Half Life 2: Episode 4 Ingame Screens Found... ... One... Two... FOUR! *three sir* THREE!

[Badnik Mechanic]

Half Life 2: Episode 4, or Return to Ravenholm is a cancelled game. It was being made by Arkane Studios at some point between 2006 and 2007. Concept art of the game exists as does some annimation footage after an employee of Arkane posted them to his online portfolio, but very little other information about the game exists.

 

Until today when ingame screens were found. As you look at this, try to get your head around this... These are from Half Life 2: Episode 4!

 

 

Theres also a video showing all of the footage found on this project so far.

 

 

So yeah... try to get your head around that one, we have info and screens on Episode 4 before Episode 3.

 

Source: Valve Time.

[KrazyBean]

Valve doesn't know the number 3.

[FourCartridge]

I've always considered myself as one of those people that think of HL3 as the new Duke Nukem Forever(complete with never gonna be released attitude so I've stopped caring), but even then it's a bit surprising to see that it's being worked on in some way or form.

 

Wonder why Arkane dropped it...

Edited January 12, 2013 by FourCartridge

[Cola]

It makes perfect sense! They obviously just decided to skip over Episode 3 entirely!

[JezMM]

I heard about this cancelled game a while back but never seen this footage.  Ha, the headcrab playing with the head would have been a cute/funny/creepy moment.

 

 

Weird that those animation tests used a zombie model from Left 4 Dead mind you.

[Mr. Awesomest]

I believe I know why Valve time is a thing: They have a time machine, and jump in it at scheduled points and go to a random, also-scheduled time frames, and continue working as normal.

Edited January 12, 2013 by Mr. Awesomest

[Lady Soniko]

So that means we'll be jumping straight to Portal 4 lmao

[novelty]

Valve has a theoretical weakness. The avoidance with the number 3 suggests that they do not render themselves to the symbol of triangulation (where one object can be stronger than two). With this particular avoidance, people would avoid anyone to make that situation that the third/first one of a saga is the weaker link.

 

Which concludes one thing: Valve is BSing. And what I mean by BS, I mean bat shit.

[Badnik Mechanic]

So I did some more looking into this 'Episode 4.' managed to find out some interesting stuff including why this was cancelled, also it turns out that there might actually be even more episodes.

 

Why was it cancelled?

 

According to Marc Laidlaw, Valve wanted to come up with a common project that both studios could work on. Valve threw ideas around, and Arkane built "some cool stuff", but Valve eventually decided that it didn't make sense to pursue Return to Ravenholm at the time. They felt like a lot of the staples of Ravenholm (Headcrabs and Zombies) were pretty much played out, and the fact that it would have to take place sometime before the end of Episode Two (so as not to advance beyond where Valve had pushed the story) represented a creative constraint that.

 

How many episodes are there?

 

Based on an interview with Gabe Newell, Episode 4 was the only one in production and that it would be it's own stand alone story. However a second interview with Doug Lombardi states that Episode 3 would conclude the Half Life 2 story. But, additional episodes would be released around the main story which would help widen the Half Life 2 universe at the time.

 

So it sounds like that Episode 4/Return to Revenholm was the only one that actually got into production, but Valve at one point was looking to expand the franchise with additional episodes.

 

Source: http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Return_to_Ravenholm

[Dr. Homem]

Note that this doesn't mean they were skipping Episode 3. The "Episode 4" would be just like Opposing Force was for HL1. When Valve were making Episodes One and Two they mentioned that they were making three episodes and an outside company (Arkane) was doing a small spin-off game too which became known as "Episode Four" even though it wasn't really part of the Episodes series. There was no other name for it.

 

Regardless, it is a good thing they dropped the episodic system.