What’s in a reputation? There are numerous online game titles that simply evoke recollections or conjure up the thought of high quality. Half-Life is only one instance. Nevertheless, Valve’s first-ever sport might simply have been referred to as one thing else.

In a current YouTube video from Valve stage designer Dario Casali, it seems Half-Life practically wasn’t referred to as Half-Life in any respect. Casali begins his developer commentary – as a part of the sport’s twenty fifth anniversary celebrations – by displaying a listing of names that have been prompt.

Of the most well-liked ones, titles like “Filth,” “Lead,” “Stress Chamber,” “Screwed,” and even “Bent” have been bandied round. Maybe most curiously, in a runners-up record, the phrase “Fallout” might be seen, together with “Adrenaline,” “Unstable Component,” and even simply “Dying.”

Would have been a bit complicated

What’s additionally intriguing is that Half-Life is on this decrease record, suggesting that it wasn’t even a preferred identify being prompt. As a aspect notice, Casali believes the group ought to have referred to as it Screwed, including that “it will have been wonderful.”

It additionally would have been attention-grabbing if the studio had gone with Fallout. Contemplating the precise Fallout sport got here out a 12 months earlier than HL, there’s likelihood there would have been some points. Or a minimum of some confusion.

The remainder of this opening chapter of Casali’s playthrough is fairly good as effectively. He provides a little bit of perception into what the aim of the enduring monorail opening was, except for setting the scene. We take it with no consideration as of late, however Valve actually needed to point out off new applied sciences, corresponding to mild shafts, scripted sequences, and new skeletal fashions, and this intro was a method to present this stuff off.