Cut HL2 Content

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Absolutely not. The unanimous (which, isn't unanimous in any way) cries, opinions and wants regarding the content seen after/from the leak are nothing but pure want of something that mystifies you because you have never seen it, never played it or experienced it. It's curiosity. Valve cut one of their designs because it did suck, because it didn't work and it simply wasn't a good game. There's no more to that. That's literally "the end of it."

I will say this, according to Raising the Bar, the reason why The Air Exchange was cut was because of Nova Prospeckt, then Captain Vance was obselete because of no Air exchange. The Air exchange had similar "atmosphere" but it wouldn't make much sense to play the same level again... thus being the exchange cut.

From what I've read from Raising the Bar, not all of the cut content sucked. Some of it was out of place (The artic which might see action in Ep3), some of it repeated other things, and some of it was a little complicated (ala Hydra) according to my indepth analysis of Raising the Bar, and yeah, lets keep it to Raising the Bar, not leaks/beta stuff.

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[Narvi]

Samon, what about the antlion caves? I believe those were cut because they weren't essential to the plot, not because they sucked.

 

[Jintor]

I'm willing to admit they send way to many cops at one miscount, but Dr. Breen only knows Gordon is there once the teleportation goes awry.
You'll go through a multitude of of areas until finally your at one in which Breen is sitting at his desk and asks you "Who are you? How did you get in here?" he then reaches towards his little secuirty caller on his desk but you get teleported away again.
A couple of teleports later you arrive back in his office and you see him talking to a monitor with a picture of the Combine Advisor on it and Breen is saying "Yes, and I'm all but certain it was" he notices you and the monitor aims in your direction "Gordon Freenman.".
Therefore after all that I'm positive we can all be pretty sure he didn't know of Gordon's arrival until now, but he might have known of the miscount in the sector Gordon was rescued by Alyx in.

So, what, the Combine throws progessively more difficult enemies at Gordon Freeman, the messiah of the Revolution? Breen really hasn't read the evil overlord list.

 

[Asknoone]

Samon, what about the antlion caves? I believe those were cut because they weren't essential to the plot, not because they sucked.

They were cut because they didn't have a place. As I said, the original storyline draft was pretty overblown in that you went from point to point with little character development. Half-life is different to other games in that you never leave the perspective of Gordon Freeman, and therefore you must consider how the pace of the game works. Characters need to follow a logical progression; they can't be shuffled around as you might do in a game with cinematics. In one of the original drafts you just shuffled from character to character. The pace of the game is extremely important, and a big long game is often detrimental the pace (Deus ex, for instance). As one of the Valve quotes said there's key value in refinement. Short and concise. Things like the Antlion tunnels and the Arctic were probably cut not because they sucked, but because they damaged and hampered the pace and quality of the game.

Arctic and tunnels didn't have something replace it, they were simply drafted out. Not the case with the Air Exchange, it gave way to Nova Prospekt. My opinion is that the Air Exchange represented an overdone, heavy-handed device to say "Guess what - Combine control!". It was your bog standard alien facility, and it would have dashed the impact of the Citadel in that you'd already seen/experienced Combine Architecture. Prospekt is a more interesting location and has a more interesting purpose.

Also, I've had word from Valve on cut content and it's legality so please, keep this conversation to elements found in Raising the Bar.