When the team returned to work in January 2004, it had been in crunch mode for almost a year. Worst of all, there was no sign the stressful development period would end anytime soon. There was, however, a silver lining: Improved level design and animation tools meant that it was now easier to produce game content. "By January there weren't any really interesting problems left for us to solve," Newell says. He even went so far as to calculate that Valve could produce about three hours of quality gameplay per month. "I finally got the sense that we were turning the crank on this project in a major way," he says. While Newell wasn't confident enough to predict a release date, he started to believe an "alpha" version--where the game could be played from beginning to end--would be ready by March.
There was other good news as well. While Birdwell's in-game characters had always been visually impressive, no one was sure how the in-game acting would blend with the fast-paced action. But in early 2004 the game's dramatic scenes started coming together in a powerful way. For years Laidlaw and Van Buren worked on honing the script for the game, which ended up amounting to more than 150 pages of dialogue, or about two hours of fully animated in-game scenes. (The original game had only 19 pages of dialogue). They even hired an impressive Hollywood cast of actors to play a number of key roles, including Robert Culp as Dr. Breen, the game's antagonist. (Robin Williams expressed interest in voicing the alien character Voiteguart, but scheduling conflicts prevented him from playing the role). Newell finally got his wish: The characters weren't robots--they acted, talked, and moved like real people.
Even the fans seemed to be coming back around in early 2004. Many of them realized that perhaps they had overreacted in the wake of the September 30 release-date fiasco. One even e-mailed Newell in January 2004 to express concern about his health. "You seem to have taken on some weight [in your recent media appearances]," the fan, MJA Lebbink, wrote. "All the fanboys are going to kill me for saying this, but if delaying HL2 is what it takes to keep you healthy by all means do so. I'd rather see HL2 in 2005 and you healthy and making more great games than a HL2 today and no more Gabe in the future." Newell, after reading the e-mail, sent a response. "I appreciate the sentiment," he wrote.
The e-mail from MJA underscored the unique relationship Newell maintained with Valve's fans throughout the project. Over the course of Half-Life 2's development he gave many tours of Valve to fans and responded to thousands of e-mails. But there was one e-mail that stood out from the rest. Newell found that one sitting in his inbox the day after Valentine's Day.
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