Recreating HL2 Beta: Dark Interval (2020 | Part 1)

welcome in this three-part series we'll be looking at three mods that aim to recreate the beta half-life 2 world first one that we'll look into in this video is a mod called dark interval in the second video we'll be looking at raising the bar redux and in the third one we'll be looking at missing information [Music] dark intervals started its development in 2016 and the build we will be looking at today is from august of this year although it's far from completion what they built so far is nothing short of a masterpiece so welcome to recreating half-life 2 beta a three-part radiation hazard special right from the menu i knew i was in for a ride a good one in this build we have four chapters to play through it starts from gordon waking up from cryosleep and ends at the teleportation segment where the teleportation process fails like in the retail game what i'll be doing is share my thoughts while the footage plays in the background this video is overdubbed with music but i will be releasing a playthrough of this mod next month without any music and it'll be cut up to provide you with an entertaining video and the full experience of the mod in this video it's mainly the design that we're looking after this prologue follows that early story variation where gordon wakes up on a sheet of ice with the borealis in the distance however i'm not aware of any starting variation where he wakes up from cryogenic sleep anyway we walk across this chilling landscape to find a carcass of a ship and in it one cryogenic sleeping chamber once we touch it we wake up right from the get-go the borealis interiors look hauntingly beautiful as i was playing through this mod i feel that the scale of the ship has been widened quite significantly there was this time shifting sequences which blew me away it showed the future of the ship i presume with dead bodies and the ship itself in the middle of the arctic about the scale now this feels like a proper ship it's huge the beta maps that we looked at in a previous video feel very congested if compared to this version however i will say that this sequence of fighting headcrabs with cinder blocks was a bit annoying now let's focus on the design side of things like i usually try to do rather than giving you a cliched review i don't like doing reviews i like sharing my experiences now if there's one thing this mod nails it's the atmosphere this is quite frankly one of the best atmospheres i've ever experienced in any game or mod the lighting the shader effects with the ambience it's a perfect combination you realize as you traverse that there's something wrong here things have gone south but it's a mystery as to why the dimly lit corridors of the ship provide for a mellow feeling somber in its appearance the whole ship has a strange mystifying feel to it then we meet a familiar character odell odell for some reason just helps us out even knowing that we're one of the passengers from the cry unit he's shipping i guess if they find you we'll both be in trouble all right gotta think of something anyway with his help we progressed further and throughout this whole experience i could not help but gaze with awe at the sceneries i was presented with continuing on odell helps us with getting off this ship and into the best part of this mod city 17. as i saw it from the distance i started to get excited seeing that this was my first playthrough i could only imagine how they visualize the beta city 17 in this mod and i'll be honest they did a fantastic job the skybox the city in the distance standing on the docks this was too good to be true it's like seeing a dream a dream of the perfect beta recreation and then that citadel in the distance ever intimidating i could not help myself but stare at it again and again it felt so unreal as if the modders just ripped out the concept art and put it into a 3d world like this one thing of note is that the voice actors did a fantastic job in this mod i couldn't tell if the dialogue used in this mod was actual beta dialogue or new dialogue but its new dialogue and every voice actor did a fantastic job gosh it really is you isn't it and yeah gordon it's me barney i wasn't sure if he still remembered me i'm working for civil protection undercover obviously still have to meet my beating quota but don't from the docks barney leads us into the city here my mind was in fifth gear i kept imagining how good the city must look from the inside if it looks this good from the outside and they did not disappoint the sudden change in the sky from dark gray to orange was a bit strange but look it's that map i showed you in an earlier video and this section right here this is the first map i showed in my first beta video and what did the modders do to it make it even better this i believe is what beta city 17 looks like in everyone's minds it's absolutely filled with grunge and so much grit the fact that this starts from night time makes it feel darker as opposed to daytime in retail the choice for the lighting's color the textures makes this more akin to the concept art we've all seen of half-life 2. in this section we have to get two warty guns to help us open this gate we rescue one but the other one is down in some kind of sewer the combine factory makes an appearance and it's similar to the original combine factory we've seen just looks busier and filled with different things the combine aesthetic itself you know of the walls their computers tubes basically everything combined looks like a mixture of retail and the concept art more skewed towards the retail side of things i guess the sewer sections however are much more diverse looking than the retail there's often a break in the area's appearance that makes it fun to play through instead of the same looking corridors and areas this mod has the sewers looking more appealing there's zen infestations rooms and tunnels all looking different from one another then there was this area where we have to bring the lights back on vertical in nature the area feels depressing broken down and not well maintained once we get both vortigaunts to open the gate we proceed further into the city this