In a recent interview with Game Informer, game designer Warren Spector has revealed a number of new details regarding partnerships between his company, the now-defunct Junction Point Studios, and Valve Corporation back in the mid-2000’s. Prior to the Junction Point’s acquisition by Disney Interactive Studios in 2007, Valve apparently stepped in and saved the company from going out of business by allowing the team to develop new conceptual designs for Valve over a period of about two years while also conducting contract work for Disney on another project at the same time. This project later evolved into what we now know as Epic Mickey.
During this time, Warren and the team were largely involved in creating work for a new standalone Half-Life title set to be released on Steam, likely sometime around the release of Episode Two. Following Junction Point’s acquisition by Disney in 2007, all work related to the Half-Life title and their other non-Mickey Mouse projects was scrapped.
Old Buddies: Warren Spector and Gabe Newell at E3 in 1999.
Later in the same interview, Warren explained the Half-Life title was set to stand as an “episode”, that would fill in one of the gaps in the Half-Life universe, describing how the team were looking to try and flesh out a specific part of the series’ fictional universe. Their conceptual work also involved the creation of what Warren dubbed the “Magnet Gun”, a new weapon with a number of reportedly exciting applications, including some which would have complimented the Gravity Gun’s existing toolset quite nicely. The Magnet Gun and its unspecified uses were all shelved when the project was scrapped.
A lot of this information isn't really "new" as such, but we thought Warren's recent reveal of the "Magnet Gun" was a good enough excuse to make a little round-up here of all the details for yet another of Half-Life's scrapped spin-off episodes.
About Junction Point Studios
During this time, Warren and the team were largely involved in creating work for a new standalone Half-Life title set to be released on Steam, likely sometime around the release of Episode Two. Following Junction Point’s acquisition by Disney in 2007, all work related to the Half-Life title and their other non-Mickey Mouse projects was scrapped.
Old Buddies: Warren Spector and Gabe Newell at E3 in 1999.
Later in the same interview, Warren explained the Half-Life title was set to stand as an “episode”, that would fill in one of the gaps in the Half-Life universe, describing how the team were looking to try and flesh out a specific part of the series’ fictional universe. Their conceptual work also involved the creation of what Warren dubbed the “Magnet Gun”, a new weapon with a number of reportedly exciting applications, including some which would have complimented the Gravity Gun’s existing toolset quite nicely. The Magnet Gun and its unspecified uses were all shelved when the project was scrapped.
A lot of this information isn't really "new" as such, but we thought Warren's recent reveal of the "Magnet Gun" was a good enough excuse to make a little round-up here of all the details for yet another of Half-Life's scrapped spin-off episodes.
About Junction Point Studios
Junction Point Studios was an independent studio established in November of 2004 by Warren Spector and Art Min, the latter of whom had previously worked at Valve. The studio spent much of their time creating concept ideas and attempting to find funding partners. In December of 2005, the company announced that it was working with Valve on a new video game project using the Source engine to be delivered via Steam. This was later revealed to be a Half-Life 2 episode that went unfinished.
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