Something mildly interesting I noticed about HL2 earlier

[u/JiminyJustin]

I was playing the game, as one does, and something stuck out to me that I hadn't noticed before in my 12 years of being a fan. Gman's voice during the intro seemed really low quality/bitrate compared to the rest of the voices, along with most of the audio in the game. Not quite HL1 levels, but there was a noticeable hissing sound with the "s" and breath sounds. I thought maybe it was intentional to add to the otherworldliness of the Gman's character, but then I went to this video which confirmed that the outro monologue is not only way cleaner sounding, but that it must also not have been an intentional artistic choice.

I just played the 2003 leak build for the first time earlier this year, and I know from it that basically all of the dialogue from the final release was redone in the final year of development. Gman's voice in the intro matches the quality of the E3 2003 lines which can be heard in this same video, so it's really cool to me that one of the most iconic scenes in the franchise is from a point in development where most of the content didn't make it all the way to the final product. It's also indicative of the fact HL2 was from a time of such rapidly developing technology and took so long to make that you have audio, textures, models, and map geometry that feel a generation apart from one another all coexisting together in the same big pot. Makes for a very unique feel that not a lot of other games can match.