something sufficiently submissive you’ll send me a spare, hahah?
Barking up the wrong tree if you're looking for dom energy sadly, I'm such a sub that making me do dominant things has occasionally been used as a punishment. It'd probably cost more for me to ship one to you than it would to just get one off ebay, sadly. DAMN the rates have gone up...
But anyway, having any gasmask just in case the world actually “ends” would make me feel a bit safer
I really recommend an M65 - I pass them out whenever shit goes down around here and they're fucking fantastic against teargas, and the lenses are impact-rated so they won't pop out if you get clocked with a baton round (which btw: ouch). Can't have a beard (true of all gas masks) and you ABSOLUTELY MUST fit them before you need them - they are truly, godawfully, horrible to adjust (I recommend a chopstick and patience - it'll come loose eventually, I swear).
They're by no means the sexiest, but for practical purposes they cannot be beat.