Half-Life 2 reimagining Raising The Bar: Redux releases its next chapter soon

Sometimes, I like to daydream about what games could have been like if they’d taken another direction during development. Raising The Bar: Redux is exactly that, a reimagining of Half-Life 2 as though Valve never dropped their original concepts for the sci-fi shooter sequel. The next instalment in the modding project to bring that abandoned game to life, Division 2, is releasing soon. You can watch the fairly hefty trailer for Raising The Bar: Redux: Division 2 below.

Raising the Bar: Redux: Division 2 - Official Trailer

Redux’s latest chapter will chuck Gordon Freeman into some of City 17’s nasty canals, and re-envisions the creepy Ravenholm. It’s a different spin on Half-Life 2, and one that I find quite intriguing. The project has a more traditionally American sci-fi flavour to it than Half-Life 2 proper, and I approve of Alyx’s almost Rocketeer-style goggles and jacket. You might’ve noticed, too, that Eli Vance is now Eli Maxwell, and isn’t Alyx’s dad in this version of the story. The Raising The Bar: Redux project isn’t the only glimpse into abandoned Half-Life we’ve seen this year either, with footage from Arkane’s scrapped Ravenholm spin-off included in a Noclip documentary back in May.

The Half-Life 2 reimagining started out in 2012 under a different team, who dropped the project in 2016. Another group of modders revived the idea a few years later, and slapped the Redux moniker on the end. The whole effort gets its name from a book by former games journo David Hodgson, which details Valve’s development of Half-Life 2 from its early days to release. The mod team has used the concept art and information in Hodgson’s book to essentially remake a Half-Life 2 that probably exists out there somewhere in an alternate universe.

Although there’s no solid release date yet, you’ll be able to download Raising The Bar: Redux: Division 2 from ModDB when it’s out. There’s already a demo, which you can grab here.