 Good evening. In the time since Valve released their colossal hit Half-Life 2 in 2004, many have become curious about the scrapped characters who appeared in the game's pre-release leaks and promotional material, and many efforts have been made to analyze and dissect these characters in their history. Of the most popular there's Odell, the predecessor to Odessa Cubbage, who was originally designed to play a critical role in the scrapped opening Borealis chapter, Samuel, who was supposed to be the first citizen to greet Gordon after his arrival in City 17, and Captain Vance, the leader of a cut faction called the Combine Conscripts, who was later merged with another cut character named Eli Maxwell to create the character we now know as Eli Vance. But there's one character whose story I find to have been neglected, and that character is Dr. Cort. It's easy to see why this character has been largely overlooked. There's a lack of solid information and general air of confusion surrounding him. The only concrete source we have declaring his existence is one mention and a deleted tongue-in-cheek tweet from series writer Mark Laidlaw. So who was Dr. Cort? According to Laidlaw, Dr. Cort was the subject of a short story vignette written very early in Half-Life 2's development. He was a scientist, potentially the first scientist conceptualized during the game's development, but unlike the characters we saw in the final game, he was not to be affiliated with Black Mesa at all. It was in the year 2000 that Val started adding characters based on Black Mesa personnel, and what is often referred to as the Cameo era of development. So it seems likely that the idea of Dr. Cort was conceived sometime in 1999. This would place him in the Hyper era of development, meaning back when the game was meant to focus around the Hyperborea, or Borealis. So what was Dr. Cort's role going to be? Well, given his duty as a scientist, it's easy to imagine that he was meant to appear on Crack and Base, the underwater scientific research facility that eventually evolved into Black Mesa East in the final game. It's impossible to know exactly what was outlined in Laidlaw's unreleased story vignette, but it seems likely that Dr. Cort was going to give Gordon some kind of technology, perhaps the HEV suit, or maybe even the mysterious Black Leather stealth suit that was canned very early in development. It's also possible that Dr. Cort was to be involved in a teleportation sequence like we saw in the final game, but there's no evidence to suggest this, nor any to suggest a teleportation sequence was even planned at all so early in the game's development. Mark Laidlaw described Dr. Cort as the subject of a short dramatic scene that Valve never iterated on any further. He explained that he drew the name Cort after watching director Toby Hooper's 1986 rendition of the film Invader from Mars, which features a character named Mark Weinstein, played by actor Bud Cort. I noticed that Laidlaw goes out of his way to mention that the scientist character Cort was based on gets eaten by a Martian, which makes me think that this short dramatic scene involved him being killed in some spectacular way. We know Valve had a fascination with killing Dr. Kleiner, even as late into development as 2003, so Cort's death seems almost certain to me. Now, it's time to clear up a major misconception. This is Cort.MDL, a file found in the Half-Life 2 beta leak. Note the spelling of the model name, which includes an H. We'll get back to that in just a moment. Many people believe this model to be a depiction of Dr. Cort from Laidlaw's storyboard, but this is not the case. While it is somewhat possible that this face was chosen with Laidlaw's vision for Dr. Cort in the back of his mind, there's actually nothing to suggest that this model was anything more than an early, more elderly version of Dr. Kleiner. The concept of Dr. Cort never made it past storyboarding, so it would make very little sense for Valve to bother creating a model for him. Additionally, the graphical fidelity we see in the face of Cort.MDL is simply too high to have been developed in 1999. Keep in mind, 1999 is the year Valve and Gearbox released Half-Life Opposing Force, which has character faces that look like this. As you can see, this doesn't add up. If the team did have an idea for Dr. Cort's appearance, it most likely would have resembled this, the earliest known concept art for Dr. Kleiner. An old man, sure, but one with scar tissue over half his face and an eye patch. So, if Cort.MDL is unrelated to the character of Dr. Cort, then where does the model's name come from? It's a funny story, actually. According to both Laidlaw and lead animator Bill Van Buren, the Half-Life team was convinced that this variation of Dr. Kleiner's model was set in stone. That is, until the team ran into an accountant working in the firm above Valve's then office. On the spot, they asked this guy to use his face as Dr. Kleiner in the game, and he happily agreed since his teenage sons were both Half-Life fans. This accountant's name happened to be Ted Cort, spelled with an H. A coincidence that greatly amused Laidlaw. The Cort slash Cort coincidence always amused me, but it was too convoluted to explain to him. Some months later I was in the Santa Ana airport, on my way back to Seattle, when I saw Ted Cort in the terminal concourse. It was funny to meet in this context, and when he saw me, he stopped and said hello. Precisely where he stood, perfectly framed from my eyes only, thanks universe, was a big hanging sign. Food Cort. Cort, Cort, Cort. It was all there in that image, absolutely objective, but also completely subjective at the same time. If we'd run into each other a few feet in the other direction, I wouldn't have had this perfect view. So what seems to have happened is that, after developing a new face to use for Kleiner based on Ted Cort's likeness, the developers opted to, for some reason, rename the old model that looked nothing like Ted Cort after him. This has led to nearly 20 years of ambiguity and confusion regarding who Dr. Cort was as a character. The reality of the situation is that Dr. Cort was a one-off character who starred in an unreleased Half-Life 2 story, even yet Mark Laidlaw wrote that we'll likely never see, and his story probably ended with him dying. This model is nothing more than a Beta Kleiner model that ended up being recycled for hostage number four on Counter-Strike Source. But it's fun to fantasize, right? I for one think Cort.MDL being relegated to nothing but an unnamed elderly man in a Counter-Strike game is a bit of a waste of a good asset. And even if it's wrong to conflate this model with Dr. Cort from Laidlaw's text, I still would love to see someone creatively iterate on the character using this model. His tired eyes and older look make me imagine him being a lot less absentminded than the Kleiner we got. Maybe still occasionally jovial, but much more stern and more of a survivalist. This is a scientist that I can imagine shooting to kill. If any of you creative types are watching this, why not give a shot at your own interpretation? I'll share the model, re-rigged as a Kleiner rescan by Wolf Clock, in the description. Maybe you can give me your shot at what you think Cort's lab might have looked like if he had one. But that's all I've got for now. I hope you enjoyed the video and learned something new about one of the most obscure characters in Half-Life 2's development history. Thanks for watching, have a good day.