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[tesqui]

I honestly feel disgust towards Valve and Steam now. I've spent over 10 years and 1000's of hours on that platform and now I feel filthy. This'll probably subside by tomorrow, but fuck man I'm really bummed. I naively still had faith in them and believed they would eventually get to HL3.

 

[TheSecondSpitter]

On a lighter note, I'm thinking about changing my username to: Gertrude Fremont, Ph.D.

 

[TP]

I often see people post how the game could never meet fan expectations but I would have been so happy to play this. That last scene in the Borealis sounds incredible, all of it does.

Half Life really is dead

Fuck

 

[KnightimeX_Legacy]

After the Switch controller hoax i'm finding this also incredibly hard to believe.
Fool me once.

 

[Uhyve]

In all fairness, it would be pretty frustrating to hear:

-"We're making Episode 3"
-"Never mind, it's not working out"
-"Ok we have a new idea"
-"Oh, half the team got bored and moved their desks away"
-"But this one guy has a solid plan"
-"Oh, he left the company for Blizzard"
-"Nobody is working on Half-Life."
-"20 people are working on Half-Life!"
-"5 people are working on Half-Life"
-"Nobody is working on Half-Life"

Frustrating because it would put in stark relief the inadequacy of Valve's corporate structure.

Heh, you're right! They should do this to create some semblance of accountability and leadership.

 

[ASilentProtagonist]

Why doesn't Valve just say they won't ever do HL3? Maybe to use it as a trump card when they'll "need" it.

To be honest. A HL3 announcement would be up there with a new GTA announcement level of buzz.

 

[Frozenprince]

To be fair to the TF2 team, they have like twelve or fifteen people, with something like three of those people being actual programmers. Which is why they're working on a super mega patch instead of having those three patches out in a reasonable timeframe from when they were announced.

Bless them for trying to keep the lights on, at least.

Which is frigging nuts to me considering how much god damn money that game makes them on what has to be an absurd return on labor capital invested.

 

[Fox318]

To be fair to the TF2 team, they have like twelve or fifteen people, with something like three of those people being actual programmers. Which is why they're working on a super mega patch instead of having those three patches out in a reasonable timeframe from when they were announced.

Bless them for trying to keep the lights on, at least.

With all of the money they have they could always you know... Hire people or contract out updates.

TF2 could have a larger audience than it has. Look at how much money that game has made valve.

 

[Adnor]

Damn that Dyson's Sphere scene would have been rad as hell.

I love Dyson's Spheres, they are my favorite stupidly big sci-fi objects.

 

[Dragoon En Regalia]

That fight on Borealis oscilating between times and spaces would have been so damn awesome!

I am glad we have a closure at once. And not have a closure at the same time.

We really are the Borealis, getting taken for a ride like this

At least Ross Scott can focus on THE MOVIE he wants to make and not worry about Freeman's Mind 3 (assuming he ever thought the day might come after FM2). That's a relief. Screw new Valve I suppose.

 

[Yukinari]

This news got a pinned thread on /v/.

Damn son.

 

[CharminUltra]

Did someone save a copy, it seems Valve ninjas have taken down the site XD.

Save the text of the post to a plain txt file is the very first thing I did, before even reading a word of it. Seems kinda silly in retrospect, but I was in shock a little.

 

[Gurish]

I know it sounds dumb but only now I finally realized that HL is truly dead, it's been dead for a long time but there was a tiny glimmer of hope and now it's gone for good. Farewell.

 

[BolognaOni]

Well, glad I got to read it at least, but damn if I didn't want to play it.

 

[Yazzees]

So I'm not sure if this has been posted yet but the BreenGrub thing probably ties into this twitter stunt that Laidlaw did a few years back

http://lambdageneration.com/discuss...reengrub-teaches-us-about-the-half-life-saga/

A big point seems to be that Advisors were not the true endgame "Combine", among other weird twists

 

[Lotto]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckkkk.

 

[TheSecondSpitter]

Why doesn't Valve just say they won't ever do HL3? Maybe to use it as a trump card when they'll "need" it.
.

Because they have boxed themselves into a corner with all the prick teasing they did over the years and it would be shockingly bad PR if they came out now and said "nope. we're not going to do it."

 

[DocSeuss]

When I learned first aid back in the day, one of the things I learned was that people don't respond well to "somebody call for help!"

It works better when you say "hey, you, specific person, call for help!" because people don't just do things when a need exists. We don't work that way. We generally won't take action unless given a specific "do this."

I think Valve thinks people are all self-motivated "I'll just do this because I feel like it," but sometimes, needs exist and people just won't think to fulfill them unless they're told to do it directly, which is why their management structure sucks.

The thing is, they'll never learn, because no matter how bad it gets, people have too much INVESTED in their ecosystem, so they'll never leave. You can't beat Valve because nobody wants to abandon their 3,000 Steam games.

