"Listening to the dev commentary makes me respect HL2 even more. All the big aspects like physics and facial animations had to be developed for years with no certainty they would work in the end. It's the polar opposite of cash-grab." - NO! actually, HL2 sucks, Playtesters suck and are the cancer that is killing Valve, and you are a nostalgiastragging ValveBIPOC shill!

Not really, most of the big changes are pretty solid and it's just people thinking wistfully about what ifs. None of the playtest changes we know about come close to Arkane gutting one of their best levels because of playtesters

The Costume Party level in Dishonored was supposed to be a full on murder mystery but play testers never realized that they could leave the first floor so Arkane put in an NPC that basically told you the answer to the mystery as soon as you got to the party.

Arkane are so bad with this. They always sand down their edges to appeal to normies. DH1 was great, but they changed the atmosphere because grimdark isnt feminist. Then they hired a bunch of s to do DH2's level design and changed everything from small but dense murder sandboxes to neurodivergent, long open world levels with a bunch of places to go but nothing interesting in them