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Female Scientist

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This subject is related to the Black Mesa Incident era.
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The subject matter of this article contains in-development information that was cut from the final version of an official and/or canonical source and appears in no other canonical source. It may also contain incomplete information since not all cut material is publicly known.

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Female Scientist
Homeworld

Earth

Rank / Occupation

Scientist

Physical description
Species

Human

Gender

Female

Hair color

Black

Eye color

Blue

Chronological and political information
Era(s)

Black Mesa Incident

Faction

Black Mesa Science Team

Designer(s)

Marc Laidlaw[1]
Chuck Jones[2]

The Female Scientist[3] is a character that was cut from Half-Life.[1][4]

Overview[edit]

An early concept in Half-Life was to feature a female member of the science team who would end up betraying the player. Her character was to be encountered during the chapter Communications Center, acting as the center's head scientist.[5] She would give the player the goal of aligning a satellite dish located elsewhere in the facility for her. When he returned, her ulterior motives would be revealed as she awaited with a squad of Marines. However, when it came to implementing this concept, Valve didn't consider the current technology at the time to be capable of telling this story the way they wanted. This led the team to cut the scene early on.[1] The idea was brought back in Half-Life 2 for the character of Judith Mossman.

“The whole relationship with Dr Mossman in HL2 was a scene that we tried to do in Half-Life. We'd done a whole bunch of stuff for this scene where there was a betrayal by a woman scientist; at that point in the story Freeman was being hunted and you think that the scientists are all your friends, so this scientist says she's going to get you help and tells you to stay in the room you're in - and then she calls the guards. We couldn't do that in Half-Life - we didn't really have characters on that level - so it was cool in HL2 when we had characters who were far enough along...”
Marc Laidlaw[4]

While the only publicly released assets of the female scientist are her textures found in Half-Life: Source, her original model can be seen in the uncorrected proof of Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar. Writing on the back of her lab coat reads "X_Lab". The head scientist in Communications Center can be found in the Half-Life Alpha using a normal scientist model as a placeholder.

Gallery[edit]

References[edit]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Interview with Marc Laidlaw on Gamitopia (November 12, 2001) (archived)
  2. Half-Life: Source files (f_science/pspbrwse.jbf)
  3. Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar (uncorrected proof), page 69
  4. 4.0 4.1 Interview with Marc Laidlaw on Computer and Video Games (December 23, 2006) (archived)
  5. Half-Life Alpha Walkthrough (WalkThru.doc) (September 4, 1997)