Valve's Half-Life series almost went by a very different name, according to one of its developers - including a title now commonly associated with a Bethesda game.
Dario Casali, who started as a level designer at Valve in 1996, has been revisiting his time at the studio over on his YouTube channel. In the first episode, Casali talks about his very first experience with the Half-Life series, referencing old diary entries, screenshots, photos, documents, and other memories from the late 1990s.
One of the first bits of information we get is some alternative names Valve had for its upcoming FPS game. "When I joined Valve, the project was called 'Quiver'," the developer recalls in the video, "a few other names were thrown around when we were trying to settle on Half-Life."
Casali then shares a screenshot of a list of proposed names for the Valve game which were split into two categories: 'The most popular names so far have been' as well as 'Names that are still in the running'. Surprisingly, the name Half-Life is actually in the second column alongside other names such as 'Burn', 'Bolt', 'Adrenaline', and my personal favorite, 'Trash'.
As the top section shows, Valve was clearly a fan of 'Bent', 'Dirt', 'Lead', 'Pressure' / 'Pressure Chamber' / 'Pressure Pit', and 'Screwed'. "I think we should have called it Screwed, that would have been amazing," Casali says, working his way down the list.
Perhaps most surprisingly, 'Fallout' was also an option in the second half of the list. Although it wasn't revealed why the team decided against the name in the end, it was probably the right decision as Interplay would release their game Fallout in 1997 - a year before the first Half-Life game.
Want to know more behind-the-scenes secrets? A Valve dev explains why Half-Life 2's eyes were (and maybe still are) the best in the biz.
