disappeared
Banned
I really should be going to bed but this whole thing has left me with this weird warm hum in my body, and that's maybe only partially because of the vodka.
There was a funeral tonight.
There was a funeral tonight.
Marc Laidlaw reveals Half-Life 2 Episode 3's story synopsis
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
didn't a lot of F-Stop get folded into the old Aperture Science part of Portal 2?
toddhunter
Member
Would have been tough for them to fit an 8 hour ant-lion section into all that but I'm sure they could have made it work.
Crimsonclaw111
Member
Alright well good luck playing many new PC releases that don't activate via Steam. I understand people are mad but leaving an entire ecosystem? Lol
Daffy Duck
Member
I see the site isn't loading, is that the joke? Lol
Interficium
Banned
I think you mean "Nobody at Valve is making the games I, personally, value right now."
There's a difference.
Frozenprince
Banned
Because Valve isnt a development studio anymore. They very likely don't even have a dedicated development team for anything larger than a dozen people at most.
A feature intensive 8-10 hour FPS takes an inordinant amount of time, money and labor to get done. And they don't even have a team in place to even begin on a large scale project like that.
Anyone can work on whatever they want, but it probably takes some serious motivation for some guy to get up and start thinking "I'm going to make Half Life 3!". And then it probably takes even more motivation to then assemble a team of people who are as passionate as you to tackle the development of a third Half Life game, one surely the internet will be critical as fuck at.
Plus then you probably still gotta convince some higher ups for a big budget or something
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
This guy gets it.
Tainted
Member
You are surprised the site hosting the script for one of the most anticipated games of all time is being hammered ?
Gabe will probably make the people who read this stuff disappear. He will then be interviewed 10 years from now & say "HL was one of those long forgotten games no one payed much attention to. It was brought up once & awhile but the fans demanded Dota. They kept voting with their wallets on f2p so we catered to that demand."
His secret thoughts, "wow it feels so good to tease people with lies. Game was 100 percent complete. I just wanted to feel elite by having the world envy me for bragging rights. I was the only one who got to play it from start to finish. Once that happened, I deleted the source code."
On multiple fronts. I have never felt more disenfranchised with where gaming is going
I was 14 when I first saw this, my jaw was on the floor and chills down my spine.
It's pretty crazy that this is how it all ends. My first two PC games ever were Half Life and Fallout 2 on a Pentium 2 box. No internet, just two of the best games I have ever played. Jump forward and Half Life 2 is the first game I buy for the first PC I ever build an AMD Athlon XP and I was blown away. While i'm glad that the Fallout Series has been lucky enough to continue, Half Life was a huge influence to me not just as a game but as an incentive to learn about and build computers and learn about game design and programming in general. At least we finally get some closure.
I think you're right on story and environment stuff, but there's supposed to be some kind of specific mechanic to F-Stop that we haven't heard anything about, in the event Valve wants to use it in the future.
sunshine and gasoline
Banned
RIP Half-Life.
Frozenprince
Banned
No, I play a ton of CSGO, played a lot of Dota. Valve doesn't work on primary development for anything, they rely on contracting to do the bulk of the actual development then they work as QA and legacy after launch.
Valve doesn't operate as a true development studio anymore. Not in house which is where Hl3 would happen if it happened.
moondoggerr
Banned
That actually sounds awesome.
I used to make this argument.
But Artifact is a game that I feel I can safely say that nobody values. And I say that as a fan of Brad Muir. It's sad that what is still known as Valve, has claimed yet another really creative person.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Is it wrong of me to want someone to make a stupid photo comparing Gabe to Trump? Even as a joke?
It's not even just a pivot to service games.
Every major game Valve has made has been a Trojan horse for some kind of new technology or market. HL2 opened up Steam itself, TF2 started the microtransactions and trading economy, Portal 2 got Workshop off the ground, DOTA 2 and CS:GO got Valve into esports, Artifact is getting valve into TCGs. What new doors can another Half-Life open up?
Every major game Valve has made has been a Trojan horse for some kind of new technology or market. HL2 opened up Steam itself, TF2 started the microtransactions and trading economy, Portal 2 got Workshop off the ground, DOTA 2 and CS:GO got Valve into esports, Artifact is getting valve into TCGs. What new doors can another Half-Life open up?
Alexander DeLarge
Member
This kind of mentality resulted in the watered down Half-Life 2 that we eventually got where they scrapped loads of great work. What a shame, Raising the Bar and the leak itself are very interesting.
From the sound of the HL3 references in the code, open world gameplay.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
That's a really poor argument.
So you're basically saying that no product can ever progress technology or itself? As far as your jab at Artifact - how else are they supposed to make physical games? You make it and then you have made a physical game. I can't follow your logic. Are you trying to make a "BioWare was never good" post?
Frozenprince
Banned
Guarantee they're trying to find a "killer app" for Vive to license out.
