New images from a planned Half-Life 2 episode known as Return to Ravenholm recently surfaced online. The game was being developed by Arkane Studios in 2006 and 2007 but was ultimately cancelled, much to the dismay of fans of the series.
Up to this point, the general public has seen little more than concept art and an animation reel demo from the game. Thanks to the investigative team at ValveTime, however, we now have several screenshots to admire – all verified to be from Episode 4.
The screenshots show multiple new textures and models that were to be used in the game as well as a HUD element called Absorption. It’s anyone’s guess as to how exactly this metric was to be used – feel free to chime in below if you have any ideas.
As you may or may not already know, Arkane Studios was absorbed by ZeniMax Media in August 2010. The company most recently worked on the first-person stealth-action game Dishonored, released late last year. The game received favorable reviews from critics and was the third-best selling title on Steam the week before its release.
Half-life’s original writer Marc Laidlaw spoke on the cancellation a year ago, telling LambdaGeneration that they were big fans of Arkane and wanted to come up with a project they could work on together. After tossing around some ideas and putting together some content, they eventually decided that it didn’t make sense to pursue the project at that time. He said that elements of the title like headcrabs and zombies were played out and the story timeline introduced some creative constraints.
