Marc Laidlaw reveals Half-Life 2 Episode 3's story synopsis

Maddrical said:
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.
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I agree.
 
pizzacat said:
Wait

Wasn't fstop a mechanic that didn't make it to portal 2

Now it's a game in itself? Or was?
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There's a scrapped Portal sequel out there that relied on the mechanic (and had no portals), so it's commonly referred to as F-Stop. It was only in development for a year or so before they scrapped it for final Portal 2.
 
It's pretty much Half Life 2 Episode 3 and not Half Life 3 like I had predicted. I've said before how I would have been happy if this was released straight up as a follow-up to Episode 2, same Source engine, same graphics, same everything. Seven hour long campaign or so.

I didn't need this thing to reinvent the FPS or released on a brand new Source 2 engine or anything. I just wanted to see it released as a game like Episode 2 and provide some closure to the story. It's a shame Marc Laidlaw had to resort to this, but I'd honestly take this over nothing at all.

Not even mad anymore, cause I stopped caring years ago about the game. Everyone else should have stopped caring years ago too, just like Valve stopped caring about providing closure for Half Life.
 
dhonk said:
Gotta remember that episode 3 was supposed to happen much faster. I always expected actual revelations in a half life 3 that will never exist.
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This is a fair point, if they'd had made it then we were waiting 10 years for Alyx if be just as disappointed I think.
 
Lol I don't think Gabe Newell or other heads at Valve have ever really cared much about Half-Life or its fans. It was one of their main money-makers, but since it doesn't fit the mold of what has made them the most money in the past ten years, they don't even care if the story isn't concluded. Newell said years ago that they weren't interested in making single-player games anymore. He's purely a business man.
 
XANDER CAGE said:
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.
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Hear, hear.
 
Snaku said:
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.
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I might be one of the biggest fans of the franchise out there, but boycotting the Steam as a whole for a sequel or two is simply childish, and while I'm not saying that Steam/games as a service part cannot co-exist with HL3 etc., I'd take the former over the latter any day, as the former affects the whole PC gaming landscape while the latter is, at the end of the day, 1-2 games.
 
Fjordson said:
Imagine this:

-R* starts releasing games completely dissimilar to GTA (or even similar single-player stuff like Red Dead).

-the structure of R* and the way they develop games changes completely

-this goes on for years and years, way longer than the usual GTA drought, with zero indication that GTA VI is on the horizon

-Then after more years of nothing, key staff associated with GTA start to leave. Important creative people that shaped the identity of the franchise.

-all the while, the other stuff R* is releasing instead of GTA becomes wildly popular over the course of a decade and is clearly the new focus of the company. Also, the total lack of any actual info about GTA VI never changes

It's deader than dead. The people who made Half-Life are long gone and Valve is simply a way different company now than it was a decade ago.
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You forgot to add this:

-throughout this, R* refuses to acknowledged that GTA VI has been cancelled and their official stance remains that it's still in development.
 
Interficium said:
Source?

Other than "My ass, because I play a lot of CSGO"
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Well aren't you just charming.

28 people was the last reported # for the DOTA
team and I'm sure that's trimmed off a few since 2014. The CS:GO team is 7-8 full time devs, TF2 was 20 two years ago and has likely decreased with the dropping player base(https://amp.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/34pbd7/tf2_has_around_20_people_working_on_it/).

Valve is mostly software and Steam development, given there's only about 360 employees total and that includes non development/programming staff.
 
I'm happy I got to read that, felt like some closure. But god damn, did it feel like reading the eulogy of a long lost friend. What a massive bummer. HL was what I considered the pinnacle of gaming of the era, and that story would've been some incredible science fiction. I can only speculate they didn't see it through because they couldn't figure out how to visually capture the Borealis and cosmic elements to the magnitude that would do them justice.

Sad!
 
OK.
This is where VALVE needs to license out the IP to any developer interested and talented enough to make a new halflife game.
Valve themselves won't make another one, so literally no harm can be done even IF an outsourced version flops.
At best it'll just remain dead at HL ep2 and that'll be it.
I refuse to read the plot spoilers because reasons.
 
RedSwirl said:
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?
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I like how this post leaves out L4D completely because it doesn't fit the narrative.
 
Acquiescence said:
We live in a world where Shenmue 3 is a thing and Half-Life 3 isn't, nor will it ever be. Bizarre.
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Shenmue 3
Final Fantasy VII remake
Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake
There's a fucking Fear Effect remake on the way
New Mechwarrior games are coming out
XCOM is a thing that exist
Age of Empires IV is coming
Starcraft is getting remastered


Other companies have realized that this old IPs are valuable and people still clamor for them but Valve wants to keep fucking with VR tech that no one wants I guess.
 