Interficium
Banned
Absolutely, they don't own gaming. I can use the Windows Store, Origin, GOG, battle.net, etc. I can play on PS4, Xbox, or Switch. They can fuck right off, and the sooner more people realize this, the sooner they might consider making HL3 in a desperate attempt to lure us back to Steam like they did with that Trojan hor-I mean HL2.
TF2, Portal 1 and the whole Orange Box originally carried no such "technological progress", it was just games.
It doesn't make it any less gross. Besides, I don't know the circumstances behind HL3, I don't work for Valve. None of us know the full story.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the anger. I love this series as much as anyone here. I worked on Black Mesa, hell, I helped clean up and fix assets from the original HL2 leak. Manhack Arcade was almost completed before the project fell through (as much as it could've been), I still have those files lol.
At the end of the day it is what it is. Projects fail, these things happen. Just take a step back and relax.
There's some truth in that. I only know a few guys from Valve and they've hinted at it. Honestly if I was given the responsibility to make HL3 i'd shit my pants.
No, it did not. The sessions were called directed design experiments, and while they used some of those experiments in Portal 2, F-Stop was not used.
"F-STOP, this never-before-disclosed project was headed by a team including producer Joshua Weier. Using the cartoon visual style of Team Fortress 2, Weier and his team mocked up a completely new, nonviolent, puzzle-based mechanic for a game. The other employees considered it fun, memorable, and most important fresh and completely unexpected.
A few days after the science fair, Newell summoned Weier and the team to his office to ask them if they would be willing to look into making F-STOP a prequel to Portal, as he thought it was probably the big, unexpected idea that Valve needed for a sequel. Weier was a little shocked: Portal was such a sensation, such an outright phenomenon, no one wanted to be responsible for trying to one-up it.
But as the team worked on F-STOP, it did not become Portal 2, and it would take Valve nearly a year of intense development before they figured that out."
I thought the story over the years was nobody in Valve wanted to work on HL3 because figuring out what it should be was too daunting.
I'm just saying that appears to be how Valve has operated.
Gabe has just about confirmed it.
ZanzibarBreeze
Member
Great scenario. Would have loved to play it, but glad I got to read it at least. Ending would have been magnificentsounds like a cliffhanger like at the end of HL2. Super stuff
Elfforkusu
Member
Seems to me that episode 3 is now more likely to make it into game form than it has been in years.
Crimsonclaw111
Member
I wish you luck. If other ecosystems were as good as Steam I would buy from them more.
How do you mean? As in they're trying to give one of their IPs to a developer to make a VR game?
also gabe's confirmed it?
Alexander DeLarge
Member
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
That's how any business operates.
They make a product, and then it exists.
By your logic, no video game company should ever make something new? Or rather, experiment?
Crooked16th
Banned
This is even worse then not knowing if we would ever see Ep3. What a disgrace to everyone who worked on half life 1 & 2 that they could not finish this.
XANDER CAGE
Member
The thing I'll never understand about the "Valve doesn't HAVE to make Half-Life" argument is how detached it comes across as. I like TF2, CS:GO, and Dota 2 just fine, but to prop those up - years-old multiplayer games - as substitutes for or satisfying reasons to abandon Half-Life is bonkers to me. I say this as someone who is pretty critical of Half-Life 2, all things considered.
I don't need to be reminded that this is a market-driven reality; my core issue with this is the fact that it plainly is such a market-driven reality. I accepted that the series was dead ages ago, but accepting a shitty reality doesn't mean I can't express my distaste for it. It sucks that Valve bled talent for so long that they effectively abandoned one of the most beloved series of all time. It sucks that Steam's success made them complacent to the point where basic functions like the store client and support system are running on duct tape and prayer. It sucks that because of their insistence on paying as few people as possible, they've been trying to come up with fancy new ways to not have to run their own damn storefront. At this point, Valve is a full-on Randian wet dream, a money hose that pumps cash from shockingly undervalued sale prices and gambling for items Valve didn't even make directly into whatever Scrooge McDuck style vault they have set up under the building. For what it's worth, Valve are masters of PR, managing to convince people that their nightmare capitalism temple was good because they're a private company and not beholden to shareholders, which makes them indie and cool and definitely not the same kind of vampire wearing a different suit.
Lastly, there's the claim that finishing the series would be too hard because expectations were too high. Who cares? There are indie tweens publishing their first shitty Unity projects - on Greenlight probably, no less - with more chutzpah than Valve in this regard. Making anything is a risk. Making games is hard, and sure, following up something as acclaimed as Half-Life 2 would be monumental - but so what? Does anyone sit around going "well, Mario Bros. was really good, but Nintendo could have made a lot more money if they had gotten into the casino business"? Given that Valve probably has something close to the GDP of a mid-sized island nation sloshing around in its coffers, they're probably one of the only companies around who could likely afford to make a whopper production like a Half-Life follow up without having to pay their employees like shit, or enforce brutal crunches to meet an arbitrary publisher deadline. If they were low on staff or ideas, there are oodles of talented people out there who would throw themselves at Valve to work on a new Half-Life game. This idea that it would be impossible to make the game is ludicrous. If anyone in the industry is poised to have their cake and eat it too, it would have been Valve.
