Prerelease:Half-Life 2 (Windows)

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Half-Life 2 (Windows).

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

To do: Upload the YouTube video and gather screenshots of all the differences (and also compare beta shotty to final).

SIGGRAPH 2000

During the 27th Annual SIGGRAPH Convention on July 23th, 2000, Valve showed an engine test behind closed doors. to show off the capabilities of the (un-named at the time) Source Engine, doubling as the first test map created for "Half Life 2".

The demo comprised of multiple scenes showing gas-masked-clad citizens rebelling over Civil Protection, throwing Molotov cocktails & engaging in hand-to-hand combat with them. The most notable scene (and the only scene we have a screenshot of) is of the rebelling citizens running down a hallway, yelling "Get Your Free TVs!" (which the demo is commonly named after). According to David Speyrer, a red-haired Alyx (based on early concept-art of her) also appeared, along with other early concepts such as the Cremator.

The demo overall was made to show fire tech, physics destruction, materials, terrain displacement, and facial animation. While no footage of the demo has ever surfaced, a broken version of the map was included in the 2003 Half Life 2 Leak, as "city_test" in the WC map pack, and assets (such as the textures for the gas-mask citizens) can also be found in the leak.

E3 2004 Trailer

The trailer shown at E3 2004 was released on November 1, 2004 as a .wmv file and later uploaded to YouTube.

Differences

• Eli is seen wearing a Yale shirt instead of a Harvard shirt:

E3 2004	Final

• The shotgun (seen near the end) is based off of the beta shotgun:

E3 2004	Final

• The rebels don't have their own models.
• Instead of the Citadel, the outro shows the train station.