Half-Life 2 before the Combine showed up looks strangely eerie

destructoid.com:

Ah, Half-Life 2. For many, Valve’s follow-up to the influential 1998 FPS is the developer’s magnum opus. It still holds up today and is often held aloft as one of the greatest shooters of all time. Much of it comes down to its tight combat, intriguing story, and dystopian setting.

But what was life like for the people of City 17 before the Combine came and wrecked everything? Before the famed Seven-Hour War would see humanity become enslaved? Well, that’s what YouTuber Radiation Hazard wondered. In a recent video of theirs (and using beta footage from the game), they showed what Half-Life 2 looked like long before Gordon Freeman came into the picture.

The result is what you would expect. With no war and no Combine, the city and its surroundings are as they should be. No damaged structures. No wreckage. No enslaved humans.

Even Ravenholm (where the game turns into a horror experience) looks positively tranquil before everything went to shit. True, Radiation Hazard’s video only shows the mining town in the daylight, but it’s still a stark contrast to see this abandoned and dilapidated locale actually looking habitable.

However, it still feels a little bit…eerie. Maybe it’s the fact that Half-Life 2‘s setting is largely industrial, including almost brutalist buildings, or the fact that even in a non-Combine inhabited city, there are still no people milling about, but it still looks quite oppressive.

It kind of shows Valve’s skills in being able to invoke a mood. Even without the carnage, corpses, and graffiti, Half-Life 2 still looks like a place that one probably wouldn’t want to visit. Which makes sense. The game probably wouldn’t feel right if Freeman had to defend an idyllic fishing village from the Combine.