Fusion Pizza
Member
This is so sad. What could have been. Shame.
Marc Laidlaw reveals Half-Life 2 Episode 3's story synopsis
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
SoundPulse
Banned
Oh, absolutely. I'd lay a lot of the fault with the corporate structure (Who wants to work on that old busted game from 2007 when you could move your desks with the cool people working on VR?) and Valve just not hiring anybody. The game's mechanics don't lend it to having the same type of competitive future that CSGO or Dota has, but the game's outlook could certainly look a lot less bleak than it currently is.
Valve's content with automating how ever much they can and farming the vast majority of the content creation out to the community, sadly.
Frozenprince
Banned
It's dead because there's nobody at Valve they can put together to make a dedicated development team, their structure doesn't allow scoping, creating milestones, hitting windows or even basic day to day functions of what is in essence a programming company.
The current Valve as it exists today is incapable of creating a game project of this scale. Hell, of any scale. Which is why almost all primary development is contracted out.
truestatic
Member
Make it in the style of Codename Gordon. Pay Valve the $100 fee and host it on Steam.
It was widely assumed that given the episodic experiment failed (the entire point was to get content out quicker and more frequently), that Valve would have just skipped episode 3 and picked up with a brand new game and carried on with 'Half Life 3'.
This is Episode 3 / Half Life 3. This is the story that was planned for it - and if 18 months ago it didn't look like Valve were interested in making this game (from the perspective of the head writer of the series), I think it's a very safe assumption that the posting of the plot signifies that it isn't going to happen.
FunkyMunkey
Banned
the fact that the rest of the story had to come out like this is downright, once gain, pathetic. if gabe or valve had any care for the videogame medium at all this would be a literal guilt tumor for them but they really, truly, do not give one single fuck
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN
guybrushfreeman
Unconfirmed Member
He doesn't work at Valve anymore. It's just a tongue in cheek way of saying this isn't 'official'
Auto-Reply
Member
A somewhat expected series of events, we knew the Borealis existed an they needed to go there and the combine would try and stifle their efforts etc.
Imagining this as an actual playable Epidose 3 it would probably rank a little higher than Episode 1 and lower than 2.
I remember reading something about "the story is always in service of the gameplay" and it would be a bit problematic to flesh this one out (on story beats alone). You'd maybe have wild snowy regions (could introduce some new alien animal that prefers cold regions) and then you get to the Borealis Combine Base, fight your way onto the ship and then the rest would be on the ship without a portable portal device. If you can't freshen up the standard combine shootouts with replacements-antlions and you also don't want to retread ground with headcrab zombie areas then your a bit shy of new and interesting challenges for the player.
As others pointed out, this blog post has a lot of personal writers background in it which wouldn't do much for the game itself as there never was Freeman narration. It's still interesting to read.
The simple grin/nod towards Gordon Freeman from the G-Man (if it also isn't just a reference for something at Valve regarding Laidlaw?) wouldn't mean he is abandoning Gordon and later Alex would replace him in the next installment of the series, at least I wouldn't take it for that, I assume he just would have placed Gordon exactly where he needed him to be and does the same with everyone else.
Fanfic the story a bit more, if the Dyson Sphere wasn't just the idea to smother any chances of fighting the combine any further, by showing how impossible it must be to really stomp them out, then I guess Gordon somehow needs some help from new outside sources or the Vortigaunts/G-Man etc. You could change the nature of the G-Man to something different, update it to modern times by revealing him to be a human AI from the future with his own agenda or shit like that. The breengrub could be the one bringing down the combine command from inside, seeking revenge, could become an ally again etc.
I'm ok with never having another new Half Life game game, I don't think I need more of regular fps Half Life, the most I'm looking forward to is the HL2 VR mod!
A real closure to everything needs the Combine to be defeated though, it does not need the G-Man to be explained or to know what will happen to Gordon Freeman at the end (could be put into stasis again for all I care) but the Combine threat needs to be solved once and for all!
Imagining this as an actual playable Epidose 3 it would probably rank a little higher than Episode 1 and lower than 2.
I remember reading something about "the story is always in service of the gameplay" and it would be a bit problematic to flesh this one out (on story beats alone). You'd maybe have wild snowy regions (could introduce some new alien animal that prefers cold regions) and then you get to the Borealis Combine Base, fight your way onto the ship and then the rest would be on the ship without a portable portal device. If you can't freshen up the standard combine shootouts with replacements-antlions and you also don't want to retread ground with headcrab zombie areas then your a bit shy of new and interesting challenges for the player.
As others pointed out, this blog post has a lot of personal writers background in it which wouldn't do much for the game itself as there never was Freeman narration. It's still interesting to read.
The simple grin/nod towards Gordon Freeman from the G-Man (if it also isn't just a reference for something at Valve regarding Laidlaw?) wouldn't mean he is abandoning Gordon and later Alex would replace him in the next installment of the series, at least I wouldn't take it for that, I assume he just would have placed Gordon exactly where he needed him to be and does the same with everyone else.
