Half-Life 2: Episode 3 Plot Posted By Writer

alexyang said:
As an anecdote, Starcraft 2 was released 12 years after Starcraft 1, and it sold well enough to warrant 2 expansions. So there's at least one counterexample to the "it's been too long, no game can live up to that kind of hype."

Also, for those who argue that it's not in Valve's financial interest to expend the resources to finish the series, can't they just license it out (and get paid) to some group that loves the franchise enough to see it done?
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Blizzard didn't hype up Starcraft 2 or even announce they were making it until a year or two before release. Nobody expected it.

Valve on the other hand, announced an Episodic release style for their version of expansion packs for Half-Life 2. They announced Episode 3 as official and in development, and we got artwork and other teasers from the game. Some very intrepid person even dug through the current game files and found objects related to the Borealis ship and thus a direct link to the Portal franchise. Not only that, Valve left Episode 2 with a huge cliffhanger.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Blizzard didn't hype up Starcraft 2 or even announce they were making it until a year or two before release. Nobody expected it.
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StarCraft 2 was announced in 2007, 9 years after Brood War and 3 years before release. I wouldn't call that a silent launch.

Valve on the other hand, announced an Episodic release style for their version of expansion packs for Half-Life 2. They announced Episode 3 as official and in development, and we got artwork and other teasers from the game. Some very intrepid person even dug through the current game files and found objects related to the Borealis ship and thus a direct link to the Portal franchise. Not only that, Valve left Episode 2 with a huge cliffhanger.
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Brood War didn't exactly end on a cliffhanger, but IIRC, Jim Raynor did say he would get his revenge. And there was that easter egg with Zeratul finding out that "Samir Duran" is actually an agent of a bigger bad. So I don't agree that there were no Starcraft 2 hints prior to 2007.

But my point is that Valve should just license out HL3 to some other group so that group takes all the risks if HL3 bombs and Valve gets a cut no matter what.
 
I call bullshit on all of you for saying 'It can't live up to the hype!'

Hype is being generated by a rabbid fanbase that want to see the conclusion of a silent hero and a few key characters, the universe itself isn't even that deep. Half of Half-Lifes appeal is the fact the world is mysterious, Duke Nukem was kicked around, promised, retracted, and promised again so many times, and each time the new company that took it would try and re-hype the product to garner more interest, of course it would fail.

If Valve announced tomorrow HL3 was coming, and it launched in 2 years with no further leaks, announcements or various chicanery, it would absolutely crush no matter the fan built expectations.

The hype isn't real, it's just Redditors screaming 'GIT FOOKIN HYPED!' trying to get an upvote.

The true tragedy is that we'll never even get to know, because as others have more eloquently stated, Valve doesn't care about games anymore.
 
You can argue this point, some do, but Valve pretty much unified PC gaming, gave us a mostly centralized place to buy from, and generally did good things for the platform. I'm actually fine with them continuing down that path, and leaving the game development to people who are actually interested in doing it. Those are the people that can bring us new and interesting experiences. Not some group of people who've basically moved on. I don't even mind what Valve moved on to. Just that now that they have, I wouldn't expect much from them where new games are concerned. Meanwhile there are other people making games, some of which are likely better than anything that HL2.3 or 3 might've been. Valve is perfectly welcome to prove me wrong, and drop some big incredible game (HL or not) that we all love more than anything else, but I don't expect it, nor do I really care unless they actually do.

I have to think that there is more talent for game making in other studios now. Valve could definitely assemble such a team, but I'm pretty sure their current team isn't that. It would be like a big record label assembling a band from highly skilled studio musicians though. It might check all the technical boxes, but may lack a lot of heart and raw greatness.
 
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Valve doesn't make games anymore.

They distribute games at 'meh' prices.

Basically, they exist because they were first and publisher friendly. If it only housed Valve games I don't think I would even have steam installed on my PC.
 
With the plot out there now, it's only a matter of time until the mod community makes this game.
 
alexyang said:
StarCraft 2 was announced in 2007, 9 years after Brood War and 3 years before release. I wouldn't call that a silent launch.



Brood War didn't exactly end on a cliffhanger, but IIRC, Jim Raynor did say he would get his revenge. And there was that easter egg with Zeratul finding out that "Samir Duran" is actually an agent of a bigger bad. So I don't agree that there were no Starcraft 2 hints prior to 2007.
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Let me explain it this way.

