Weapons cut from Half-Life 2

Throughout the development of Half-Life 2, its arsenal of weaponry varied considerably, and it contained several different/additional weapons when the game was first made public, weapons that were later cut before the final release.

It has been suggested that the bulk of the weapons were cut due to the fact that they were too similar to one another, as the AK-47 served a very similar role to the SMG2, and the OICW the same to the SMG1, and that it would not be very believable to hold more than 25 weapons.

Players could originally use small objects, such as bottles, as weapons by throwing them at the enemy. This was likely cut with the introduction of the Gravity Gun. Its entity name, weapon_brickbat, can still be found in Hammer, although it is an invalid entity.

Most, if not all of these weapons were usable in 2003 leaked Half-Life 2 Beta, and are playable in the mod Missing Information.

AR1 (AK-47)
The AK-47/AR1 appears in the leak. It has no animations, but can fire in semiautomatic mode, three or five-burst mode, or full-auto mode.



Binoculars
Not technically a weapon, binoculars were also to be featured for exploring the area and zooming anywhere. They were equipped with a 5x zoom. They were integrated into the suit as the "zoom" feature which also disables firing, and was already a key element of the crossbow.

Combine Guard Gun
Type: Hand-held warp-cannon Ammo: Dark energy plasma (?) Range: Long Intended to be a weapon used by Combine Guards and then to be aquired by player. It resmbles the warp-cannon of a Strider but scaled down to be carried by human-sized units. It can kill anything in one shot. Dropped along with Combine Guard concept, although its firing sound was re-used for Portal.



Fire extinguisher
Type: not a weapon. Ammo: powder. Range:short The fire extinguisher was used to extinguish fire that could stand in the way of the player and help him progress into the level. It was useful in the Borealis.



Flare gun
Type: Pistol Ammo: Flares Magazine capacity: 1 Range: Short A flare gun is a gun that shoots flares. They are typically used as a distress signal as well as other signaling purposes at sea and between aircraft and people on the ground. The weapon was to be found on the Borealis. Due to general ineffectiveness when used as weapon it was cut out of HL2 on early development. The gun still exists in Half-Life 2 but cannot be accquired, this is evidenced by Overwatch soldiers on the Coast using one to summon a gunship, to light an area after deactivating the ceiling lights during the Entanglement chapter and a Civil Protection officer firing one when the player assaults a power generator during the rebellion.

Trivia
 * In Half-Life 2: Episode One disposable flares were introduced, that Gordon Freeman could use with his Gravity Gun, mocking the operation of the flare gun.
 * The Flare Gun makes a return in Team Fortress 2 as an optional secondary weapon of the Pyro and is used to ignite enemies from long range.



MP5K (SMG1)
Type: Submachine gun Ammo: 9mm Para Magazine: 30 rounds Range: Short H&K MP5K is a compact version of German-designed SMG, the H&K MP5, with a shorter barrel making it even more maneuverable and more easily concealed. The MP5K was apparently set to be HL2's primary SMG, and at some point during the development the MP5K and it's replacement, the H&K MP7, existed side-by-side, but in the end it was cut in favour of the more modern MP7.



HMG1
The HMG1 (Heavy Machine Gun) is the only gun that uses Heavy rounds. It has horrid accuracy and can be switched to fire three round bursts. Strangely, each burst will only eat up one unit of ammo. Even in burst-fire mode, it will continue to fire as long as you hold down the fire key.

The HMG1 is based off of the rare H&K GR9 machine gun. There is an older HMG1 model named "v_hkgr9.mdl", which is a much less detailed version of the HMG model.

The 1 in the HMG1's name hints that there was supposed to be another HMG, but there is no sign of it in the Beta.

In the final version, the Combine Soldier still has a firing animation for the HMG1, but is unused.