Better than nothing, at least it's some kind of closure. Laidlaw you beautiful bastard we miss you already

Fuck Valve for leaving us fans out in the cold. Yeah. I don't give a shit about DOTA or CSGO or online TCG's, so congratulations to those who do, but we Half-Life fans were here first goddammit and we waited for more than a decade to get an ending that was promised to a series we loved. Anybody who honestly doesn't get why we'd be incredibly disappointed about Valve's direction ever since is being intentionally obtuse. Very few other devs in the history of this medium have strung their audience along this badly for so long, and clearly we're not the only ones pissed given that Laidlaw felt he had to release this in this way in the first place. Valve staff got distracted by F2P bucks and Steam trading card money, plain and simple. They're a shell of what they used to be, and frankly I don't think I would wanna play whatever they'd end up putting out at this point anyway. What a fucking waste of talent.
 
Maddrical said:
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.
Click to expand...
It's been ten years, it ain't happening.

Valve would have to completely change and all the money they're making isn't gonna let them change, why would they? For the fans? Anyone who cared is long gone.

Valve is now the company that owns the ip and not the company that made Half-Life.
 
XANDER CAGE said:
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"?
Click to expand...
This is right on the money, because it's exactly what they're doing and there's a company that everyone hates for this exact reason, Konami.

They found an easier revenue stream that doesn't require them to give a shit about their fans, driving away their talent. Wait... which company am I even talking about right now?
 
City 17 said:
I might be one of the biggest fans of the franchise out there, but boycotting the Steam as a whole for a sequel or two is simply childish, and while I'm not saying that Steam/games as a service part cannot co-exist with HL3 etc., I'd take the former over the latter any day, as the former affects the whole PC gaming landscape while the latter is, at the end of the day, 1-2 games.
Click to expand...

It's not childish. I recognize the responsibility and part I played in the sequence of events that led to this blog post. It was a small and rather insignificant part, but I share the blame all the same. I'm choosing to remove myself from the cycle of bullshit.

Acquiescence said:
We live in a world where Shenmue 3 is a thing and Half-Life 3 isn't, nor will it ever be. Bizarre.
Click to expand...

And Yu Suzuki waited 14 years and basically had to go begging for money from fans and investors to make it happen. Valve is using that kinda money as drink coasters. He has all my respect for keeping the dream alive, and doing everything he could to make the fans happy.
 
XANDER CAGE said:
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.
Click to expand...

Very well said and sums up my thoughts as well.
 
RedSwirl said:
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?
Click to expand...

Ugh, no. TF2 got the economy running way after arguably peaking in popularity. Same with Portal 2 and workshop levels if that even started there. You are also ignoring both L4D instalments. And then we have this sketch of Half-Life story which would tie nicely into surprise Souls-style multiplayer, for instance, which would interest a different market than existing Valve games do.
 
The best thing Valve could do now (besides actually working on HL3, even if it wouldn't be the same without the core team :/) is to give Danny access for a Noclip documentary.

I would watch the shit out of that.
 
weepingangelz said:
Why do I feel like pouring a drink
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No lie I cracked a mickey, coincidentally, at the same time this broke and I should really be in bed and I'm gonna reek of booze tomorrow at work but I just can't help reading every post in this thread. This is a big moment in this industry and being a little numb is helping but oh lord my boss might be pissed at me tomorrow.
 
KnightimeX_Legacy said:
OK.
This is where VALVE needs to license out the IP to any developer interested and talented enough to make a new halflife game.
Valve themselves won't make another one, so literally no harm can be done even IF an outsourced version flops.
At best it'll just remain dead at HL ep2 and that'll be it.
I refuse to read the plot spoilers because reasons.
Click to expand...
Read the first and last paragraph, no spoilers.
 
I know these don't have to be mutually exclusive, but I gotta ask. Would y'all prefer to live in a world where Half-Life 3 exists plus a couple of other strong single player games and maybe another mediocre Condition Zero-esque CS. Or would you rather what we have now with the experimental Valve with Greenlight, SteamOS, Steam controllerVR advancements and Dota 2 & CSGO being massive? "Hire more people" doesn't instantly resolve this either, though it'd certainly help.

I'm still going to reserve judgement for until we get a proper Source 2 release. I feel like they would've learnt a lot about game engines from Source, and also the recent engines like Unity, UE4, etc.
 
