Footage of Cancelled Half-Life 2: Episode 4 Surfaces Online

A few seconds of gameplay from the cancelled Half-Life 2: Episode 4 – Return to Ravenholm project worked on by Valve and Arkane Studios surfaced online this week in preparation for a new documentary releasing soon. This documentary from Noclip was teased this week with a trailer previewing an in-depth look into the history of Arkane Studios, the creators of games like the Dishonered series as well as the most recent Prey. The studio was also one of the few companies that was ever able to work with Valve on the Steam creator’s acclaimed Half-Life series, and though the result of those efforts was never released, it’s that game that’s got people buzzing ahead of the new documentary.

Noclip, the organization known for releasing crowdfunded video game documentaries about games and the creators behind them, teased its upcoming Arkane Studios documentary this week on Twitter by previewing several games that it’ll be featuring in the full feature. A thread of those included some familiar faces, sometimes in screenshots and sometimes in gifs, and one of those animated previews showed previously unseen footage from Half-Life 2: Episode 4.

The clip shows a relatively routine encounter with a zombie where the creature reaches through the crack of a doorway to get the player, but things get a bit more intense when it rips the door off its hinges to get to the protagonist. It’s dispatched fairly easily with a melee attack though and is sent flying backwards to shatter the box behind it.

Since this Half-Life episode was never released, there’s not a great deal known about it. It’s unknown how much the documentary will dwell on the topic since it seems like it has many different games to cover based on the preview trailer above, but hopefully Half-Life fans will come away with some new facts about the unreleased project. The same trailer featured at the top showed some more gameplay footage from the cancelled episode towards the end, so expect to see some more insights into the Half-Life 2 episode in the documentary.

That documentary is scheduled to be released next week via the Noclip YouTube channel, so expect to see it released there. An exact release date has not yet been announced.

For Half-Life fans, the most recent game in the series you can play is Half-Life: Alyx. It’s a virtual reality title which means you’ll need the proper headset to play it, but it’s been received well so far and has been getting updates since release to refine it.