Content cut from Half-Life 2
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This article deals with content cut from the final release of Half-Life 2.
The book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar[1] revealed many of the game's original settings and action that were cut down or removed entirely from the final game. Half-Life 2 was originally intended to be a far darker game where the Combine were more obviously draining the oceans for minerals and replacing the atmosphere with noxious, murky gases.
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[edit] The tram ride
This quote from the book, from an early draft of the introductory sequence, gives a feel for what the game would have been like:
| Off to one side, you see another train hurtling through the dusk. It gives you some sense of the train you are riding. The nose of the engine car is protected by a huge, deadly variant of a cow-catcher, a sharpened steel plow designed to shear through herds of whatever creatures might stray across the tracks or try to take the train head-on. Something that resembles the old Gargantua looms up from a fissure, lunging at the parallel train, and the engine slices right through the thing, leaving it in gory pieces on the track. |
It seems that the train ride from the beginning was intended to be longer, allowing the player to see a bit of the exterior of City 17.
[edit] Nova Prospekt
In addition, the evolution of Nova Prospekt is described: originally as a small Combine rail depot built on an old prison in the wasteland (the depot model remains in the game, visible from the beach and trash compactor) it grew and grew from a stopping-off point along the way to the destination itself.
[edit] The Hydra
Promotional shots and gameplay videos released before the game became available showed parts of these scenes, and also showed enemies that do not appear anywhere in the final game, such as the "Hydra," a massive, gelatinous, translucent, neon-blue creature that lived in the sewers. It was planned as a massive bulk far below the city with tentacles that would reach up and spear through enemies, including Combine soldiers. The Hydra was apparently cut because its AI proved troublesome: while impressive when attacking NPCs, it was less interesting, and more frustrating for players to fight, and was also difficult to code.
[edit] Other enemies
Other enemies cut from the game included Combine assassins (their AI was salvaged to form the Fast Zombie; they were females, very similar in attitude to the Half-Life black ops; they are included in Half-Life 2: Survivor), a newly skinned bullsquid, various Synths and Combine soldiers. There was also a planned creature called the Cremator who would clean the streets of bodies after a skirmish with a massive acid gun called an Immolator, which would double as an offensive weapon when the Cremator would become an enemy. The Cremator's head would eventually be featured in Eli's lab in Black Mesa East, encased in a jar of formaldehyde, which Eli will make comments about when the player nears the jar and views it.
[edit] Different characters and places
The game was originally intended to be much more diverse in settings. Parts of the book detail how Gordon would fight alongside characters such as Odessa Cubbage, albeit under a different name and in a different place, as well as fighting together with Colonel Vance - a character that was later merged with Eli to become Doctor Eli Vance - and Vance's forces. Originally, Eli and Alyx Vance had no relation, and Eli's lab was originally intended to resemble a form of scrapyard and town in a cave than a better equipped laboratory within a hydroelectric power station; the scrapyard area where the Gravity Gun tutorial takes place resembles the original concept; being an auxiliary area as opposed to the bulk of the lab. The Citadel also looked very different, it was more round than the bulky retail citadel.
[edit] The original journey of Gordon
The original journey for the player, as mentioned in Raising the Bar, details the following stages:
- Encounter with Samuel, an Asian character, on the wasteland train. Samuel's character model would eventually be used for a nameless train passenger at the start of the final version's storyline. Samuel's model was later recycled as a hostage in Counter-Strike: Source. In addition, the train ride was originally planned to be much longer, and allowed players to view the wastelands outside the New City (the original name for City 17).
- Encounter with Barney and Kleiner in the New City.
- Encounter with Eli (a.k.a "Eli Maxwell" in the beta version of Half-Life 2) and Dog in "Scrapyard" (Eli's lab), notably without any mention of Alyx Vance or Doctor Judith Mossman (a.k.a "Elaine Mossman" in the beta version of Half-Life 2)
- Encounter with Alyx in the wasteland. At one stage, Gordon takes another train ride which ends in a crash and he is met by Alyx in the desert. Alyx was intended to be a much tougher character and mention is made in Marc Laidlaw's scripts of her using an array of weapons, including grenades.
- Encounter with Captain Vance in the "Air Exchange" (aka AirEx). This was a planned section of the game involving a massive scale attack on a Combine building. The Air Conditioner was a massive dome that literally drained Earth of its oxygen. Captain Vance - Alyx's father, but not linked to Eli - was one of the few surviving military leaders and was leading an assault on the building, and Gordon and Alyx join the fight after their journey there on foot.
- Encounter with Owen on the Borealis. The Borealis was a science icebreaker that was, in some versions of the planned game, stranded in the ocean. Owen, sometimes named Odell, was the engineer of the original ship and leader of a group of rebels. His model was later recycled as Odessa Cubbage. After the battle fought with Captain Vance, Gordon travels on foot to the Borealis, which in turn takes him across the ocean bay.
- Encounter with Doctor Mossman in the "Kraken". The Kraken was either a stranded science ship, locked in ice or beached in the shallow depths of a nearly dried ocean, or a rebel base of sorts. Judith Mossman met the player here for a period of time before Gordon leaves, on foot, and advances through a Combine Weather Control Complex.
