Half Life 2 Beta: The Story (Summary)

before i get into the video let me take a few seconds to say thank you thank you for being here and supporting me i started this channel in january but didn't start putting in real effort until well october but when i did you were all there for me we slowly grew as a community and i'm grateful for it i never knew i would grow this fast and heck have my own discord server boosted by someone thank you so much i know it's been a tough year for every single person around the world so i wish you and your loved ones all the best for 20 21 and finally if you enjoy the video please consider subscribing to the channel because if you do well it'll make an old friend very happy an old friend that suggested this video [Music] half-life 2's story went through many many variations there are so many that i couldn't even fit them all into this video so what i did was take the most interesting ones and create a linear sequence of events to show you i will do my best to not confuse you with this so this is it the half-life 2 beta story from start to finish if you know any other official story variations share them in the comments below train ride boat ride or the borealis most of the variations started off in a vehicle of some sorts in some it's the train ride in some it's the boat ride in the train ride version gordon would wake up and see g-man besides him the g-man would then proceed to tell him what has happened in the past 10 years the thing is he would show gordon what happened not tell him this would have been a sequence in which the earth would look perfectly fine but then the seven hour war would happen right in front of your eyes and then the landscape gets corrupted after that gordon would find himself in the train outside of the city here he would meet samuel who would tell gordon a little bit about life under the combine rule he would give him a gas mask because of the murky air this train ride would have let us see a lot of things for example gordon would see the wasteland all the aliens roaming about and the ruins of the old city in early variations there was no city 17 there was the new city and the old city in the boat opening sequence there are variations within variations in one instance gordon wakes up on an ice of sheet and in the middle of nowhere surrounded by fog he would hear the bells of a ship from a distance and once he follows those sounds he reaches the borealis this was a ship used by the resistance to transfer goods and resources there he would find odell the ship's engineer although there isn't evidence of this but the final hours of half left two claims that this version of the ship was heading towards city 17. in the beta files there's also a dox map from here some speculate that the game originally was going to start on the passenger ship not the borealis gordon would wake up and come outside only to find that the whole world has changed train station docks now given the two starting variations train ride and ship ride we have two further variations from the train ride gordon gets off on the train station from the ship he gets off on the docks it's not clear what happens in the train station or the docks but it is probable that barney meets gordon here and asks him to meet him at the manhack arcade there's a little ambiguity for these places we do have a dox map but it's sort of a concept map honestly not a full-fledged one but there's no official beta train station so most people just speculate what happens here [Music] new city or city 17. in the early variation city 17 was known as the new city it was a normal city before the combine came but when they came they converted the city into the new city a concrete jail for the humans in the city you would have seen different sorts of transportation like buses and trolleys up until late 2002 the city was quite dark literally and figuratively even in the maps we've looked at earlier all of the maps take place at evening or night and the sense of despair and misery were ever present more so than the retail version we have already talked about different versions of this beta cd17 the older one was the one with tall skyscrapers similar to the ones in american metropolitan areas but when they shifted the game's location from america to eastern europe the architecture was drastically changed and more emphasis was given to the titan-like stature of the citadel [Music] combine factories stenographer's chasm after coming into the city from the train station or the docks gordon would first go into the combine factories or in simpler terms the industrial area of the city here he would see the stenographer's chasm the cremator factory where children were creating cremators and other similar workshops the team at valve didn't find this area to be any good in terms of gameplay that is so in the end the whole factory industrial area got cut however some elements from this section were reused in half-life alex terminal or plaza and the construction sites after the factories gordon would arrive at the terminal or the plaza here he would see how ruthlessly the citizens are being treated by the combine from here gordon would proceed further to meet up with barney [Music] there are a few interesting things to note here later in development this would become the train station plaza because the factories were completely removed and sometime around 2001 gordon would pass through the construction sites as well which i assume came before the plaza section at this point in the retail game the metro cops start chasing us but in the beta variations it is unknown when that happens most likely it happens after the next section the manhack arcade the manhack arcade was completely cut from the game similar to the industrial areas the team at valve didn't find this area to be fun after it was implemented here gordon would enter into the manhack arcade building which was the entertainment or the commercial center for the citizens here gordon would see the citizens playing these games in which they control manhattan drones and kill fugitives little did they know they were actually killing real citizens gordon meets up with