Half Life 2 Beta: The Citadel - Inside The Titan

before we begin i'd like to say that if you enjoy the video please consider subscribing and if you do the combine won't send you to nova prospect so we've talked about the beta city 17. it was different from the retail version of half-life 2. it was gritty dystopian and more cyberpunk and unlike the retail version which takes place in europe the beta city 17 was located in america but i wondered what was inside the beta citadel how did it look like from the insides back then we saw it well a bit of it in some of the maps we looked at earlier we saw the titan in the distance keeping an eye on the citizens of the city ever watching well why don't we step inside there are a few handful of maps in the 2001 beta this is the first one right as it starts a cold blue light emits from the ceiling followed by what appears to be the holding cells if you remember the retail citadel then this is nothing like that similar to the beta city 17 we saw this gives off similar wives run down and full of grime it's more grunge even for a beta map it looks polished enough to be in a retail game what makes this map great is the ambient sounds [Music] of course the finished version would have had enemies here along with some music in the background but right now it is the scariest place to be these overall shapes these little containers is what i think are the parts that carry people in the retail version these shapes can be seen in the walls so i assume they fit the prisoners in these containers and then fit them in the walls quite disturbing you could only imagine what the citadel was used for in the retail one it was only implied that people were turned into stalkers but this feels more violent they could have used red to portray the map as a place of agony but the light the blue light is more fitting the rest of these maps are quite unfinished most of these have the prefix of prototype underscore in their names so you would imagine that these are more concepts than maps but still this first one has a sense of verticality not seen in many maps this concept shows the top part of the citadel with the bottom half of it shrouded in the darkness of the abyss compared to the sleek and alien design of the retail citadel this is more modular or rough looking the map does not have any interiors apart from some little spaces that you can go into and i haven't said this in a while but that skybox like a painting in the sky this one similar to the first map just has these stairs here instead of the other half of the holding section but let me show you something [Music] did you hear that a door opened wonder why i'm mentioning that i no clipped to every corner of this map and i did not find a single door this map has no doors then my question is who or what opened that door and where is it this map is the console's office the thing is this was so early in the development process that the story wasn't even developed up to this point no one knows what happens here but it is known that gordon fights his way through the citadel to reach this office after meeting the console it is unknown what happens [Music] this might be my personal favorite out of the bunch the map shows the interior of the citadel instead of the darkness of the retail citadel here it's a piercing bright cold light that's illuminating the map not reaching all the crevices it casts shadows that give personality to the overall atmosphere i'd like to make a reference which may sound crazy but this map reminds me of the eyelid elwyn ruins in the fourth elder scroll game oblivion anyway totally different from the actual citadel and i would have loved to see this in the retail version but hey what can you do another interior map same properties as the previous one i like this one but it's a bit small apart from appreciating the lights and the shadows there's not much here these tube-like structures show up a lot and was a recurring theme in these designs the third interior map resembles the first interior map with the same properties and all that and sorry for the stuttering obs was freaking out for some reason an interior map with machinery of sorts i assume these would have been moving in the final version good map not much to say here either i would share some backstory from the original beta storyline but like i mentioned these maps were made so early in the development process that they had not finalized this part of the story at this point i started to wonder something do we all appreciate the beta maps or just maps in general what i mean is there's intrigue at looking at old maps especially maps of these half-life games it may be nostalgia or it may be the fact that when we see empty maps with not a single soul in sight we feel some sort of emotion evoked in our receptors in our brain emotions that bring up feelings in our minds that we rarely feel there is a connection i know there is but some may be genuinely looking for beta maps and see what the maps looked like and how the game changed but some may be looking for maps that evoke emotions emotions that only they can identify with and well i've gone a bit off topic this map is a skybox map it's basically used along with the skybox to create a sense of vastness in a level it's a bit tricky to explain but let me know if you want me to make a video on this topic it really is interesting this is the 2001 hyphen 2002 beta it has the same holding cells map but with one difference there's this section here which kind of resembles a map we looked in the 2001 beta here's the second and the last map in this version it is massive in size i honestly do not know what this place was used for or what would have happened here in the final version but my guess is that this could have been a boss battle arena maybe green or excuse me maybe the console in a combined mech suit or a combine super gunner ship i don't know and there you have it the beta version of the citadel i really hope that i covered all the citadel maps unlike the city 17 maps if i find more of these i'll put them in a compilation video so the maps we looked at were fascinating completely different and unique in their own rights i said i like the retail city 17 but for the citadel i would have preferred this version in the retail version well maybe in one of the infinite multiverses we have maybe another version of myself got to play this version of the citadel in half-life 2. thank you for watching you

Channel: Radiation Hazard

Views: 23,620

Keywords: half life 2, valve, beta version, dark atmosphere, grim alternate reality, leaked hl2, half life leak, city 17 beta, city 17, blade runner, cyber punk, orwellian, 1984, alpha version, half life 2 development, Half Life 2 Beta: City 17 - The City That Never Was, Half Life 2 Beta: Air Exchange - A Facility That Poisons The Air, The Fascinating & Depressing World of Half Life 2, the citadel, citadel

Id: 6n_3iJjpANA

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2020