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

derFeef said:
For me it was years of uncertainty and now I am here having lots of things to think about. But I have that feeling in my stomach that I would describe as "I am sad that it's over" - so I guess it was a closure to me.
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I feel a bit of that, but I'm also thinking, "So you had that coherent of a story and you still couldn't make Episode 3 happen? What kind of internal politics happened to derail a series that by any measure should have continued?"
 
QUICKSAVE said:
How feasible might it be for former Valve staffers to run a HL3-like kickstarter?
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Unless Valve license the IP to them they can prepare to get sued if they try. Valve might not do anything with it, but that doesn't mean their legal team will sit idle if someone else tries to use it.
 
This reads like a really cool finale. I'd like to see an animated adaptation like the Castlevania series or something at some point.

I don't think they would have ever 'finished' Half Life, it sounds like they would always have had the G-Man cliffhangers for ever and ever. But I would have been happy with the finale as outlined here even with the unresolved stuff involving Alyx.

Edit: Also as mentioned above the time-flickering sounds like it would have been a technically difficult thing to implement, one wonders if that's one reason why we never got Ep 3.

Also at least with this script in the open there's always the possibility of a Black Mesa style effort which is exciting in itself.
 
So... that's it. Would've been a cool game :(

Laidlaw is a great writer... Can't wait for Psychonauts 2 :D

Valve died 6 years ago. It was a fun ride.

CD Projekt is the new Valve and I can live with that (I think we all can live with that)
 
waveuponwave said:
Never played a Half-Life game and didn't want to start as long as it ends on a cliffhanger

Would you say it's worth it now that there' some amount of closure, even if it's just a blog post?
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I was able to take closure from that blog post. Sad that it's over and I would have loved to experience it.

Jump in
 
It's kind of crazy to realize we live in a world where Duke Nukem Forever, Daikatana, The Last Guardian, Final Fantasy XV (Versus XIII), and even the 22-years ago cancelled Star Fox 2 saw the light of day.

But Half-Life 3 will never happen.

Is this truly the darkest timeline?
 
eyeball_kid said:
Not a very satisfying conclusion, mostly just kicking the ball down the field, and the major emotional arc with Alyx left undiscussed.

Still, would've been better than all these years of nothing.
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They never intended to really finish the story, they deliberately left things open so it could go on and on. Marc talked about this on Game Dev Club, recently.
 
Man, this is so sad, I would have loved to see it.

Awesome of Laidlaw to post this, though, for the closure people were looking for.
 
The ending reads like a fine prep up for an open-world HL3. Characters you know reach closure, and you're free to roam.

Two stars out of three
 
LordCiego said:
This is the closest as an official ending as we are going to get, and is pretty damn good. We have a closure at last.

Thank you, thank you very much Marc.
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It's nice to know what happens next but it's hardly closure.
The Combine aren't any closer to being defeated and Alyx disappears with G-man and it doesn't sound like she and Freeman will ever be reunited which is depressing. I love that Alyx would've been the main character going forward though.
 
Dragon1893 said:
It's nice to know what happens next but it's hardly closure.
The Combine aren't any closer to being defeated and Alyx disappears with G-man and it doesn't sound like she and Freeman will ever be reunited which is depressing. I love that Alyx would've been the main character going forward though.
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It's not closure if your question is "how does every plotline in Half-Life ultimately conclude?", but it's absolutely closure if your question has been "what would Half-Life 2: Episode 3 have been?"
 
Dragon1893 said:
It's nice to know what happens next but it's hardly closure.
The Combine aren't any closer to being defeated and Alyx disappears with G-man and it doesn't sound like she and Freeman will ever be reunited which is depressing. I love that Alyx would've been the main character going forward though.
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It is closure to the Freeman timeline/ripple. And yea, Alyx seems to be the next story to continue the fight. And I am content with this.

I haven't played the game in 10 years, and I could read the entire thing with the correct names in memory with ease. Can finally let HL3 go, and stop waiting for something to happen.

Even tho he says it is "fanfic" to cover his ass, this is the story I have settled with.
 