Fanfic the story a bit more, if the Dyson Sphere wasn't just the idea to smother any chances of fighting the combine any further, by showing how impossible it must be to really stomp them out, then I guess Gordon somehow needs some help from new outside sources or the Vortigaunts/G-Man etc. You could change the nature of the G-Man to something different, update it to modern times by revealing him to be a human AI from the future with his own agenda or shit like that. The breengrub could be the one bringing down the combine command from inside, seeking revenge, could become an ally again etc.
I'm ok with never having another new Half Life game game, I don't think I need more of regular fps Half Life, the most I'm looking forward to is the HL2 VR mod!
A real closure to everything needs the Combine to be defeated though, it does not need the G-Man to be explained or to know what will happen to Gordon Freeman at the end (could be put into stasis again for all I care) but the Combine threat needs to be solved once and for all!
truestatic
Member
We hugged the site to death?
Frozenprince
Banned
That Valve is threatening to sue his ass probably.
PackAPunchedMick
Member
I honestly don't know what to say......
.....
Fuck Valve.
.....
Fuck Valve.
SpikeDaPenguin
Neo Member
If there's any kind of emotion I can grab from this, it's closure.
Thank you.
Thank you.
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
what a time to be alive
I wonder... Could the end of that last paragraph suggest that maybe a mod team should go Black Mesa with it? Black Mesa does have Valve's blessing, and I bet if a mod team made this, it would too.
I think it would have made Artifact have a more positive reception, because the idea of Artifact is good IMO.
Alexander DeLarge
Member
Even Naughty Dog said they'd take it on. I'm sure Sony would allow it too as a massive vanity project that they could showcase on their stage. Imagine how fucking big that would be. Every joke is grounded in a bit of truth.
https://twitter.com/neil_druckmann/status/642013726514774016?lang=en
Balmung421
Member
Dream = this game being made
truestatic
Member
That's one interpretation, but I think the last sentence is a "you do you" directed at Valve.
He doesn't want Gabe and his knives to come after him.
I doubt they even have the staff capable of making a game like this now. Certainly not one that would live up to the Half-Life name.
With their money and clout they could certainly hire people in time, but it's been so many years at this point. Seems pretty clear that Gabe abd co. have no interest in developing anything remotely like Half-Life.
Frozenprince
Banned
Sony would bend over fucking backwards to make that happen if it were possible (and it's not let's make no bones about that) just for the PR alone.
Can you imagine the E3 stage where Gabe walks put? That alone would dominate mind share for my months.
But it's NEVER happening.
It means he's leaving himself some legal wiggle room.
SchrodingerC
Member
Thank you so much Marc, for giving HL and its fans some kind of closure.
Sad to see the series end like this.
Sad to see the series end like this.
nekkid
It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
FUCK.
THAT.
If it's exclusive, then it should be PC exclusive. But ideally it would be available everywhere.
louis89
Member
I still don't really get it, but alright. Like if the story for GTAVI was suddently leaked on the internet by some disgruntled former writer I don't see how that would mean that GTA the series is dead. But I know nothing about Valve or Half Life so clearly I'm just missing something.
It means that it's not official so he can't obviously call it anything other than fan fic but we all understand the subtext and the true meaning of his post... he did just close the series.
TheSecondSpitter
Member
Why would Sony make it available for their competitors?
It means his blog has never experienced so much traffic.
Galactic Specter
Member
Fuck me, I played episode 2 on the orange box in middle school and I'm well into college now. Talk about ending with a whisper.
Alexander DeLarge
Member
Oh no way it'd be exclusive but I'm sure Sony would bend over backwards in the same way they allowed the early dealings with Kojima's next game (Death Stranding) to be on PC. A PS4/PC exclusive would've been good enough for me.
Unknown Soldier
Member
I'm not justifying anything. Origin and Uplay are ugly-ass storefronts too, you know. You know what else was awful in 4K for the longest time? Battle.net Launcher.
I game exclusively in 4K on a 65" 4K TV so I'm not speaking without knowing what I'm talking about either. Lots of things look like total ass in 4K, up to and including Adobe Creative Cloud and that's a software package which costs many hundreds of dollars. The way Windows handles High DPI has always been a kludge bolted onto the side of another kludge and so many applications simply do not comprehend it.
And that's the biggest reason ND should never get close to other's IPs.
Frozenprince
Banned
If it just looked like shit that's one thing.
But as a UI it flat out doesn't function half the time and many features are either incomplete, bugged, or broken.
TheSecondSpitter
Member
If Valve start issuing C&Ds in other places, we'll know for sure how pissed Gaben is.
Sony is reasonable and will be open to making it available on Steam, but seriously fuck the idea of making it available on Xbox.
JasonUresti
Member
Very nicely done by Marc. He was able to give fans some closure by sharing the vision that once was of Half Life, and speak to some of his frustrations and disappointments with what Valve has become.
It was just a joke don't take it so hard, no one obviously is making a serious offer on Twitter.
That sounds great, it would have been great. Thank you, Marc.