barney here and then proceeds to go to dr kleiner's lab there are different sources on this section some say that this is the first time barney meets gordon others say this is the second time after the train station slash dos meetup [Music] kleiner's lab some parts of kleiner's lab played out differently for example instead of being teleported to doctor eli vance gordon was supposed to go to kraken base but then the teleportation fails like in retail but instead of no casualties occurring dr kleiner was supposed to either die or get severely injured after the failure the teleportation machine itself was different in appearance as well it's more round after the teleportation failure barney asks us to escape from city 17 and head on to eli maxwell's lab on foot plaza between the lab and the plaza gordon would go through the consoles plaza there's no information known for this area no maps created but only this console statue exists it was intended to be used in this planned map but later shifted to be used in other maps throughout the game sewers or canals gordon starts his escape on foot but later used a jet ski or an airboat to traverse through the waters the beta canals were intended to be very long but they were trimmed while traveling through this route gordon would see the ruins of the old city besides him the team had a big challenge to overcome here they wanted to convey the feeling that gordon had traveled a long distance from the city with the changing landscapes on the sides and they kind of achieved it in retail the wasteland the next major section to play through would have been the wasteland this section was developed upon so much that it became the highway 17 coast that we all know and love the wasteland originally was supposed to be a dried-up ocean with wreckages of ships visible around the area this was all supposed to be the combines doing as they were the ones sucking up all the water from the oceans to extract the minerals in the wasteland gordon would travel and fight through many locations one thing of note is that alex was originally supposed to first meet gordon here but her initial appearance was shifted around a lot so from this point on just think that in every section we either had alex with us or we were alone that is until weather control where it is confirmed she was always stated to be there the town also known as the quarry quarry town fist town trap town or zombie town gordon would reach this place after the end of the canals when the ruins beside him were gone and instead he saw the wasteland quarry town was a small establishment filled with zombies and traps here he would meet a mad monk that we now know as father gregory with his help gordon would fight through the hordes of zombies use a digger in the mines to clear a way through and make his way to the scrapyard or eli's lab the town of course became ravenholm in the retail version eli's left right next to the town inside the cave was eli maxwell's lab gordon would proceed further into the depths of this cave until he would find eli maxwell eli would show us what had happened in the past 10 years what the air exchange is and tells us the story of how he lost his leg in a particle storm as we would get the physics manipulator that later became the gravity gun eli maxwell was merged with captain vance and became eli vance kraken base got cut so eli's lab became black mesa east an actual lab instead of a scrap yard the antlion caves after eli's lap gordon would go through the rest of the caves which are filled with ant lines and antline grubs here he would also confront a cut enemy the antlion king the patriarchal ruler of his kind this beast stood at almost 60 feet with gordon standing just between his toes unfortunately this enemy was cut this whole section itself was completely removed and some elements from it were reused in episode 2. the ant-line king was recycled into the antline guardian [Music] the coast the coast most likely would have been a part of the wasteland but it is considered a section on its own here gordon would go through different areas like the railway depot and prison and the air exchange since the scout car wasn't created and implemented in the earlier versions here gordon would continue his journey on the wasteland train and later on foot his journey would take him to the depot where he would fight the combine and destroy the gunship workshops the deport prison was further developed into what we know as nova prospect the overall concept however was changed drastically it became just a prison instead of a place where the combine make vehicles or imprison the prisoners from the depot gordon would take a train and go to the air exchange his train crashes into another depot a bit far from the air exchange and there he meets alex and skitch alex's alien pet remember alex's introduction and placement in the game shifted around a lot so in another variation alex was the one who came by train and gordon reached the air exchange on the scout car in the air exchange gordon alex and captain vance along with his conscripts fight the combine and their forces gordon proceeds to the highest tower in the facility battles a gunship and then jumps into a pool of solvents then he swims into the main reactor section of the facility and destroys it this makes the air exchange unoperational and the air starts to recover from the atmosphere this is the point in the beta story where the citizens of city 17 realize that this is the time to rebel against the combine this whole air exchange section was cut instead it was recycled into many things for example both the air exchange and the depot were merged together to make the nova prospect chapter and the theme of blowing up the core was reused in the ending of the retail game arctic regions it is unclear how gordon would reach the arctic in the previous chapter he had just blown up the air exchange the information that is available states that he arrives at the shore quote unquote and meets odell the former engineer of the borealis i'd like to point out that this section itself is a variation remember in the beginning i said that gordon started from either the