Half-Life’s Possible Names During Development Included Free Radical, Crysis, and Fallout

It turns out that legendary first-person shooter Half-Life could have been named Free Radical or Fallout back when it was still in development in 1997. As caught by VideoGamesChronicle, former Valve developer Dario Casali, who worked on Half-Life as a level designer, revealed a few of the proposed names for Half-Life.

In an episode of a YouTube series titled Half-Life 25 Year Developer Community, Casali talks about working on the development team of Half-Life, accompanied by his diary filled with old documents, screenshots and photos. According to Casali, some of the names thrown around for the game that would eventually be released as Half-Life included Bent, Dirt, Lead, Pressure, Pressure Chamber, Pressure Pit, and Screwed.

It is worth noting that, during development, Half-Life was codenamed Quiver. Some of the other names on the list, alongside Half-Life itself, were Free Radical, Fallout, and a few variations on the name Crysis, including Cry.Sys, Crisis, and Krisis.

Fallout is an especially interesting potential title for Half-Life, since the seminal RPG of the same name was still under development at the time, and would be released a year before Half-Life. Fallout‘s original planned name was Vault-13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game.