 

[5taquitos]

Holy

Shit

The Holy Grail, and we're just seeing the artisan's sketches.


This sound like it would have been a worthy follow-up, the entire end sequence was raising goosebumps.

I am both incredibly happy and entirely defeated.

 

[xJavonta]

I want to read it, but I dont.
#torn

You're doing yourself a massive disservice considering this is likely the only format you'll see it in unless fans build it themselves.

It's a storefront though. It doesn't have to look pretty. You put money in, and games download and you launch them. Ultimately Steam became the de-facto PC gaming platform, the Playstation Network of PC gaming, but it's really just a storefront and also server listings for Valve's own games.

The storefront has made Gaben worth an estimated $4.1 billion though, so that's one hell of a storefront. I bet Jeff Bezos wonders why he had to bust his ass so hard to become a billionaire from Amazon and all Gaben did was make a storefront for downloading and installing PC games and he's a billionaire too.

There's absolutely no reason for you to justify Valve's negligence.

If you're the leader on a platform, something as simple as making sure your storefront doesn't look like a hot mess in 4K shouldn't be an issue people have.

If Bezos wasn't so cutthroat Amazon would not be where it is today. Gabe could learn a thing or two.

After the Switch controller hoax i'm finding this also incredibly hard to believe.
Fool me once.

Marc tweeted it himself.

 

[Frozenprince]

With all of the money they have they could always you know... Hire people or contract out updates.

TF2 could have a larger audience than it has. Look at how much money that game has made valve.

Hat sales per week alone have to pay damn near a months worth of a team of 15's salary.

 

[nekkid]

I feel like I have some closure.

But now I'm just sad because that sounded great.

 

[truestatic]

I honestly feel disgust towards Valve and Steam now. I've spent over 10 years and 1000's of hours on that platform and now I feel filthy. This'll probably subside by tomorrow, but fuck man I'm really bummed. I naively still had faith in them and believed they would eventually get to HL3.

I have been pretty willing, for years now, to accept that HL3 is never happening. I will go to bat for Steam as not being a monopoly and a terrible evil blight upon the industry (like in the "Steam should stop taking 30%" thread) and complain bitterly that it's frustrating that they are no longer in any way a developer of things I want to play. Valve broke my gamer heart but I'm still happy they're around.

 

[Snaku]

Your NDA has no power here, Gaben.

 

[disappeared]

 

[IAmAnAgnostic]

..Can't Valve at least hire people who actually want to make video games?
I think they could afford it.

 

[guybrushfreeman]

On a lighter note, I'm thinking about changing my username to: Gertrude Fremont, Ph.D.

If we could do changes I'd go for girlbrushfremont in a heartbeat

Edit: is this where we beg for tags? I'm begging

 

[soxinthebox]

I haven't finished a single Half Life game. Should I just read this? Are the previous games required for the story?

 

[Alexander DeLarge]

Honestly, I can't fault them for not releasing Half-Life 3 on the original Source engine. The series has always been a technical showcase and Source was certainly showing its age.... But I have no idea why it wasn't the showcase for Source 2. What a shame.

I haven't finished a single Half Life game. Should I just read this? Are the previous games required for the story?

Absolutely. It won't make sense otherwise.

 

[- J - D -]

I love it. It's about as perfect an ending to Half Life as I could have ever imagined.

Now we can bury it once and for all.

 

[Oreoleo]

After the Switch controller hoax i'm finding this also incredibly hard to believe.
Fool me once.

This isn't some random anonymous 4Chan or Reddit leak, it was posted to the personal website of Half-Life's head writer. There's no reason to doubt it's authenticity.

 

[Tevos]

This is depressing.

 

[xJavonta]

I haven't finished a single Half Life game. Should I just read this? Are the previous games required for the story?

It's not as impactful without it. It's kind of required to know the characters and their roles.

 

[OverdriveOtaku]

After the Switch controller hoax i'm finding this also incredibly hard to believe.
Fool me once.

Tell me a Nintendo Switch controller is a hoax if someone actually from Nintendo blogged about it after an NDA expired. I'd believe in that controller in a heartbeat.

 

[Dmax3901]

So apt...

APT!

 

[truestatic]

I haven't finished a single Half Life game. Should I just read this? Are the previous games required for the story?

You'll be coming in on the third act of Empire Strikes Back.

 

[Nimajneb]

What a brilliant story, that would have worked so well in a game. I didn't get what you did though, about Earth being the aggressors - I thought it was more along the lines of The Terminator, where they cut off the Combine invasion before it happens, but failed to do so due to the sheer size of the Combine force. The fact that they were preparing an attack already implied to me that this was a futile effort to stop it, rather than one that triggered the attack in the first place.

Also, what the hell is "schoolmarm (no male equivalent)"? Do they mean "schoolmaster"?