Hopwire grenade
Type: Tripmine (?) Ammo: Explosives (?) Range: Short Judging from its name, the Hopwire may have been the functional equivalent of the Laser Tripmine based on the M86 Pursuit Deterrent Munition. Such a weapon, once placed, leaps up into the air after several seconds and shoots out several wires which, when tripped, cause the grenade and all its tethers to detonate.

Be aware that the Hopwire is extremely unstable in the leak. If one of the wires touches a surface in the wrong way, the game will crash.

The hopwire grenade can be found in Half-Life 2: Episode One as a hidden weapon, dubbed the "blackhole hopwire". It creates a small black hole that disintegrates everything next to it - including the player). The Hopwire concept continued to be improved, and became the Magnusson Device in Episode Two.

There are 2 versions of the Hopwire in the mod SMOD there is the Beta version of this weapon that is the version that is cut from the 2003 leaked Half-Life 2 Beta. And there is a heavily coded Blackhole Hopwire ported from Episode One.



Ice axe
Type: Melee An ice axe is a multi-purpose mountaineering tool carried by practically every mountaineer.

The Ice Axe was probably dropped along with the Borealis concept, and also because it was identical in operation (in-game terms) with Gordon's trademark crowbar.



Immolator
Type: Flamethrower Ammo: Unknown flammable and/or corrosive substance Range:  Short The Immolator was a weapon intended to be used by Combine Cremators and then acquired by the player. It functioned similarly to the human-designed flamethrower except that the burning liquid also possessed corrosive properties, allowing it to nearly "eat away" organic matter. It was intended to be highly effective against unprotected organic enemies, like antlions or zombies at short range Dropped along with the Combine Cremators concept; however the effects of the weapon were converted for the effects made by thrown objects of Combine soldiers in the laser-like vertical beams in the Citadel.



Incendiary rifle
Type: Projectile launcher (?) Ammo: (?) Range: Short/medium What little is known about the Incendiary rifle (or irifle) can be garnered from its appearance in the pre-release "Tunnels" gameplay video, where it is seen used against some Civil Protection officers. The weapon looks almost identical to the final version Pulse Rifle, but fires incendiary bolts which ignite their target in flames. It's magazine of 5 made it much more useful than the Flare Gun. Perhaps due to the weapon's seemingly limited tactical use, the weapon was dropped and it's model repurposed as the AR2 Pulse Rifle.

Missile launcher
Type: Guided Missile Launcher Ammo: stinger missiles Used a slightly different model than the RPG. Was never scripted.



Molotov cocktail
Type: Explosive Ammo: N/A Molotov cocktail is a self-made incendiary grenade. It includes a glass 0.5-0.7 litre bottle, and gasoline, diesel fuel and motor oil mixture filling the bottle, as well as an old piece of cloth serving as cover and fuse. To arm the weapon, the cloth is ignited and bottle thrown at the enemy, breaking upon contact and saturating its immediate surroundings with the flaming liquid.

The effects of the weapon are very similar to grenades, therefore its cut.

Trivia


 * The Molotov cocktail was somehow reused for Left 4 Dead as an optional secondary weapon of the Survivors and it is used to ignite zombies from long range.



OICW
Type: Assault rifle Ammo: 5.56mm NATO Magazine: 30 rounds Accuracy: Good Range: Medium/Long The XM-29 OICW (part of the U.S. Army's Objective Individual Combat Weapon program) was an assault rifle concept that sought to combine a standard 5.56mm assault rifle (the XM-29's assault rifle component was based on that of the H&K G36 assault rifle) with a 20mm cannon and complicated computerized sighting system. A number of problems, including weight, bulk, lack of effectiveness of the 20mm airburst round, and ultimately cost of single unit exeeding 10 000 USD have led to the project effectively being shelved.

The XM-29 never entered full scale production or served with any military, but that hasn't stopped a number of games and films from depicting it in the hands of soldiers and mercenaries, including Half-Life 2 in it's beta phase. In the game, it was originally planned to be the Combine Overwatch's weapon of choice, but it was later replaced by the fictional Overwatch Standard Issue Pulse Rifle (OSIPR).

