Half-Life 2 just turned 20 years ancient, and to celebrate, Valve has updated the game with several up-to-date features. They also produced a documentary in which several members of the development team recall their work on the game and its episodic additions – including the never-released Episode 3.
The documentary includes footage of the episode in action for the first time, as well as an ice cannon and a up-to-date type of liquid enemy.
Discussion for Episode 3 begins at 1 hour 52 minutes, with concept art and eventually in-game footage. All in-game footage comes from test arenas and technology demonstrations, not finished game parts. Various Valve developers say they worked on this episode for about six months before moving on to the original Left 4 Dead and never returning.
The episode in question has two main features. The ice gun allows you to create geometry by spraying ice, so you can create an impromptu cover to hide behind, through which soldiers can shoot and eventually crash. It can also be used directly as a weapon to freeze enemies, or in the so-called “Silver Surfer Mode” to squeeze a path of ice in front of you while gliding along it.
The ice cannon is thematically appropriate, considering Episode 3 was supposed to take place (at least partially) in the Arctic, as Freeman headed for the Borealis icebreaker, which was referenced in Episode 2 (and was initially planned as the setting for Half-Life 2).
More compelling is the up-to-date enemy type called “blobs”, which is a descriptive name. These are spots, similar to liquid droplets, that can change shape, separate and clog the surrounding area. They could absorb other enemies or physical objects and squeeze (or fall) through the bars.
There’s no telling if these elements would have made it into Episode 3 or if fighting the blobs would have been a lot of fun. They sure look chilly though.
“I still don’t know what it would be like if we built it, because it hasn’t been built,” says writer Marc Laidlaw. “It was a feeling of excitement about something I couldn’t even imagine would happen as a team. I didn’t impose a top-down plan: ‘This is what we need to do to tell our very important story.’ You know, it’s like – do we have new features? What story can we make with them now?”
Laidlaw eventually published a story presenting an essentially fanfiction version of Episode 3, though he later told us he regretted that decision. “I had been living on an island, completely cut off from my friends and creative community for the past few decades, completely out of touch and with no one to talk me out of it. It just seemed like a fun thing to do…until I did it.”
In the documentary, several Valve employees give their own take on why they never continued work on Episode 3. Fatigue after working on Half-Life for so long, doubts about the concept of episodic games, feeling they had to “step up” development for the next part , excitement about other projects being developed internally, including multiplayer games. A few also say it was a mistake – that in hindsight they could and should have gone back to work on it.
“You can’t be inactive and say: ‘We’re moving history forward.’ It’s about fulfilling your obligations to your players. Yes, of course they like the story, they like many, many aspects of it. But the reason we do it is because people want to know what happens next – you know, it wouldn’t be that tough for us,” says Gabe Newell.
“The failure was that my personal failure was embarrassed. I couldn’t understand why working on episode 3 was pushing anything forward.”
I don’t think it’s inactive to resolve a story that ends on a cliffhanger. I’m also not sure if developers have any obligations to players, but if so, they probably do more a policeman who will take no further action at all, thus completely relinquishing responsibility for innovation. On the other hand, it’s tough to argue with the ethos that produced Half-Life and Half-Life 2 in the first place, as well as the several fantastic games in various franchises that Valve made instead of Episode 3.
If you’re obsessed with Half-Life like me, the entire anniversary documentary is worth watching. For example, there’s a brief footage of Arkane’s abandoned Ravenholm project near the end. Valve has also uploaded several separate videos to its YouTube channel, including SIGGRAPH demo from 2000something that has never been seen before canceled E3 2002 demoAND demo at E3 2003, which was eventually launched.