docks or the trains well if we follow the dog's variation then i presume that the arctic regions wouldn't exist and rather we would go straight to either kraken base or the weather control facility anyway in the most well-known variation odell would take us on his tugboat to the borealis now in the later variations the borealis was used by the combine for research purposes even carried combine assassins that were probably in stasis but by the time gordon and adele reached the borealis the ship is littered with stalkers and dead bodies of the ship's workers they would get attacked by the combine and then would have to later escape the crack in base in a submarine kraken base in the base gordon would meet helena mossman the base itself would serve as a rebel science research facility however not much else is known about what transpires here all we know is that once kraken base is attacked gordon ends up in weather control kraken base itself however was seemingly dropped very early from the game as there isn't a lot of maps for it weather control for weather control there isn't any information available apart from the vinnette that was given to the developers for inspiration the facility with the massive dome it would drain the earth's oxygen similar to how air exchange corrupted the air a huge battle would take place between gordon alex captain vance and his conscripts and the combine mechs after the battle gordon and alex would escape from the weather control in an aircraft in one variation this aircraft was a c-130 airplane and in others it would have been a helicopter during their flight back to the city the aircraft would be hit by the combine and then crash into the skyscraper which would start the vertigo chapter where to go in the vertical chapter or the skyscraper chapter or the palace chapter the premise would be the same the aircraft crashes on the top floor and you have to fight your way down to the street levels when this chapter starts alex is either hurt by the crash and can't move or she gets kidnapped by the combine however before anything happens to alex she asks us to go find captain vance her father in his temporary headquarters right outside the citadel walls [Music] there are dozens of floors in vertigo that gordon has to fight through lobbies office rooms hallways and everything in between and there are shadows in the darkness that call my name and they wait oh yeah the skyscraper chapter anyway once we reach the rooftops of the lower buildings the street wars would start in later variations the building's appearance itself was changed and it looked like a museum of sorts rather than a normal looking office building the skyscraper chapter was completely cut instead of flying back to the city gordon and alex would instead teleport back in the retail game street wars the street wars is similar in concept to the retail one however it looked very very different it started after gordon reaches the rooftops after fighting his way through many different rooftops of different buildings he would reach the ground level here he would find the conscripts pinned down by a combined sniper then he would reach captain vance's headquarters and storm the citadel with the conscripts in the earlier variations the street wars chapter would of course take place in the american aesthetic city 17 but in the later variations it got shifted into the european one because gordon could not enter into the citadel directly so he does what he does in retail he goes to the underground areas and uses the tunnels to go through them here he would fight the hydras lurking in the waters of course captain vance was cut so was his headquarters the hydra was cut because it was not a fun enemy to fight and the general concept of this map remained the same [Music] the citadel gordon would fight through the citadel to reach the consul's office citadel had a different appearance here it felt more like a prison than some sort of alien headquarters [Music] i assumed that he would fight through a lot of combined forces and find the console in his office there he would see alex is being held hostage at this point we would also discover that helen hamas men betrayed us most likely gordon would have killed the consul but the fate of all these characters and the ending itself is unknown in earlier stages there was going to be a twist here when we would see the console he would have been turned into this alien-like monstrosity he would have fulfilled his wish of becoming immortal of course the appearance of the citadel changed many times the inside and the outside and we've looked at them before but this is where the story of half-life 2 beta and its variations end so ladies and gentlemen that is the story of half-life 2 beta i hope you enjoyed this video i hope arc cynics if he's watching this from up above enjoyed it too these past three months have been a wild ride i am so thankful for the support that you have given me we have achieved so much in such a short amount of time time doctor has hazard it seems as if you just had arrived you've done a great deal in such a short time span even gotten yourself a discord server but rather than letting you continue on with your illusion of free choice i'll make the choice for you it will all make sense dr hazard in the near future in times when you'll have to rise up and well i'm not at liberty to say in the meantime viewers this is where dr hazard and i get off prepare for unforeseen consequences because things are about to get hazardous [Music] you

Channel: Radiation Hazard

Views: 74,815

Rating: 4.9483871 out of 5

Keywords: half life 2, valve, beta version, dark atmosphere, grim alternate reality, leaked hl2, half life leak, city 17 beta, blade runner, alpha version, half life 2 development, Half Life 2 Beta: City 17 - The City That Never Was, The Fascinating & Depressing World of Half Life 2, the citadel, citadel, Half Life 2 Beta: The Citadel - Inside The Titan, Half Life 2 Beta: City 17 - In A Different Timeline, half life 2 beta, Half Life 2 Beta: Cut Characters & Enemies

Id: JGbnh9SputY

Length: 24min 31sec (1471 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021