None of this is to detract from the people working on their current projects. Like I mentioned before, CS:GO, Dota, and TF2 are all great projects that have been passionately put together by talented people, and you also can't really fault people for enjoying those games. I'm not like... I dunno, I don't think anyone should swear off Valve or anything, but at the same time I can't help but 1. be increasingly frustrated by their insidious business framework and 2. feel disappointed that they abandoned a game series they set out to finish. Yes, of course it "makes sense" for them to have done this, in the same way that it would've made sense for Lucasfilm to stop making Star Wars after Empire Strikes Back because Kenner Toys was printing money for them. There are a lot of easier ways to make money than making single-player video games, but that doesn't mean that not making them is inherently better.
It's a bummer. I get it, but it's a bummer.
I don't need to be reminded that this is a market-driven reality; my core issue with this is the fact that it plainly is such a market-driven reality. I accepted that the series was dead ages ago, but accepting a shitty reality doesn't mean I can't express my distaste for it. It sucks that Valve bled talent for so long that they effectively abandoned one of the most beloved series of all time. It sucks that Steam's success made them complacent to the point where basic functions like the store client and support system are running on duct tape and prayer. It sucks that because of their insistence on paying as few people as possible, they've been trying to come up with fancy new ways to not have to run their own damn storefront. At this point, Valve is a full-on Randian wet dream, a money hose that pumps cash from shockingly undervalued sale prices and gambling for items Valve didn't even make directly into whatever Scrooge McDuck style vault they have set up under the building. For what it's worth, Valve are masters of PR, managing to convince people that their nightmare capitalism temple was good because they're a private company and not beholden to shareholders, which makes them indie and cool and definitely not the same kind of vampire wearing a different suit.
Lastly, there's the claim that finishing the series would be too hard because expectations were too high. Who cares? There are indie tweens publishing their first shitty Unity projects - on Greenlight probably, no less - with more chutzpah than Valve in this regard. Making anything is a risk. Making games is hard, and sure, following up something as acclaimed as Half-Life 2 would be monumental - but so what? Does anyone sit around going "well, Mario Bros. was really good, but Nintendo could have made a lot more money if they had gotten into the casino business"? Given that Valve probably has something close to the GDP of a mid-sized island nation sloshing around in its coffers, they're probably one of the only companies around who could likely afford to make a whopper production like a Half-Life follow up without having to pay their employees like shit, or enforce brutal crunches to meet an arbitrary publisher deadline. If they were low on staff or ideas, there are oodles of talented people out there who would throw themselves at Valve to work on a new Half-Life game. This idea that it would be impossible to make the game is ludicrous. If anyone in the industry is poised to have their cake and eat it too, it would have been Valve.
None of this is to detract from the people working on their current projects. Like I mentioned before, CS:GO, Dota, and TF2 are all great projects that have been passionately put together by talented people, and you also can't really fault people for enjoying those games. I'm not like... I dunno, I don't think anyone should swear off Valve or anything, but at the same time I can't help but 1. be increasingly frustrated by their insidious business framework and 2. feel disappointed that they abandoned a game series they set out to finish. Yes, of course it "makes sense" for them to have done this, in the same way that it would've made sense for Lucasfilm to stop making Star Wars after Empire Strikes Back because Kenner Toys was printing money for them. There are a lot of easier ways to make money than making single-player video games, but that doesn't mean that not making them is inherently better.
It's a bummer. I get it, but it's a bummer.
Well that's a massive reach. I'm sure there has been a LOT of scrapped development on Half Life over the past decade. Why it's been scrapped is anyone's guess; lots of posts in this thread making wild assumptions as to why but the reality is we don't really know.
I still think we'll see a Half-Life game, or a game set in the HL universe, when Source 2 is properly launched. Maybe I'm just naive.
guybrushfreeman
Unconfirmed Member
There was a cancelled space RPG as well. Sin of a Solar Empire (????) something like that. I don't recognise though pictures though
Edit: terrible guess at the name. Stars of Blood (or something) http://kotaku.com/5959953/valve-was-once-making-a-space-pirate-game
"Millenials killed Half Life 3"
Damn this sucks. I love HL and played them 5 times each. But honestly this made me feel good. At least this gives a conclusive scenario to Gordon Freeman more or less. Ending games with all hope lost is OK to me.
Give it to Respawn, the Titanfall guys.
Damn this sucks. I love HL and played them 5 times each. But honestly this made me feel good. At least this gives a conclusive scenario to Gordon Freeman more or less. Ending games with all hope lost is OK to me.
Give it to Respawn, the Titanfall guys.