Final Hours of Half-Life 2

GameSpot has the newest Finals Hours feature from Geoff Keighley, this time focusing on the development of Half-Life 2. It covers everything from the start of development when Valve co-founder Mike Harrington quit, Gabe Newell telling the team he wasn't ready to the game they had been working on for several years at E3 2002, and of course last year's release date fiasco and hacking incident / arrest. Various concept images are included as well.

Valve decided to try something ambitious during the summer of 2001: The designers started working on a test sequence that would highlight all the new technology. The concept was to simulate a street war between rioting citizens and the Metrocops sent to contain them. Such a sequence would test the engine's ability to create a vast, believable world and lifelike characters. There would be APCs and tanks rolling down the streets. Citizens would throw Molotov cocktails at the vehicles, which would then gloriously explode, thanks to the physics engine. Other characters would start looting stores and yell, "Get your free TVs!" There was even a hand-to-hand fighting system so the Metrocops and citizens could get into fistfights.