Ravenholm was cancelled because the headcrabs and zombies that featured in it were “played out” and it was constraining to have to fit the game before Half-Life 2: Episode 2, according to former Valve writerMarc Laidlaw.
Ravenholm began life as a fourth episode of Half-Life 2 before Valve decided to spin it off into its own thing. Noclip’s video is taken from an unfinished build that was shown to Valve towards the end of development. The raw footage is split into five chapters, with each chapter showing different parts of what would go on to make up Ravenholm. It’s creepy at times, which you’d hope for from a horror game, mostly thanks to some close-quarters shotgun combat with plenty of zombies rushing about in extremely dark office hallways. Still seems very much like aHalf-Lifegame, though.
One of the standouts from Noclip’s footage is the electricity system introduced by Arkane. It’s something you might expect from Arkane given their experience with immersive sims, but also totally in keeping with Half-Life 2’s habit of mucking about with physics. The good thing about electricity is it’s very good at frying zombies, which O’Dwyer makes use of a lot in the video. Ravenholm would let you conduct electricity through metal, and through water to electrify pools and trap enemies. Reminds me of happy times spent dealing with splicers inBioShock.
Noclip’sfull documentaryabout the history of Arkane holds more details on the canned Ravenholm project. Would you have liked to play a horror game set in Half-Life’s world?