- Consul confrontation in the Citadel. After battling through the Weather Control Complex, the player would board "Flight C-130" and travel back across the ocean towards the New City. Here he would either land at or fight into the Citadel to confront the Consul. The Consul was the origin of Doctor Breen's character and his model went through several different incarnations. (Flight C-130 was intended to crash into a building called "Vertigo", a museum or palace of sorts. The player would then continue his journey again on foot, and soon reach the citadel and navigate through it to meet the consul. This was slightly modified, with the vertigo chapter removed, to form the current Citadel level.)
[edit] Vehicles and weapons
Other cuts from the game included a drivable jetski, which was eventually replaced by the airboat in the final game, and additional weapons. Weapons cut included the following:
- The OICW, likely cut because of the implausibility of coming across such a weapon in Half-Life 2's universe
- An ice axe, likely picked up during the arctic section of the game which was planned to take place after the Borealis. This is similar to the stunstick, which was also cut.
- A flare gun, found on the icebreaker ship Borealis
- Hopwire grenade - a ball which the player throws and which, after several seconds, leaps up into the air and shoots out several wires which, when tripped, cause the ball and all its tethers to detonate (note: the hopwire grenade can be found in Half-Life 2: Episode One as a hidden weapon. It creates a small black hole that disintegrate everything next to it)
- The Combine Guard Gun, a weapon similar to the Strider's cannon which was used by a cut enemy named the Combine Guard
- The Immolator, the device used by the Cremator to clean up after resistance had been quashed
- S.L.A.M., Selectable Lightweight Attack Munitions, as used in HL2DM
- A variety of light and heavy machine guns
- Incendiary rifle, as seen in the E³ 2003 video "Tunnels"
- A number of tools with no offensive capabilities
- Fire extinguisher
- A second Gravity Gun, the Physgun, which offered a different method of manipulating the environment and the ability to weld objects together, which was later re-tooled and used in mods such as Garry's Mod
- Binoculars
- HK MP5K SMG
- AK-47 Rifle
- Grenade with no LED light, which also made a bigger explosion
- A much more powerful Franchi Spas-12 shotgun which also looks different than the final version in the game
- The RPG could also hold more than 3 rockets
- The standard development kit released with the game also mention an incomplete weapon that was intended to provide the player the ability to use various small objects as a weapon (bottles, planks, etc.)
- The standard pistol also ejected shell casings when being shot, unlike the one in the final game.
[edit] Ravenholm
The E³ video "Traptown" shows that at some point in the game's development it was also possible to shoot any gun while using the HEV suit's zoom function and that the player could discard weapons, indicating they could only carry a specified amount of firearms at a time. Traptown was to be a section of the Ravenholm chapter. It seems to share some similarities with a section from the Ravenholm chapter from the released version of Half-Life 2, mostly the setting of the section. The trailer also showed the ability of Combine enemies to try to break down doors, which did not make it in the final release. This is thought to be a scripted sequence for the E³ video. At the end of the video, the player shoots an explosive barrel that was behind an old car, which made the car explode and jump into a nearby zombie. This wasn't possible in the final version, although there is a roadblock in the Highway 17 chapter of the finished game where the player does something similar to a barrel-toting truck. Also, Ravenholm (or probably only the Traptown section) featured both Combine soldiers and zombies in its beta stage, as well as Father Grigori, which, according to Raising The Bar and the leaked sound files, was to be tougher and less humorous. The zombie skins were different: the zombies had city clothes, rather than the final versions (white shirts and blue trousers, quite similar to the Half-Life 1 zombie skins).
Initially a small mining town called Quarrytown, which was more of a puzzle solving section of Half-Life 2, with zombies added as the town's pests, Valve liked the idea of having a town full of zombies, so Quarrytown eventually became a big town, which was full of traps, made by Father Grigori, the town's priest and only remaining survivor.The E3 video, Traptown, featured both Combine Soldiers and zombies, the soldiers being added probably because Valve thought that the video wouldn't have been as interesting only with the zombies, which are slow and easy to kill.
[edit] Lost content ?
It remains unknown if most of the cut Half-Life 2 scenes will eventually be completed and released, or if they are lost forever. A removed section of the original Half-Life was eventually released as the Half-Life: Uplink demo; a similar situation was in place with the HDR technology demo, Lost Coast, which was based on a scene that was cut from the sequel. It is possible or even likely that more removed sections of HL2 will be seen in expansion packs such as Half-Life 2: Episode One. There's a possibility that Kraken Base might be in the further episodes of Half-Life 2 because Doctor Judith Mossman is only seen in Episode One on a monitor in the Citadel reporting from an artic base. This might mean that Kraken Base (possibly under a different name) is being put back into the storyline.
Some of the cut content, including the Borealis level and the E³ presentation maps, is contained in the third-party mod Missing Information. After a discussion questioning the legality of the mod [1], a Valve employee deleted the article about Missing Information from the VDC with the reason "illegal content". [2]
Also, some of the cut content is featured on the 2003 illegal leak of Half-Life 2.The leak was the first time the players noticed that the E³ demos were heavily scripted.
[edit] List of the demonstrations shown at E3 2003
- G-Man Emotions Demo
- Two Source Engine demonstrations
- Zombie Encounter on The Docks Demo
- Bugbait Demo
- Coastline Demo
- Tunnels Demo
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Hodgson, David (2004). Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar. Prima Games. ISBN 0-7615-4364-3.