It's unclear whether the final target was the central command or the evasion fleet. The presence of a Dyson Sphere indicates that it might have been the homeworld, or at least a major settlement. The whole bootstrap paradox interpretation was mostly a joke, I doubt the writer intended it to be read that way.


And yeah, schoolmarm is just a word for a female schoolmaster.

 

[XANDER CAGE]

It's been mentioned, but the first and last paragraphs are absolutely meta-commentary:

I hope this letter finds you well. I can hear your complaint already, “Gertie Fremont, we have not heard from you in ages!” Well, if you care to hear excuses, I have plenty, the greatest of them being I’ve been in other dimensions and whatnot, unable to reach you by the usual means. This was the case until eighteen months ago, when I experienced a critical change in my circumstances, and was redeposited on these shores. In the time since, I have been able to think occasionally about how best to describe the intervening years, my years of silence. I do first apologize for the wait, and that done, hasten to finally explain (albeit briefly, quickly, and in very little detail) events following those described in my previous letter (referred to herewith as Epistle 2).

....

And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Except no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle.

"This was the case until eighteen months ago, when I experienced a critical change in my circumstances" - Laidlaw left Valve 18 months ago

And that last paragraph is practically ten times my daily allowance of shade. Jeez.

 

[SallyIsNow]

After the Switch controller hoax i'm finding this also incredibly hard to believe.
Fool me once.

Saw on /v/ that apparently the NDA was up. So that's why he posted.

 

[teepo]

that was an incredible read

thank you marc, seriously

 

[Qassim]

I have been pretty willing, for years now, to accept that HL3 is never happening. I will go to bat for Steam as not being a monopoly and a terrible evil blight upon the industry (like in the "Steam should stop taking 30%" thread) and complain bitterly that it's frustrating that they are no longer in any way a developer of things I want to play. Valve broke my gamer heart but I'm still happy they're around.

This is my view on it (although I happen to be a huge Counter-Strike fan, so they still have something for me, for all its faults). There is, in general, this backlash against Valve and it's partly the internet just doing internet things. Valve were almost universally loved for a long time, it was a meme to shower praise on them.

But as people do on the internet, we're all guilty of it, but when we see what we perceive as an excess of something, we overcompensate the other way. In the case of Valve, there has been in general an overcompensation of the 'criticism' of them. I think if people took a few steps back they'd probably land somewhere closer to the middle.

 

[louis89]

Yes.

Or, at the very least - it was dead when Marc Laidlaw left back in January 2016.

Why does it mean it's dead, was my question.

Episode 3 was just the final chapter of the episodic series started with the Orange Box wasn't it? Not the real Half Life 3?

 

[Instro]

After the Switch controller hoax i'm finding this also incredibly hard to believe.
Fool me once.

Well he literally linked to the blog post in a tweet, it's certainly real.

Why doesn't Valve just say they won't ever do HL3? Maybe to use it as a trump card when they'll "need" it.

To be honest. A HL3 announcement would be up there with a new GTA announcement level of buzz.

Someone somewhere in the company, maybe Gabe, probably still has visions of making a Half-Life something. Hell Gabe himself said as much in his AMA earlier this year, along with saying they are still making single player games. Having said that, the question is whether they still have the wherewithal to make these things happen in the near future, and whether said Half-Life game will be anything related to where we left off and what was posted here tonight.

I fully expect to be still having these discussions in 2020.

 

[rashbeep]

so after all that this is what we get

so sad

 

[Frozenprince]

It's been mentioned, but the first and last paragraphs are absolutely meta-commentary:



"This was the case until eighteen months ago, when I experienced a critical change in my circumstances" - Laidlaw left Valve 18 months ago

And that last paragraph is practically ten times my daily allowance of shade. Jeez.

The last one is glorious. Legit takes everything we've been saying about valve for years now and validates it all in a single paragraph.

 

[BolognaOni]

Damn that Dyson's Sphere scene would have been rad as hell.

I love Dyson's Spheres, they are my favorite stupidly big sci-fi objects.

Just finished reading the Imperial Radch trilogy, and definitely seeing some parallels with the Combine after reading this.

 

[Harpoon]

https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/900960760481726464

My website's down for now. I guess fanfic is popular, even a genderswapped snapshot of a dream I had many years ago.

;_;

 

[NotTheGuyYouKill]

Some indie dev should somehow make this. Change all the names, call it Semi-Life.

 

[Fox318]

Some indie dev should somehow make this. Change all the names, call it Semi-Life.

Instead of Breen you are fighting Gabe

 

[guybrushfreeman]

It's been mentioned, but the first and last paragraphs are absolutely meta-commentary:



"This was the case until eighteen months ago, when I experienced a critical change in my circumstances" - Laidlaw left Valve 18 months ago

And that last paragraph is practically ten times my daily allowance of shade. Jeez.

The last paragraph is a thing of beauty. I'll keep that one with me from now on