Half-Life could have been called Fallout or Crysis, developer reveals
Half-Life level designer Dario Casali has revealed that Valve's iconic shooter had several potential names, including Fallout and Crysis.
The details:
In the first episode of Casali's new YouTube series covering the history of the game's development, the designer shows a number of old documents, screenshots, and diary entries from the mid-90s, including lists of potential names for the game while it was codenamed "Quiver."
The most popular titles on the list at the time were Bent, Dirt, Lead, Pressure, Pressure Chamber, Pressure Pit, and Screwed, none of which would be its final name. A second list of possible titles is also shown, including Half Life (without the hyphen), Fallout, Free Radical, and Crysis, with various versions of the latter such as Cry.Sys, Crisis, CrYsis, and Krisis.
It's likely that Valve was unaware of Interplay's Fallout, which was known as Vault-13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game at the time of development before adopting the Fallout name before its final release in 1997, a year before Half-Life. Free Radical was also the name of a developer founded in 1999 by former Rare employees, which was later purchased by Crytek, the creators of Crysis, in 2009.
More gaming news:
Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi has announced that he is now working on a brand new project. It's unclear whether the legendary producer will develop a new IP, work on a new installment in one of Mistwalker's existing franchises, or even port Fantasian to PC.
Xbox has announced a multi-year partnership with AI company Inworld. After making headlines for allowing open-ended conversations with NPCs, the AI developer will create a new toolset for dialogue and narrative purposes.