Guess Who said:
It's not closure if your question is "how does every plotline in Half-Life ultimately conclude?", but it's absolutely closure if your question has been "what would Half-Life 2: Episode 3 have been?"
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That's true, but I wonder if that's really what people been asking for all the time, going by the comments it looks like it was.
To me, Half Life never was Alyx Vance and her relationship to Gordon, it wasn't even the characters in general. It was the resonance cascade and the alien invasion, and further down also how the G-Man relates to all of this (but this didn't need to be explained, the combine thread needs to have a solution though as this is the main focus of the entire story)
 
Vaaaaaalve

giphy.webp


10 years ago... 6 years ago, maybe even 5 or 4 years ago, I never would have thought they'd leave us like this. It's a shame. It's a god damned shame. There was so much talent there, and they just let it bleed away.
 
EmCeeGramr said:
So in case anyone wants a tldr:

-Gordon and Alyx head to Antartica and find a Combine base built around the Borealis, their helicopter gets shot down
-The Borealis is a weird shifting place that exists into two places simultaneously
-Breen as a Combine grub doesn't quite realize what happened to him, but hates his current state and after capturing Gordon and Alyx, asks them to kill him. Alyx refuses, but the player/Gordon can apparently do something to kill him
-Mossman claims that Eli had tasked her with being a triple agent for the Resistance all along
-They realize the Borealis is "stretched" between the past and present, not just two places in space; the Aperture scientists activated the device during the Seven Hours' War while the Combine was approaching and attempted to warp to Antarctica to be as remote as possible, but ended up warping into the future
-Time and space warp more around the Borealis and they get a glimpse of the Combine's headquarters they launch invasions from
-Mossman wants to "anchor" the Borealis in the present in Antarctica to safeguard it for the Resistance, Alyx wants to honor Eli's wishes and destroy it so it can never be misused; there's talk of the potential time paradoxes
-Mossman and Alyx fight, Alyx shoots Mossman
-Gordon and Alyx rig the Borealis to self destruct and create a missile that can travel between dimensions, essentially turning the Borealis into a time/space warping bomb aimed at the Combine base
-As they fire it, the G-Man suddenly appears and reveals that he's been keeping tabs on Alyx as some kind of sleeper agent (as hinted at in Episode 2) since the events of Black Mesa, and actually appears to Alyx (she remembers him) and takes her with him through his glowy train door as a "replacement" for Gordon, who he leaves to die
-The player sees that the Combine base is actually a massive Dyson sphere and there's no way the Borealis bomb will actually do any significant damage
-The Vortigaunts intervene and pull Gordon out right before the Borealis self destructs
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God bless you!
 
Sounds like exactly what I had in my head for Episode 3. I'd still take it in that engine. But fuck off Valve. Just fuck right off. And stick your card game up your arse whilst your there.
 
Dragon1893 said:
It's nice to know what happens next but it's hardly closure.
The Combine aren't any closer to being defeated and Alyx disappears with G-man and it doesn't sound like she and Freeman will ever be reunited which is depressing. I love that Alyx would've been the main character going forward though.
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As another poster said that it's an open ending doesn't mean we don't get closure. Our last mission was going to borealis to get the secrets to defeat the combine which is the motive of the hl2 syoryline, but in the end we discover it was not possible. Alyx goes her way and Gordon in another and we get left asking what could happen next. They are not straight answers but is not like if you were reading a book and in the half of it the rest of the pages were blank which is what happened after episode 2.
 
LordCiego said:
As another poster said that it's an open ending doesn't mean we don't get closure. Our last mission was going to borealis to get the secrets to defeat the combine which is the motive of the hl2 syoryline, but in the end we discover it was not possible. Alyx goes her way and Gordon in another and we get left asking what could happen next. They are not straight answers but is not like if you were reading a book and in the half of it the rest of the pages were blank which is what happened after episode 2.
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It's closure for a chapter, not the story, that's what I'm saying. Of course it's a lot better than where we were before.

My thanks to Marc Laidlaw for posting this.
 
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