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

Half Life? Full Life Consequences.
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eat shit valve for throwing this amazing franchise into the fucking wind and pissing on it and your fans in the process.

while gabe is having sex and eating pizza in his multimillion dollar home (one of them) i'm sure it's the thought on his mind /s, but to pretend to be some gamer in tune with other gamers and then turn out to be a dollar for blood business man rubs me the wrong fucking way
 
This is incredibly well written. I could almost picture the environments and how each scene described could play out.
If this is the only closure we will ever get, I am still satisfied.
Of course, it'd be awesome if someone does a fan-made Half-Life 2: Episode Three with this as a guide, but even if something like that never comes to fruition, I'm just glad that, after ten years, I finally have closure.

Thank you for this, Mr. Laidlaw. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
 
You let us all down Gabe. After years of just leading us on. Dissapointed in you.

Speaking of Gabe, how many years has it been since that one "these things, they take time" video?

Also now that I think about it, that cutesy wink wink bullshit is what really annoys me the most about HL3 and I'm saying that as someone who gave up on it years ago.

At a certain point you should just come out and say, "yeah it's not happening because blah, blah, blah, we're sorry."
 
They wouldn't dare do something like that. The negative response would be massive.

No it wouldn't, people would be pissed for all of five minutes then forget and move on instead of this constant bullshit teasing they do and all but mocking of people that still think that there's a vain possibility the franchise even still exists at any level.

Dancing around if the project actually exists or not for a decade is ridiculous. Making videos, doing Q/A sessions, making fucking memes about it. It's not funny, people are asking you a simple question, yes or no, does this thing exist or not so stop trying to play with your consumer base and just answer the question.
 
That was the ending of Episode 3, and it's a far better place to stop than Episode 2. No one has said anything about Half-Life 3, if it ever really existed.

Well unless Half-Life 3 was going to be played from the perspective of Alyx, it seems that it never really existed. That's the implication of the end of that post, that Gordon's story is over.
 
Are you fucking telling me it was gonna end on another cliffhanger!?

Honestly it's not THAT bad of a cliffhanger. That's actually a really cool ending, imo: the Half-Life 2/Combine story as seen through Gordon's eyes ends, but there's still story hooks for some kind of Alyx vs. Gordon story (or a story where you play as Alyx, or something). I think it would have been pretty satisfying to see. The Alyx thing is a pretty big payoff, even if it's inconclusive.

This is so weird. While it's true that Valve can do whatever they please, it's still unprecedented to see them walk away from something that was critically acclaimed, financially successful, and practically one of the most inarguably canonized franchises of all time. Like... at least GRRM pretends he's still going to write the rest of ASOIAF. Valve quietly taking Half-Life into the woods and leaving it there is wild.
 
Well unless Half-Life 3 was going to be played from the perspective of Alyx, it seems that it never really existed. That's the implication of the end of that post, that Gordon's story is over.

The end of the post was pretty clearly Laidlow basically saying "I was a professional writer on a project I was proud of and now the writing staff creates lore for hats".
 
How many hats should I buy to convince Valve to revive the series? Should I take out a mortgage on my house for this?
 
With everyone else that has peaced out over the last year or two, I wonder if Doug Church will be officially be gone for good soon. He is halfway there working with Otherside.
 
Well, I'm definitely in no rush to finish the episodes now, lol.

This is really sad news though. I mean yeah, at least there's closure (except not really, since it ends with another cliffhanger), but people will never get to play it for themselves. I always held out hope that Valve would return to form someday with a new wave of games ushered in by HL3 (like Portal 3, L4D3, new IPs, etc), but that dream is pretty much dead now.
 
This is so incredibly sad to read. It's really over. I'm very grateful he posted this though as at least he seems to care about giving fans closure.
 
I'll take it. Still so many unanswered questions and an even bigger story for the future that will never happen and we'll never know about it. That and of course that final part is basically a call out of the situation at Valve. Sucks that there doesn't seem to be any drive at all for single player focused games there anymore. I miss the Portal series as well. Anything's better than nothing at this point and story wise it sounds like a fitting end.
 
Dota is one of the best mobas, CSGO is one of the best FPS.

We have actual good single player FPS games in Metro, Wolfenstein, Doom, Titanfall 2 if what you're looking for is a single player FPS.

Yup, these are all excellent shooters that I've played since Episode 2 which makes it really hard for me to care for a mythical Half-Life sequel. I still love Half-Life game but they were surpassed in many ways throughout the years by other talented devs. Also, knowing modern Valve, I honestly believe they don't have the talent nor will to create quality titles equivalent to their classics of old (Portal 2 & Half-Life 2). Inb4 someone brings up their current MP games which they're doing a terrible job of managing & developing for the exception of Dota 2...

