10 Weird Origins Behind Iconic Video Game Weapons
Keyblades were nearly chainsaws? That's wild.
There is certainly no shortage of amazing weaponry to be found in video games. But is that much of a surprise, given how much damn fun you can have with a good video game weapon?
Getting into a game world and receiving an incredible tool for dishing out damage is a feeling unlike any other. As such, developers are always scrambling to make the arsenal in their games as good as possible. Doing so can help those items reach the upper echelon of gaming and become something more than the sum of their parts, something iconic.
The likes of the Master Sword (which is inspired by mythological heavyweights like Excalibur) and the Portal Gun (which gets its concept from gameplay features and scientific theories like quantum tunnelling) have profound meanings behind their creations. However, not all gaming weapons are created equal, as others have far more surprising and goofy beginnings.
These ten examples are some of the most unexpected. All of them went on to become absolute staples of the gaming industry, but given their bizarre origins stories, that might have come as a surprise to the devs.
10. Gordon Freeman's Crowbar (Half-Life)
It's hard to picture the legendary Gordon Freeman without his trusty crate-smashing crowbar. That said, why did the devs decide to give their protagonist such a plain, simple melee weapon?
Well, Gabe Newell opened up about that very choice during an hour-long documentary exploring the first game's development (documented here by PC Gamer), and it's quite something.
According to Newell, one of the earliest priorities during Half-Life's production was ensuring that the environments reacted to your choices. In essence, he felt many game walls didn't respond to the player's actions, claiming that if he attacks a wall and it leaves no mark, "it feels like the wall is ignoring me."
With that in mind, the devs introduced walls that showed damage when struck. They then spent a lot of time "running around like idiots smacking the wall." In Newell's own words, "When you're going around whacking a wall, a crowbar is an obvious thing to whack the wall with." And that is where the soon-to-be beloved crowbar made its debut.