Blizzard, when making Star Craft 1 or even a couple years later, said at any point there would be a set amount of games in the series. They decided later to do the sequels.

Another way of looking at it would be if Blizzard announced Star Craft 2, announced that it would be 3 parts, then canceled the third installment. This is exactly What Valve did when they decided upon the episodic content.
 
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But But But I already sent my money

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I have it on good authority that HL3 will be released along with Red Dead Redemption for PC on a dual disk usb thumb drive.

Just to be sure i don't miss out on it, I always plug in all usb thumb drives that I find randomly laying around in laundromats, airports and walmart parking lots.;)
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Let me explain it this way.

Blizzard, when making Star Craft 1 or even a couple years later, said at any point there would be a set amount of games in the series. They decided later to do the sequels.

Another way of looking at it would be if Blizzard announced Star Craft 2, announced that it would be 3 parts, then canceled the third installment. This is exactly What Valve did when they decided upon the episodic content.
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You're basically saying that these cases are not exactly the same, therefore they are not related. Two things don't have to be exactly the same to still be related.

But once again, if Valve is concerned that it is not in their financial interest to expend resources internally to finish HL3, fine. License it out to another group. By doing so, that group bears all the risks if HL3 flops. Valve gets a Steam cut for every HL3 sale regardless. And if HL3 succeeds, Valve rakes in easy money.

At this point, the only reason not to do this is childish spite on Valve's part, like "if we can't do it, no one can."
 
Valve will have their hair on fire causing them to create hl3, if and only when steam funds dry out. So if you want hl3 stop buying steam games.
 
alexyang said:
License it out to another group. By doing so, that group bears all the risks if HL3 flops.
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I'm pretty sure that if a third party did HL3 and it isn't an 11/10 destroyer of genres and gods gift to gaming, the internet hive assigns no less than 1000% blame to Valve.

That said, I'd lay money we'll see HL3 as a VR title. It's the only thing that really makes sense: jumpstart the AAA VR era the way HL2 jumpstarted the Steam/digital distro era.
 
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DPI said:
I'm pretty sure that if a third party did HL3 and it isn't an 11/10 destroyer of genres and gods gift to gaming, the internet hive assigns no less than 1000% blame to Valve.
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I doubt that. Valve still enjoys a (in my opinion no longer deserved) sterling reputation among many in the gaming community. They have many diehard fans who will defend nearly everything they do. I believe that the cases where they've faced serious backlash are cases where it was almost indisputable that they had fucked up (read: paid mods).
 
alexyang said:
You're basically saying that these cases are not exactly the same, therefore they are not related. Two things don't have to be exactly the same to still be related.

But once again, if Valve is concerned that it is not in their financial interest to expend resources internally to finish HL3, fine. License it out to another group. By doing so, that group bears all the risks if HL3 flops. Valve gets a Steam cut for every HL3 sale regardless. And if HL3 succeeds, Valve rakes in easy money.

At this point, the only reason not to do this is childish spite on Valve's part, like "if we can't do it, no one can."
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I'm not even arguing that part of your post. Frankly, I think it would be great if they handed it off. At least it would get done.

What I was pointing out was your use of StarCraft as an example that no game can live up to it's hype that long after release. It's a bad comparison. My point was that a StarCraft 2 was never expected to be made by anyone other than Blizzard because Blizzard themselves didn't hype it up. Then when they did decide to finally make it, they actually followed through on their commitment. When Valve announced the Episodic content for HL2, they hyped it up big time. They were at the conferences, they did the interviews with websites and magazines, etc. They finished episode 2, left the story on a cliffhanger, then proceeded to hype up episode 3 for quite a while... then they went silent. They refused to answer questions on it. As I said, what Valve did would have been the equivalent of Blizzard announcing Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, and Legacy of the Void... then simply giving up on ever releasing Legacy of the Void after they had already announced it.
 
it'd be nice if Valve just came out and said what everyone already knows at this point- that they've moved on from game development and are now exclusively a game distribution platform...Valve continues to tease HL with various updates and cryptic messages which only adds to the frustration of fans
 
NickJames said:
These days that's still highly unlikely. The last game they did that with was the HL expansion Blue Shift back in 2001 which wasn't that great. Now a days Valve just likes to buy up interesting IP and their studios to merge their team together. Is it possible? Yes. But I feel like Valve would rather burn the house down than have someone else live in it.
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Not really a "now a days". CS, TF, Day of Defeat, Portal, L4D. Even DOTA2 was conceptually based off of another game/mod. The only fully original Valve IP that they started on was Half Life.

