 | | Half-Life 2 - the coffee table book |
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Raising the Bar is a book on the development of Half-Life 2. Referring to it as a mere book sells it short though, it feels more like a journey...the evolution of the game from beginning to end as seen through the eyes of its creators.
It's physically huge, hardback covered, and rather light on text. Instead it opts for massive amounts of media; stunning concept art, high resolution screenshots, deleted scenes, private e-mails, sketches, scripts and tons more, all of which culminate in a stunning "making of" that rivals the sort of thing you'd normally find on a DVD documentary.
Back in the Day
The story begins in 1996, when early Valve members began work on their two initial projects.
The first was a simple first person shooter titled Quiver, while the second, titled Prospero, was to be more of an intricate story based action game, encompassing psionic powers and deep exploration.
Over time Quiver started to steal many of Prospero's concepts for itself though (can you see where this is going?) which prompted Prospero to be redesigned into a massive multiplayer network project instead (which ultimately became Steam). As things progressed, Quiver was eventually retitled Half-Life, and thus a franchise was born.
Studying the earliest doodles and character designs that Valve did around that time, way before programming had even begun on the actual game, makes one giggle gleefully though; an early Gordon Freeman for example, with massive beard and epic beer gut, originally looking more like an evil red neck lumberjack than a scientist. Enemies and AI characters also appear oddly cartoony and lacking the darker realism they ended up displaying in the final game.
At the same time, you can't help but bust out a tiny little grin when among the many off-target creature and concept designs they did, you suddenly come across the Houndeye or the Barnacle - creatures that went on to be not only used in the final game, but in fact appeared identical to their initial doodles.
Cover Me, Gordon!
As the book progresses and work on Half-Life ramps up, you feel like you're getting a heavily condensed fly on the wall look at what it must have been like to work on the game back then. As new designs and ideas are brought to the table, the game is constantly changed and remoulded to accommodate each and every one of them.
There's no better example of that than Barney, who from reading this, you realise perhaps had the biggest affect shaping the game than pretty much anything else. Originally old blue pants was meant to be nothing more than an ineffectual bad guy, with Gordon going up against evil forces primarily by himself for the entire game. Then on a Valve AI test one day, a developer had Barney follow Gordon around just to test some path finding techniques (people getting stuck behind doors, etc). The side effect of that test was that Gordon suddenly had a companion - a sidekick who'd follow him everywhere and take down bad guys for him. Developers were so impressed by this accidental discovery that they began an entire overhaul of the main game in 1997, with companions worked in as a far greater influence this time. And as it was, Barney joined the light side.
The book's full of these small, interesting anecdotes. Wait until you read about the off the wall idea behind creating Big Mama, the 20ft tall giant spider boss near the end of the game.
As we move on past the story of Half-Life, there's an extensive section on Counter-Strike and its recent Source upgrade. Following all that though is the real meat and potatoes, and perhaps the main reason to buy the book; the making of Half-Life 2 itself.
Wake Up, Dr. Freeman
Browsing through the hundreds upon hundreds of paintings, drawings, renders and designs for Half-Life 2 makes you realise just how much stuff gets cut from a video game these days. Half-Life 2 as it was originally envisioned, was a massive globe trotting adventure where Gordon visited arctic bases before flying to Washington DC, then zooming off to the actual areas that made it into the final game. How this much more epic of journeys would all have been handled in HL2's real-time storytelling mode is a mystery, although scribbled sideline notes hinted at plane based levels. Hey, if 24 can do it...
My favourite part of the book is the section on developing the characters though. Ever wondered how they got G-Man, Dr Kleiner, Barney and everyone else looking so scarily life like? Well here you find out...and while I hate to give it all away, they literally just got actors in to "play" their parts (bet ya didn't know Alyx was a real person?).
Although some were professional actors, and others were relatives to the development team, they also hired homeless people off the street, such as Eli. The comparison photos of real person compared to CGI actor is an amazing site to see, and fantastic proof of Source's supreme ability at recreating life-like figures.
When all's said and done, the Half-Life 2 section of the book is just far too jam packed with info and details to mention 'em all here though - for example I never even knew those little flying scanner fucks who take your picture are actually relaying your position to enemy troops!
Computer Generated Art
As well as stories and descriptions, there's just hundreds upon hundreds of lusciously painted concept designs too - utterly amazing artwork, regardless of how little of it made it into the final game. Some of the artists' ideas clearly pushed that sci-fi edge a lot more than what we got in the actual game, into very dark and twisted Aliens-like places.
It's amazing how much content they had designed which never even made it into the game in fact, there's easily enough creatures, characters, places and back-story to create at least two more sequels here. Just check out the deleted Combine Overwatch troops for example, with their bad arse camo suits that change colour to match the environment, or the female Combine Assassin, successor to the original game's ultra high-speed female arse kickers.
Coolest of all is the Cremator though - a Combine "janitor" who wonders the streets of City 17 cleaning up your mess of dead bodies and entrails (his head can still be seen in a jar at Eli's lab as a wee little cameo). The fact that so much got cut is a shame, but at the same time expect much of this stuff to be reincorporated into HL3. In that regard, Raising the Bar is our first, if somewhat twisted glimpse at the next game.
Interspersed between all these various nuggets of info are occasional high resolution full quality double page 16:9 screenshots from throughout the actual game. And oh my god, they took my breath away. It's one thing to be playing the game in a sense of panic, with Combine hordes on your tail and alien headcrabs trying to stick their vagina faces down your throat, but to now sit back and admire the views as actual works of art...wow. It's all so easy to miss out on the beauty when you're busy spraying lead into Striders.
Heck some of the shots featured here are genuinely hard to differentiate between in-game footage and photos. I won't be scanning
any of this stuff as you really do need to see it for yourself though.
Buy Me
The book came out before the game did, back when Valve had no clue what sort of reception the title would receive. As a result, there's a slight nervousness to be found in some of the passages, as if they don't quite realise what they've achieved. Luckily for them, HL2 rocked the world, and if you still haven't picked it up after all the acclaim it's since received...chances are you must be some sort of vegetable.
For those who've worked there way through Half-Life 2 and think it's game over, think again. Raising the Bar will show you a whole other side to the game that you never knew existed.
I'll leave you with one last amusing story from the latter pages of the book before I go; once the physics engine had been added in to the game, a beta tester was doing all he could to push a tire-swing all the way over on itself. Try as he might though, he just couldn't get it high enough. So he took a run up, sprinted forward and gave it one final big arse shove...it went all the way up, then came crashing all the way down onto his head and killed him.
That serves you right for getting paid to beta test the best game ever made.
