Marc Laidlaw shares development info from late 2002

[Cvoxalury]

Earlier today, Marc Laidlaw posted a photo of a whiteboard sent to him by a fellow Half-Life 2 developer, Randy Lundeen.



In it, a whole bunch of info can be seen. Most importantly, the proposed chapter order for late 2002; seeing what chapters were still considered for the story; and various developer assignments, such as what prefab maps to work on.

The chapters listed are:

• Train ride : City 17
• Station
• Terminal Square
• Arcade (or other)
• Kleiner's Lab
• Back alleys/Factory
• Breen Plaza
• Sewers
• Canals
• Quarry
• Ravenholm
• Eli's base
• Junkyard or Wasteland
• Sub - Lighthouse
• Depot / (Train Ride?) / (Alyx + Train?)
• Air Exchange
• Borealis
• Kleiner's Lab - Redux
• Factory
• Breen Plaza
• City Streets & Museum
• Gate to Inner City
• Inner City
• Citadel
• Interior

Among other curiousities, it shows that the Airex and Borealis stayed relevant enough to be included up until late 2002; the WC Mappack's most recent Airex map is from February of 2002, and it is usually believed it was dropped in early part of that year.

There's also nothing between Borealis and returning to Kleiner's lab.

As noted by Marc, it also contains Viktor Antonov's 'trademark slogan', "This is bullshit". It is said to have been applied to everything "liberally and hilariously". 

[Витой]

This is so awesome! It's a real treasure trove of information.
I guess we have another proof that this City 17 section map is from late 2002 - early 2003


Also Scarlett12 made a version of this photo with all the text captioned

[d498]

Awesome, really got surprised by seeing AirEx still there.

[Theuaredead]

I presume this would be the story for HL2 after they started re-doing the game mid-2002 after Gabe Newell's negative reaction to what they were planning on showing off at E3 2002? I mean, being late 2002, I would assume so.

Guessing AirEx and Borealis got cut due to them trying to get the game ready for the 2003 release that never happened.

Though, I do wonder... How would you get from AirEx to the Borealis? Did the teleport that happens in Entanglement still occur with-in the Combine Depots? Did it take you to AirEx, then causes you to teleport to the Borealis at some point during AirEx, and then the same happens in Borealis where you end up in Kleiner's Lab (mimicking the teleport sequence in the opening where you're teleported all over the place)? Or did the teleport happen in AirEx? I guess there's probably some information out there that explains this that I am unaware of.

[Shift]

With Combine teleport mentioned in tasks, late Borealis maps having Combine presence and episodic trilogy planning a teleport on a reused Borealis long before Aperture was invented, maybe they considered replacing the assassin capsule (that never had much going for it) with a teleport, before cutting the ship and moving the teleport to Depot as its final place.
It's also possible that the vacant space between Borealis and Kleiner's lab was left to be filled out with more locations, before the problem was solved with more cuts and merges, and it was a "worry about that later".

[Витой]

I presume this would be the story for HL2 after they started re-doing the game mid-2002 after Gabe Newell's negative reaction to what they were planning on showing off at E3 2002? I mean, being late 2002, I would assume so.

Or after that September 2002 improved demo mentioned in "The final hours of Half-Life 2"

Though, I do wonder... How would you get from AirEx to the Borealis? Did the teleport that happens in Entanglement still occur with-in the Combine Depots?

My guess is there we would still board a train inside a depot that goes to Air Exchange and Alyx would blow the tracks some time before airex.

I wonder if they still had Kraken base in mind, that would explain how we end up in Kleiner's lab near the end of the game.

[Uncanny]

from what I can gather given the gaps around borealis, I reckon a previous version of the lineup had kraken base and another area padding inbetween but they ended up revising and this particular version doesn't include it so they wiped it off, you can see quite a few marks in other places where they've done so, just without the positional context of the gaps being in a list.

[mr. lilepicfacetp]

It's big information for beta community, seriously.

[MegaMan1904]

from what I can gather given the gaps around borealis, I reckon a previous version of the lineup had kraken base and another area padding inbetween but they ended up revising and this particular version doesn't include it so they wiped it off, you can see quite a few marks in other places where they've done so, just without the positional context of the gaps being in a list.

imo before the borealis would be somekind of area like arctic or that bigterrain map like area
it kinda sucks that yet again we get no explanation how gordon teleported from airex to borealis

i think that gordon teleported from kraken (before it was scrapped) makes some sense

[CactusTown]

this is awesome 

[Витой]

yet again we get no explanation how gordon teleported from airex to borealis

The tugboat is mentioned on that whiteboard, at the Borealis section, so I guess that's the answer to your question.

[Shift]

Hear me out: what if these are not City 17 docks, and that is no Citadel.

[d498]

Hear me out: what if these are not City 17 docks, and that is no Citadel.

Would that be the Airex cooling tower?

[PrisenShift]

Hear me out: what if these are not City 17 docks, and that is no Citadel.

OK, explain this
https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/File:Citadel_sewer.jpg

[Cvoxalury]

It would be nothing out of the ordinary to reuse geometry. And it's a map by Riller as well as the Airex maps.

What we know for sure is we don't have any solid Airex-specific maps past Feb of 2002, yet the whiteboard is from late 2002, proto_docks is from later half of 2002, (and d1 sewer with the ""clamp citadel"" is a year from that, we'll ignore that for now).

So despite Airex being in the cards and needing some rework, we have no materials from it... except a late 2002 map with possible unknown Airex tower design. That by itself is surely much closer to resembling Airex than the Citadel - because the Citadel had long since been shaping up to be much taller than that, and in 2002 already had the prismatic shape.

A new design of the Airex tower that accidentally or for some other reason found its way into the canals worked on by Riller (same as Airex), is more likely than a mysterious Citadel design that is the most out of place compared to the rest of them.

edit: spelling