Even CS:GO was contracted out.
 
Youn said:
Damn all you guys with your "they're too late, it'll suck no matter what" attitude just illustrate why it was never done in the first place... I dunno if it's high levels of estrogen or what, but being a little pussy and crying about things potentially not being dainty-perfect is just such a vortex of suckage... but hey, maybe Valve could use your help, you seem to fit in to their philosophy these days...
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It is simply looking at what happens with every other game that comes out and the current mentality of gamers. As a majority now gamers bitch about every little thing. No games are good enough, no game lives up to its series. listen to people in here and other parts of the internet. Skyrim was a shit game that wasn't as good as previous games and was a major let down, Fallout 4 was a shit game, of course we all know how much fans hated Mass Effect 3 & Andromeda. Rise of the Tomb Raider was a shit game. Halo 5 was a shit game. Duke Nukem Forver as 12 years of waiting was shit. Final Fantasy XV was terrible. Prey was a terrible game.... Honesty I don't know if a single sequel / remake has come out in the past 5 years that people haven't bitched whined and moaned were nowhere near as good as the original or earlier games. They either think the graphics aren't where they should be, their story isn't what it should be, gameplay isn't what they think it should be... They almost go out of their way to complain and find a reason to say every game is a pile of shit. I don't understand why other than people like to bitch about stuff. So for that reason I am not surprised Valve said fuck it we don't want to spend time on something only to have people complain about how we didn't do our series justice.

The people to be pisses at aren't those of us repeating what a valve employee said, but you should be pissed at those that bitch about every detail about every game that is released.
 
Exavior said:
It is simply looking at what happens with every other game that comes out and the current mentality of gamers. As a majority now gamers bitch about every little thing. No games are good enough, no game lives up to its series. listen to people in here and other parts of the internet. Skyrim was a shit game that wasn't as good as previous games and was a major let down, Fallout 4 was a shit game, of course we all know how much fans hated Mass Effect 3 & Andromeda. Rise of the Tomb Raider was a shit game. Halo 5 was a shit game. Duke Nukem Forver as 12 years of waiting was shit. Final Fantasy XV was terrible. Prey was a terrible game....
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I think you've wildly overexaggerated your case here by grouping DNF together with Skyrim and Fallout 4. People may bitch about Skyrim and Fallout 4 - speaking for myself, I think Emil Pagliarulo is a terrible writer - but just look at the "negative" Fallout 4 reviews on Steam. Many of them are from people who have >100 hours in the game! I saw one person with >300 hours in the game, come on, it can't be a bad game if you've spent >300 hours in it.

Honesty I don't know if a single sequel / remake has come out in the past 5 years that people haven't bitched whined and moaned were nowhere near as good as the original or earlier games.
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I bought Wolfenstein: The New Order (released 2014, within past 5 years), and it was very enjoyable. I'm not alone in thinking that either. Read the "negative" reviews on Steam, and they seem to mostly say that the game is good, but it is not optimized with AMD cards.

I haven't bought Doom 2016, but the impression seems to be equally favorable if not more. It's just not true that players these days bitch too much so it's not worth it to release anything.
 
I loved Half Life and was excited for the episodic releases and the prospect of a 3rd game. Now though, it's been long enough and with enough existence/release hype that I don't really care anymore.

I'd probably buy it if it came out, but I have zero actual excitement.
 
