Valve developers discuss why Half Life 2: Episode 3 was abandoned

After Ars spent Half-Life 2's 20th anniversary week looking back at the game's history and impact, Valve marked the occasion with a meaty two-hour YouTube documentary featuring insider memories from the team behind the game itself. Near the end of that documentary, longtime Valve watchers also get a chance to see footage of the long-promised but never-delivered Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and hear more about what led the project to be abandoned.

The Episode 3 footage included in the documentary focuses heavily on a new ice gun that would have served as the episode's main new feature. Players would have been able to use that gun to freeze enemies, set up ice walls as makeshift cover, or construct icy ledges to make their way down sheer cliff faces. The developers also describe a so-called "Silver Surfer mode" that would have let players extrude a line of ice in their path then slide along it at slippery speeds.

The Episode 3 developers were also working on a new, blob-like enemy that could absorb other blobs to grow or split into segments to get around small barriers or pass through grates.

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