Also, does that imply that Alyx could've been the protagonist of HL3? That would've been really cool but Alas.
 
Like seriously it took a blog post a decade after the fact to do something Valve and or Gabe could have done in one press release fucking ages ago to just say "it's dead, the franchise ended, sorry".

Their constant and blatant disdain for their own consumers is fucking absurd.

the words you're looking for are pathetic and greedy. i'm sure gabe loves rubbing lotion on his cysts and cracks while laughing at the plebs begging for HL3 info while he knows it's truly dead, kiting the peasants along for years to milk any hope he can from them, but imo, it's absolutely pathetic. if he had even an iota of love for the industry, his fans, or gaming in general, he would handle the situation differently. but he has seen the greed of the dollar and literally couldn't give less of a shit to the franchise or the fans at this point
 
Sounds cool.
man I have no idea why pushing shitty skins and costumes on players is such an effective way to make money. People ought to be more discerning with their spending.
 
With everyone else that has peaced out over the last year or two, I wonder if Doug Church will be officially be gone for good soon. He is halfway there working with Otherside.
Yeah, there were rumours of Valve doing something HL related for VR, but then everyone seemed to leave all of a sudden. Got the feeling it's all dead now.

Edit: It just annoys me because even companies like Activision Blizzard have their TF2 (Overwatch), their Artifact (Hearthstone) and their Dota 2 (the money maker (CoD)). But they still make Destiny. I just don't understand Valve, they make 30% of almost every PC game sold, if they wanted to do right by their fans, they are obviously in the position to. They just don't care.
 
The coverage will be there, but it's simply so late in the states when this happened that we'll likely have to wait until tomorrow to really see it blow up in the mainstream.

Valve News Network already has an acknowledgement vid, but will be giving a full video about this soon.

Haha the end of the video is great "go read the ending... yeah go read the ending to the Half-Life episode trilogy..... you can do that now"
 
At least we got some goddamn closure (with the original cliff hanger). I don't think this is a satisfying ending for the Half Life franchise though and I think they really wrote themselves into a corner unless
the combine story is really over and they do another dramatic time skip with a whole new scenario
 
I am preparing myself for similar fuckery from Rockstar. Everybody knows its coming.

I think they'll at least put out iterations of the MP map since the GTA:O one will EVENTUALLY get stale so at least there will be something. And they have a "plot" in that, a shitty one but there's something beyond reading descriptions for hats.

It's still going to be shitty and it's totally going to happen, but at least there will be new content rather than just years upon years upon years of silence.
 
Honestly it's not THAT bad of a cliffhanger. That's actually a really cool ending, imo: the Half-Life 2/Combine story as seen through Gordon's eyes ends, but there's still story hooks for some kind of Alyx vs. Gordon story (or a story where you play as Alyx, or something). I think it would have been pretty satisfying to see. The Alyx thing is a pretty big payoff, even if it's inconclusive.

This is so weird. While it's true that Valve can do whatever they please, it's still unprecedented to see them walk away from something that was critically acclaimed, financially successful, and practically one of the most inarguably canonized franchises of all time. Like... at least GRRM pretends he's still going to write the rest of ASOIAF. Valve quietly taking Half-Life into the woods and leaving it there is wild.

Not that it's going to matter to them at this point, but they've literally torn down all the good will they built up over the years. It's strange how easily they let themselves slip from the good guys to just another company trying to make a dollar anywhere they can.

I just don't get it. It's like they don't even care about their image anymore.
 
Yeah. Valve likes to think they are the PC market at times.
I mean they nearly are in some ways. And that's fine. Why the hell make video games when you can work on getting a 30% cut of everybody else's games? It's smarter business - good for you that you landed this spot.

Just don't be a dick and say "yo dudes, this ain't happening. Sorry not really sorry. Kthxbye"
 
I'm disappointed in Valve. They have all these resources, and where they previously were dedicated to creating games as both a form of art and entertainment, they are now entirely focused on creating games that profit.

Where companies like Platinum will shit out licensed crap to fund their weird and amazing original IPs, Valve won't even take a small sum from the hundreds of millions they make off of Dota 2 or CSGO and invest them into even short-form episodic games. Everything they make has to be extremely profitable, constantly making money off of marketplace bullshit, crates, and keys. And that sucks. That really, really sucks.

In fact, it's part of why I stopped playing Valve games, and prefer to use other clients like (brace yourself) Origin and Uplay to purchase third party games. I don't like supporting Valve. I don't like Valve. And the fact that a game like this never saw the light of day after nearly ten years of waiting is fucking criminal.

I want to know why. But we'll never know. Because it's fucking Valve.
 
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