Half-Life 2′s 20th anniversary documentary has revealed a tantalising glimpse at unseen footage of Episode 3, which was scrapped during development.
Produced by Secret Tape, the documentary features interviews with a number prominent Half-Life 2 developers, including Gabe Newell, and touches on why Episode 3 never saw the light of day. Half-Life 2 Engineer, David Speyre, revealed that the project was about six months into production before it was shelved.
I think we were six months in on it when we moved to Left 4 Dead. We put down episode 3 to go help Left 4 Dead. By the time we considered going back to Episode 3, the argument was made that ‘well we missed it.’ We could have definitely gone back and spent two years to make episode 3.
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“My personal failure was being stumped. I couldn’t figure out why doing Episode 3 was pushing anything forward,” added Newell.
Half-Life 2 was released on November 16, 2004 for the PC via Steam. The game was a huge critical and commercial success, and is widely considered one of the greatest video games ever made, bagging some 39 Game of the Year awards. The game was later released for PS3 and Xbox 360 as part of The Orange Box, which also featured Team Fortress 2 and Portal.