After reading, I think the events surrounding the Borealis ship in Episode 3 were an absolute technical nightmare in all aspects (visual, gameplay, mechanics etc) and Valve entered development hell. The final parts of EP3, once boarded the ship, would have been the chapter equivalent to Xen in the first Half-life. The team was never fully satisfied with the results from each attempt they came up with and after much frustration, then apathy, the third episode was shelved. EP4 and other side stories were no longer needed and a Portal sequel became the main focus due to its success.
 
blkt said:
After reading, I think the events surrounding the Borealis ship in Episode 3 were an absolute technical nightmare in all aspects (visual, gameplay, mechanics etc) and Valve entered development hell. The final parts of EP3, once boarded the ship, would have been the chapter equivalent to Xen in the first Half-life. The team was never fully satisfied with the results from each attempt they came up with and after much frustration, then apathy, the third episode was shelved. EP4 and other side stories were no longer needed and a Portal sequel became the main focus due to its success.
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I still need to read but you make it sound like they actually did have substantial development effort, shelving at a stage in quality where today's games are in early access/public beta.
 
NickJames said:
These days that's still highly unlikely. The last game they did that with was the HL expansion Blue Shift back in 2001 which wasn't that great. Now a days Valve just likes to buy up interesting IP and their studios to merge their team together. Is it possible? Yes. But I feel like Valve would rather burn the house down than have someone else live in it.
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I disagree. Blue Shift was quite entertaining and I thought fit rather well with HL and Opposing Forces. I would play back through, but the last time I checked there is a crash bug in Opposing Forces that pretty much makes the game unplayable (The part where Shepherd follows Freeman into the portal that was generated at the top of the Lambda core) - the game crashes here and you can't do anything about it... :(

Now as far as Ep. 3 / HL3 - I think Valve would do wise to licenses that bitch out to a studio filled with some die hard HL fans that could do it justice. $10 says that if they made that announcement and would give full permission / support to said studio, you would have a mob of mofo's beating each other to work on that bitch.

If done right, it would be epic.
 
SecretStash said:
I still need to read but you make it sound like they actually did have substantial development effort, shelving at a stage in quality where today's games are in early access/public beta.
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It is only my guess. I don't have any clue as to how far they were in the project but the Borealis ship events, to me, seem very difficult to translate from story to substance.

STrooperTK421 said:
...Now as far as Ep. 3 / HL3 - I think Valve would do wise to licenses that bitch out to a studio filled with some die hard HL fans that could do it justice. $10 says that if they made that announcement and would give full permission / support to said studio, you would have a mob of mofo's beating each other to work on that bitch.

If done right, it would be epic.
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Anything having to do with the main storyline would need to be done by Valve. I see on Steam the inevitable requests for Crowbar Collective to make EP3. Even if they were given permission, assistance etc, I feel they would experience the same development hell (look at the amount of time they are taking to finish Black Mesa Xen let alone final pass and debug the whole package).
 
I think a major issue is the age of the engine. The Source Engine was ground breaking in its time--now its old hat, and while we can look at it with rose colored glasses and say "it aged well" (which I admit...it did in alot of ways), its hard to just release a game with an old engine.

I actually love this piece and how it is written, messing with the whole time spectrum would be a fun thing...I love it. I actually had to recall what had happened in EP2 in order to put this into perspective. Valve needs to close its story arc. Then, open the universe up to third parties and see what kind of stories they can tell in the HL universe.

In a world where Wolfenstein, Doom, and hell AGE OF EMPIRES are rebooting...can we please get a HL3?
 
But as long as Gaben has his cake, there will be no HL3. He's gotta feel desperate. If money doesn't dry up then it will take a risky yet big hardware release where HL3 will be needed to serve as the draw.
 
well thats pretty neat.

Exavior said:
They make enough with Steam by itself they don't need to really make games anymore. Even fi they did they had previously used Mass Effect as an example of why they would not want to make another HL game and with how true that was with Mass Effect 3, after the release of Andromeda and how that played out that is even more proof.
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andromeda tanked because it was made by a dev team who had no experience crafting a AAA title on their own, & a myriad of mismanagement/office culture issues while the publisher rushed out an unfinished product. thats not a good comparison at all - & i take issue with the validity of your first point as well. they were stinking rich when hl2 came out, yet theyve worked on & released a number of games since then.

the only reason they havent done it is because of valves oddly unstructured office & a lack of impetus. if a project seems too monolithic & downright daunting...& a few other folks are over in the corner working on a small, simple, novel teleporting puzzle game, guess wat? people will bail hl ep3, or hl3, or watever...out of simple intimidation...because nobody is holding them to any given project...
 
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