The Half-Life series has been receiving a lot of attention over the past month or so. While Half-Life 3 rumours are usually to be ignored, the latest series of them seem to be more solid than ever. Then there’s the Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Documentary which revealed a lot about the development cycle and plans for the unreleased Episode 3.
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Of course, the most interesting part of the documentary was the never before seen footage of Half-Life 2: Episode 3, which revealed an arctic setting and an ice gun. However, there were also some revelations about the early plans for Half-Life 2, including multiple cities and content that was removed in the wake of 9/11.
Half-Life 2 Originally Had A Lot More Content
As spotted by PC Gamer, the early plans for Half-Life 2 diverged a lot from the original game. Writer Marc Laidlaw revealed that the plot didn’t carry much over from the unforeseen circumstances that took place at Black Mesa. There were plans to show Earth being invaded by multiple alien races, with the Antlions playing a much bigger role.
“It had three alien races,” explained engineer David Speyrer. “The Warrior Aliens, the Insect Aliens, and the Spy Aliens. And it had a Prague-like city, which ended up being the closest thing to City 17.” There were also plans to hop between cities like City 40 and City 49, showing what the occupation looked like over there.
“I remember we were really ambitious at the beginning,” added level designer David Riller. “I remember we designed, what, four cities at one point? Prague, Jerusalem, Chicago, Los Angeles, I believe. We had an Arctic base, an underwater base, an icebreaker ship, an airplane sequence that crashed into a high rise, which we cut right after 9/11. We had several Combine bases in the Wasteland, we had the Air Exchange, which is where they were taking the atmosphere from Earth, we had a train depot, and so on.”
All these ideas were the result of the developers trying to see what they could work off, but were eventually scrapped when “Gabe kept asking, how is this Half-Life?” It was then that Valve regrouped and built off what happened in the original Half-Life.
Half-Life 2 is a critically acclaimed FPS from Valve. It continues the story of Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist formerly with Black Mesa. This time, he must fight the alien Combine empire.