scene mesmerizing this area leads into the plaza section which we've also seen in previous videos here it's magnified in area size and looks as amazing as you'd expect in an earlier version of the beta we would take a lift from here that would go to the other side of this map but here we just go into the train station to proceed further at this point the combine are aware of our presence in the city that's why barney asked us to go through here so we can reach dr kleiner the construction area remember the construction area in one of my earlier videos well here it's as if they turned up the dial to 11. that ray of light that we barely see from over the wall so good this area has a darkness of its own the rain pouring down makes it even more depressing this whole area has a feeling of being alone and helpless armed with only a crowbar it feels miserable to be here the lack of street lights and minimal lights coming from a distance only adds to the lonely mood this city 17 feels so much like it's an actual city living and breathing i'd even go far as saying that this is more alive than retails city 17. you see at least someone in the streets doing something being miserable being oppressed people living out in the streets under the pouring rain while green goes on and on about his overlords windows lit in the buildings makes you think who lives there and what kind of life they are living i guess in absolute misery this is just good so good i may sound like a broken record at this point but come on look at it i think this is how dark well wanted half-life 2 to be these interior sections of the apartment building filled with flickering lights dingy rooms and desolate people nails the feeling at this point gordon must be thinking how screwed up the world has become this is not the world he left behind when he accepted the g-man's offer the aesthetic of city 17 architecture-wise left me a bit confused it's not completely like the u.s skyscraper design nor like the european one it's more of an algomation it has both american looking buildings and eastern european ones it adds to the mystery where this version of city 17 is located the us europe are somewhere completely different once we reach the manhack arcade we venture inside to find our friend barney and on our way we see the miserable citizens in their habitat waiting for something to happen inside the manhack arcade we can see that it got an extensive facelift and the mod also has a playable manhack game but i'll not show it here because it has flickering lights and i don't want to trigger someone's epilepsy well i'll show just a bit of it it's the same concept though it looks like you're playing a game but if you look closer you'll see that you're actually controlling a manhack drone that's killing actual people hiding in the sewers god damn disturbing once we find barney he sends us back into the sewers and onto the path to dr kleiner's lab before the sewer starts there's this little abandoned area time has shifted and now it's almost daytime this wrecked area feels like it's been sealed off and nobody's been here for a while then we see a familiar radio station and inside the entrance to the sewers now unlike the narrow passages of the beta sewers it's more grand in scale here brilliantly designed now it looks like an actual sewer system of a gigantic city like city 17 and same point as before more diverse it's filled with different things and that's why the sewers are fun to travel through because it's not monotonous in design it's more diverse i like how they added in the element of zen infestation something that we see in half-life alex more prominently and i'll mention the tried and tested principle i always mentioned to make a good map with this kind of atmosphere you need sparse lighting and appropriate textures the foundations of your map will be perfect what you add on top of it is at your discretion throughout this mod you might have noticed that the locations are scaled up in such a way that they make you feel so small that's something not even the retail half-life 2 could achieve i love this warehouse area even though we're here for a few moments the feelings you get here are amazing you think about what this place used to be and how did it get like this now in the lab things resemble both the beta and the retail game of course here it looks more beautiful the sunlight coming in from the windows god damn breathtaking oh my goodness gordon freeman in the teleportation scene something similar to retail plays out we're trying to get to kraken base but the teleportation doesn't go as planned we see some familiar places beta places we come back kleiner gets injured and barney asks us to get out of the city asap and the mod ends here before i end the video let's look at some extras there was this map which was more of a concept of the train going through the wastelands from the interior it looks phenomenal but from the outside it was a bit barren well of course it's a concept map so i wasn't expecting anything out there either then there's these places that we see during the teleportation scene the wasteland area looks amazing and so do these other places now the outro this mod is straight up gorgeous to look at every map every location is so well crafted you couldn't even tell that this was made by a small group of modders i really really hope that they continue to work on this the four years it took to make this shows in how beautiful and well crafted it is i cannot wait for this to be completed one day and we will all have a way to replay the beta version of aflav 2 that is true to its roots now seeing that this is a three part series i i hope to crown a winner out of the three mods i'm not gonna rate this mod yet i'll do that in the third video i'll uh i'll declare a winner out of these three for now in the coming days i'll be working on creating the second and third part of the series i hope you enjoyed this one and if you did please consider subscribing to the channel and thank you for watching you

Channel: Radiation Hazard

Views: 38,240

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: uMAmRe6L_7U

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020