St. Olga

"You must be here to take on the Combine. Not sure what one man can do, but... no other reason to visit St. Olga at a time like this."

- The Fisherman

St. Olga is a location cut from Half-Life 2 and reused in the technology demo Half-Life 2: Lost Coast.

Overview
To be located along the Coast, St. Olga consists in a small fishing village being attacked by a Headcrab Shell launcher, and a Byzantine monastery located at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea, partially surrounded by scaffolding, hinting it was probably being restored prior to the Combine invasion.

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast


In Lost Coast, Gordon Freeman awakens in a shallow tide on a beach near St. Olga. A Fisherman has apparently been waiting for him, and tells that he must be there to "take on the Combine" and take out their Headcrab Shell launcher, located in the Combine-occupied monastery above and attacking the village nearby, probably hiding Resistance members.

As Freeman progresses along the cliffside to get into the monastery, he is attacked by Overwatch soldiers, and a few Headcrab Shells can be seen hitting the village and causing fires. Once inside the church, Freeman finds the Headcrab Shell launcher and sabotages it by blocking the mechanism with a candelabra, after which other Overwatch troops and a Hunter-Chopper attack. After defeating the Combine, Freeman returns below near the Fisherman through a mechanic lift. The Fisherman suggests to follow him to an unspecified (and apparently safe) part of St. Olga for a feast of Leeches, at which point the screens turns black and the game ends.

Behind the scenes

 * According to the Lost Coast commentary, each area of the level was designed with a specific purpose. An Eastern Orthodox architectural / Byzantine style was deliberately chosen for the monastery, as buildings of this type "are very colorful and have a large variety of materials" and are "often lit naturally, with extremes of darkness and brightness," providing an ideal showcase for the HDR lighting effects. The team also thought that the use of a monastery would help provide a starker contrast between old human architecture and futuristic Combine technology found within it.
 * The cliffside leading the monastery has a gameplay-oriented purpose and is meant to mirror a similar cliffside combat scene seen in the Half-Life chapter Surface Tension. The cliffside also forces the player to be observant of threats from above and below, breaking from normal horizontal combat.
 * The monastery's courtyard was designed as an area where the player recovers from the cliffside combat, while also presenting a contained combat arena later in the level in which the player must hold their ground while they are attacked from multiple directions.

Trivia

 * This location was probably meant to be somewhere in between the Half-Life 2 chapters Highway 17 and Sandtraps.
 * Although St. Olga was cut from Half-Life 2, it cannot be found in the WC mappack as most of the cut locations.
 * St. Olga may be named after Saint Olga of Kiev, the first Christian queen of Kiev, Russia, and the patron saint of widows.
 * The monastery style and setting are probably based on the complex of Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Meteora, Greece, featured in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.
 * The village and the cliffside may be based on a village similar to Manarola, Italy.
 * While very difficult, the village can be reached without cheats, but it is uninteresting as the village is just a large 3D skybox.

Real world images
Images of the similar real world locations mentioned above.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life 2: Lost Coast