Unseen Half-Life Concept Art Released – Including a Spin-Off That Never Came Out
Many Half-Life projects have never come to fruition, from Half-Life 2: Episode 3 to spin-offs that never made it to development. At least we know what they look like, thanks to some new concept art.
2K developer and Half-Life fan David McGreavy (via) Kotaku) has released a selection of never-before-seen images from the highly anticipated Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Review some previously released plot points.
McGreavy never worked on Half-Life 2, but became an avid collector and found himself in possession of concept art that gave us a glimpse into an unpublished chapter of Half-Life 2.
Spend my Sunday scanning and archiving my collection #valve concept art.
Not a bad way to spend the day.
😅 And I need to start cataloging everything else lol pic.twitter.com/jjkFwD08Om
— David McGreavy 🔜 PAX West (@DominusNoctis) April 25, 2022
Back in April, McGreavy Made fun of never-before-seen artwork When he started cataloging the Valve collection, a former Valve employee added new ones in an attempt to reduce the size of the collection. The most immediately interesting part is the slug-like creature in the top left.
It’s “Breen Grub”. Fans, as the name suggests, are large, slug-like creatures. The villain of Half-Life 2, Dr. Wallace Breen, appeared throughout Half-Life 2 and was seen falling to his death after Gordon Freeman destroyed the reactor at the top of the Citadel. rice field. During episodes 1 and 2, he only appears in flashbacks. looks like It’s not the kind of host body he might have preferred.
Once human, Dr. Breen intended to transfer his consciousness to a slug-like creature on the Combine’s orders. know? Well, this gorgeous (but pretty gross) concept his art confirms a plot revealed by former Half-Life 2 writer Marc Laidlaw before he left the company in 2016.
Breathe Love pic.twitter.com/rOUvkrH1ra
— LambdaGeneration (@LambdaGen) August 29, 2022
As Laidlaw reveals, the conspiracy would have seen the heroes Alyx and Gordon move to Borealis, an Aperture Science ship in a constant state of flux, existing in stages. Having set up a base around it, the Combine meanwhile transferred Breen’s mind to the aforementioned slug-like creature… and asks Alix and Gordon to kill him.
Laidlaw claims his version of events is “0% official” after leaving the company, but it’s still a fascinating glimpse into what happened.
Additionally, McGreavy has released more concept art scans for Half-Life 2: Episode 3. This includes post-apocalyptic vistas and debris-covered coastlines.
However, the two concept art showing Alyx Vance and her robot companion, Dog, are not from Episode 3. Instead, McGreavy says: Kotaku These were part of an attempted spin-off that would have been completely separate from both Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and the unreleased Half-Life 3.
For now, we can only speculate what that spin-off might have been.
High-res scans of Half-Life 2: Episode 3/Half-Life 3 concept art (previously @Dominus Noctis as part of his *extensive* Valve collection).
Big thanks to David for sharing these with us and the community 🙏
Raw Scan will be released soon. https://t.co/pbSJXMBCXI pic.twitter.com/HTY0cuebdG
— LambdaGeneration (@LambdaGen) August 29, 2022
Half-Life 2 is a landmark moment in game development, and IGN’s review stated: Additional episodes, a third cliffhanger. However, it took Valve until 2020 to explain why Episode 3 wasn’t made.
Since then, we’ve got the incredible VR-exclusive game Half-Life: Alyx, but we’re still waiting for the official Half-Life 3. Multiple versions of the game have been abandoned, but it could be closer than ever – Valve’s developer series says it wants to continue making more games.
Ryan Leston is IGN’s entertainment journalist and film critic.you can follow him twitter.
