Source: VK
Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar is videogame book which speaks in detail about initial days of Half-Life. The book, which has been termed as one of the best videogame book ever featured about the making of Half-Life 2 and the “mod movement” which was started by Counter-Strike.
The book contains all the details about Half-Life 2 like concept art, developers notes, etc. The 300 pages book also covers stuff like casting and discusses the ideas that were discarded.
A post in the Half-Life 2 Beta Project group on the Russian social network VK, however suggests that the book was initially visualized to be larger than what it is now. It is mentioned in the post that a preliminary copy of the book was purchased by a US based fan on eBay and it consists of at least 100 more pages than the final copy.
The post also contained some scanned copies of the extra pages of the book which were posted by the buyer. When we look at the scanned pages it seems like some minor adjustments were made to the final copy of the book from the preliminary version.
Here are some of the scanned copies of the unpublished pages of the book. The post in VK also reads that the user will post all of such pages soon.
A full spread of unseen Concept Art from Half Life 2
A new weapon and an enemy that looks to be a Combine Knight?
The first concept for Doctor Breen
Concept art for a Combine mobile mine
Concept for a weapon called Zombie Shredding Propeller
More Combine Unit Concept Art
Some In-Game Screenshots
Unseen Building Concept Art From The Game
We’ll update the post once we come across more unpublished pages of the book. Stay tuned.