A Half-Life developer has revealed that the game’s potential list of titles included the names Crysis, Fallout, and more.
In a YouTube video as part of an ongoing series called Half-Life 25 Year Developer Commentary, level designer Dario Casali has shared some never-before-heard stories about his time working on Valve’s 1998 first-person shooter while playing through the game again (via VGC).
In the first episode, Casali shared some items from his archives, including a document showing the potential list of names for the game before it was inevitably called Half-Life, and some of them are surprising.
The developer explained that when he joined Valve the game was codenamed Quiver, but the studio was still trying to come up with a solid name for it. The document shows that some of the most popular, potential names included the likes of Bent, Dirt, Lead, Pressure, Pressure Chamber, Pressure Pit, or Screwed.
Casali went on to share a second document for titles that were “still in the running” with the name we now know as Half-Life being included. Others listed range from Adrenaline, Anthro, Burn, C.I.A., Death, Edge, and Shiv; the list goes on.
Funnily enough, there are also some that just so happen to be names that went on to become some of the most popular games of the 2000s, including Fallout, and several variations of “Crysis” such as Cry.Sys, Crisis, CrYsis and Krisis, as well as Free Radical.
It’s unclear if Bethesda’s eventual release of Fallout in 1997 had any connection with Half-Life‘s potential naming and Valve’s team, or if the situation was purely coincidental since production on the post-apocalyptic shooter began in 1996.
The same can be said for the development studio Free Radical Design, which was founded in 1999, before being acquired Crytek in 2009, the creators of Crysis.
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