In the leak, you can only fire the rifle portion of the gun and zoom in. The grenade launcher was shown working in promo videos, but it doesn't in the leak (the grenade launcher function is in the code, but is disabled). It appears that it's grenade function was moved to the SMG1 by the time the leak was made, as getting close to the SMG grenades in the map "zoo_item" causes the message "AR2 Grenades" to appear on the screen.

The OICW has good accuracy as long as you fire in short bursts, and the scope turns it into a decent makeshift sniper rifle.



Physgun
Type: Manipulation gun Range: Long The Gravity Gun was originally called the Physgun and allowed the player to levitate far away objects without bringing them closer. The Physgun was cut and replaced by the Gravity Gun, but it was later used in Garry's Mod with different utilities.



Pulse Shield
The only information about this weapon comes from an unused HUD texture file called "w_icons3.vtf" in the folder "materials/sprites". The only thing known is that it would protect the player from something.

Rollerwand
It allowed players to control Rollermines. Episode One granted Alyx the ability to reprogram Rollermines to help the player.



SMG2 (MP7)
In the leak, there were two SMGs; SMG1 and SMG2. SMG1 was supposed to be the MP5 as described earlier, but was replaced by a slow-firing version of the final SMG by the time the leak was made. The SMG2 is an MP7 as well, but it has a 60 round magazine and is capable of one or three-round bursts. It is extremely weak, but makes up for it with a large amount of ammo per magazine.

Interestingly, an unmodified leak has the SMG2 use the SMG1 model. The SMG2's weapon file must be edited in order for it to use it's proper model.

Of note is that the SMG1's world model textures are called "w_smg2.vtf". That means the SMG1's model file might've been for the SMG2 at one time, which explains why the SMG2 uses the SMG1's view model in an unmodified beta install.

Garry's Mod has a fully working version of the weapon it can be downloaded at Garrysmod.org.



Sniper Rifle
Type: Sniper rifle Range: Long An unknown sniper rifle of Combine origin was planned to be in the arsenal, but was dropped in favour of the less conventional crossbow. This weapon was adapted for use by Overwatch Snipers, and was eventually seen by the player in Episode Two.

Trivia
 * In Half-Life 2 and its episodes, you can spawn a box of sniper rounds using the console command "give item_box_srounds". These rounds would originally act as ammo for the sniper rifle. Valve most likely forgot to remove the sniper ammo from the final release.


 * Garry's Mod has a fully working version of this weapon it can be downloaded from Garrysmod.org.



S.L.A.M.
Main article: S.L.A.M.

Type:Explosive Ammo:N/A Range: Long Stands for Selectable Lightweight Attack Munitions. They can be thrown or placed on walls. The player can throw as many S.L.A.M.'s as they want and then detonate all of them at the same time. Alternatively, there is a tripmine mode. This was re-used in Half-Life 2: Deathmatch.



Socket wrench
A concept art for Half-Life 2 depicts Alyx was to own a basic weapon in the form of a socket wrench, just like the crowbar for Gordon or the pipe wrench for Shephard.

Stun Baton
Main article: Stun Baton.

It was originally possible to pick up the Stun Baton from a killed Metrocop and use it.



Tau Cannon
Type: Experimental, particle cannon Ammo: Depleted uranium Range: Long The Tau Cannon was first sheduled to be in the arsenal, but due to unknown reasons was cut from the final version. It had a similar model to the Tau Cannon mounted on the Dune Buggy, and was similar in operation to the Tau Cannon (HL1) Trivia
 * An unused sound clip can be found in the game's files of a citizen talking about detaching the Tau Cannon from something, suggesting that at some point in the game's development, the Tau Cannon was to be detached from the Buggy for you to take with you after leaving the car at Lighthouse Point.