It was this year that Half-Life triumphantly returned with Half-Life: Alyx after an extended absence. While many still ponder and even yearn for Half-Life 2: Episode 3, an upcoming documentary is getting ready to show more on the fourth episode.
Video game documentary series NoClip is set to premiere their next project on developer Arkane Studios. The documentary titled "The (Untold) History of Arkane Studios" is set to chronicle the studio's catalog of games including those that never materialized. One of those titles was "Return to Ravenholm", which was set to be Half-Life Episode 4, and players got their first look ever at the title in a recent tweet.
The official NoClip Twitter account published seven tweets each showing a picture or gif of a game that would be featured in the documentary. It was specifically the fifth tweet of the set that has drawn the most attention. The ten-second gif is the first glimpse of the cancelled Half-Life 2: Episode 4, subtitled "Return to Ravenholm."
Return to Ravenholm was planned to take players back to the city and be set before the events of Half-Life 2: Episode 2. This jump backwards in time was reportedly one of the reasons for its cancellation according to Valve writer Mark Laidlaw. While the game was in development between 2006 and 2007, information of the title only appeared in 2011 following a data breach of Eidos servers which had it listed on a resume. It was in 2013 that most of the known details were revealed through Laidlaw and concept art.
Return to Ravenholm is not the only unreleased game that will be getting attention in the documentary. The previous tweet of the set was a screenshot of the famously cancelled title LMNO. The project, which was cancelled in 2010, was most known for involving Steven Spielberg in his second video game collaborative effort with publisher Electronic Arts. The other cancelled project that will be explored is the failed Valve collaboration with The Crossing, a first-person shooter that seemed well ahead of its time.
If previously released documentaries are anything to go by, NoClip are the perfect group to capture the story of Arkane Studios. NoClip is entirely crowdfunded and has produced some of the best documentaries on video games. Previous projects have brought light to many of the behind the scenes stories of popular and famous games. One of the most recent series on the development of Obsidian Games' The Outer Worlds revealed that there was an entire cut planet.
As for the Half-Life series, many fans are happy that the franchise has returned with Half-Life: Alyx. While some still pine for a "true" Episode 3, publisher and developer Valve explained why it just never worked out.
NoClip's "The (Untold) History of Arkane Studios" is set to debut on Tuesday, May 26 on YouTube.
Source: NoClip / Twitter