Wow. This is like...the absolute last thing I expected to see today. Or ever really.

I'm not honestly sure how to feel about this. Mostly because I have too many feelings to start pinning down.

It definitely seems like a fitting end to the series.

I'm just incredibly sad we'll certainly never see it.

I am glad to have experienced it in some capacity though. Some closure is better than none.

Kind of a sad day. :(
 
Man just imagine this being the first two to three hours of HL3. After that you continue as Gordon searching that time travel tech in Aperture labs for the Vortigaunts and form a new resistance while Alyx keeps working for G-Man in other shit that you dont understand but are able to see while playing.
 
BigDes said:
Shenmue 3
Final Fantasy VII remake
Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake
There's a fucking Fear Effect remake on the way
New Mechwarrior games are coming out
XCOM is a thing that exist
Age of Empires IV is coming
Starcraft is getting remastered


Other companies have realized that this old IPs are valuable and people still clamor for them but Valve wants to keep fucking with VR tech that no one wants I guess.
Click to expand...
And even then, the other companies that aren't taking advantage of their old IPs at least have the nerve to say "nope, nothing in the foreseeable future" or "hm, we could look into it but no promises."

Meanwhile, Valve has been playing this stupid ghosting game for a decade at this point, pretending that the issue doesn't exist or just straight up bullshitting us in saying they actively are working on it (and that's in rare occasions).
 
For anyone who no longer remembers this because it was so damn long ago:
https://youtu.be/8vhfEZ2IgfQ?t=540

This is actually the last time the G-Man appears in the Half-Life games too, as he is completely absent from the rest of Episode 2 including the ending of that one. It's the sequence which hints at the ending of Episode 3, where Alyx turns out to have been also working for the G-Man the whole time.
 
BigDes said:
Shenmue 3
Final Fantasy VII remake
Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake
There's a fucking Fear Effect remake on the way
New Mechwarrior games are coming out
XCOM is a thing that exist
Age of Empires IV is coming
Starcraft is getting remastered


Other companies have realized that this old IPs are valuable and people still clamor for them but Valve wants to keep fucking with VR tech that no one wants I guess.
Click to expand...

For a real kicker, Nintendo just announced Metroid Prime 4 ten years after releasing Metroid Prime 3. MP3 released about a month before Episode 2.
 
I have no words to describe my current mood so I'm just gonna post this:
SadKeanu.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Maddrical said:
I know these don't have to be mutually exclusive, but I gotta ask. Would y'all prefer to live in a world where Half-Life 3 exists plus a couple of other strong single player games and maybe another mediocre Condition Zero-esque CS. Or would you rather what we have now with the experimental Valve with Greenlight, SteamOS, Steam controllerVR advancements and Dota 2 & CSGO being massive? "Hire more people" doesn't instantly resolve this either, though it'd certainly help.

I'm still going to reserve judgement for until we get a proper Source 2 release. I feel like they would've learnt a lot about game engines from Source, and also the recent engines like Unity, UE4, etc.
Click to expand...
Valve quite literally has nigh unlimited money and no publisher constraints for time. This isn't an either or thing. They had the staff on hand to di it and yes, hiring more people is the answer. Riot games employs 1,100 people and manages to move along just fine with updates and patches.

A dedicated half life team with unlimited time and no threat of crunch could easily produce a great game. They aren't bound by the constraints of the industry at large if they chose to get back into active development.
 
Uhyve said:
This is right on the money, because it's exactly what they're doing and there's a company that everyone hates for this exact reason, Konami. They found an easier revenue stream that doesn't require them to give a shit about their fans, driving away their talent. Wait... which company am I even talking about right now?
Click to expand...

This. Only difference is people will defend Steam because mah ecosystem!
 
Maddrical said:
I know these don't have to be mutually exclusive, but I gotta ask. Would y'all prefer to live in a world where Half-Life 3 exists plus a couple of other strong single player games and maybe another mediocre Condition Zero-esque CS. Or would you rather what we have now with the experimental Valve with Greenlight, SteamOS, Steam controllerVR advancements and Dota 2 & CSGO being massive? "Hire more people" doesn't instantly resolve this either, though it'd certainly help.

I'm still going to reserve judgement for until we get a proper Source 2 release. I feel like they would've learnt a lot about game engines from Source, and also the recent engines like Unity, UE4, etc.
Click to expand...

If you're asking personally? I'd take Half-Life. Dota can go fly off a cliff, CSGO is basically CS, except with awful trading and microstransactions, VR is a fad, Steam Controller is a gimmick, Greenlight got shut down.
 
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