Why You Will Never See Half-Life 3

Megalith

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So, here’s a thought: Valve can’t/won’t/shouldn’t make HL3 because they have nowhere to go narratively, as they killed Eli Vance, who was arguably the driving force for most of your actions in the sequels. Does this guy have a point, despite there being many unanswered questions (e.g., G-Man) in the Half-Life mythology?

Half-Life was about you proving yourself to other people, a personal journey as you attempted to escape from a bad case of Science Gone Wrong and Government Coverups. Half-Life 2 was about spending all your time trying to get to Eli while everyone masturbates your ego, presumably to disguise the fact that you’re nothing but a glorified errand boy, whose only purpose is to do things that help Eli out, and then the guy just straight up DIES on you, and now you’re stuck. You know what? I think the problem is that Valve never really knew why you were there.
 
Sometimes I feel exactly the same way as this guy. They simply didn't plan the story out effectively.
 
That has nothing to do with why we'll never see it. The real reason we'll never see it is because Valve has no focus and gets distracted by shiny things. Seriously. Valve is a very small company, despite making absolutely fucktons of money which means they can do whatever they want and projects needn't succeed, hit a budget, release date, or whatever. They also have a flat "no bosses" structure meaning that there's nobody doing any setting of overall strategy or keeping things on track. So what happens is they play with whatever fascinates them at the moment, and neglect other things. Right now they are fascinated with eSports and VR. So everything else they have languishes and gets some minimal effort, or completely abandoned. It'll be the same shit with VR and eSports as well. They'll keep plaing with it until they are tried of it and move on to whatever fascinates them next. So long as Steam keeps raking in the dough and they aren't forced to actually spend money on a real support infrastructure, they can fund anything they like.

Any other considerations aside like story planning, this is why you own't see HL3: They just don't care, and they don't have to care.
 
The only thing HL3 could do at this point is make money. It can never meet the expectations & hype it is drowning in. To be honest I think the best thing Valve could do is hire someone like Joss Whedon to make Half-Life 3 the movie and close the story.
 
The plot was written like Lost, draws you in with questions but they probably have no idea how to answer them all in a way that wont piss off everyone (see ME3)
 
The plot was written like Lost, draws you in with questions but they probably have no idea how to answer them all in a way that wont piss off everyone (see ME3)

and that is what has been said before. If they make a HL3 all they will do is piss people off like ME3. Look at something like No Man Sky, the game got super hyped and once released it disappointed everyone. The same will happen here. If they ake the game it will not live up to hype, it won't make everyone happy with the story and people will complain about the game. The only way to win is not release a game.
 
Valve just plain doesn't have the talent and ability to make games any more. Hell, they don't even have the ability to do any constructive work.

Just look at the train wreck that was their Steam Machines initiative. Does anybody really think they could make a game like HL3?
 
it doesn't matter if they have no idea where to go with the story...in fact it won't matter if HL3 fails miserably...Valve will still be filthy rich...Vale has grown so big that a big letdown won't effect their bottom line at all...so they're in a win-win situation...hype the game up forever or release a dud...either way Valve wins
 
Why should they when it would cost them money? After all, they are making boat loads now and have money to waste on a Linux Steam interface.
 
If I were ever to make a successful movie or game I'd milk the crap out of it. These people who could print money with the likes of Star Wars movies and Half Life games and go 20 years between making them are beyond me. There's zero risk involved for those types of franchises. Sure it will take money to make but it'll make a heck of a lot more back.

A friend of mine and I were talking about actors who are making millions playing a certain role in multiple films and then say they're not going to do it any more. If I were making millions on one character I'd play it every year if they wanted me to.
 
I didn't even know who Eli Vance was throughout the entirety of HL1, and didn't know he was in the first game at all until HL2 came out. Why should I care if he is in HL3? (especially in a game where you are alone most of the time anyway)

Attributing the "dead-ending" of the plot to the death of Eli Vance is just grasping. They could have turned it into a real plot-changing moment where Alyx goes crazy in a quest for revenge or something.

There must be some legal reason why they can't make any more half-life games. My guess is that the rights belonged to an employee and not the company, and that the employee later quit (but Valve will never admit it, because that would be admitting that they made a mistake)

For the people that say "Valve doesn't make games", they have released at least 8 new games since HL2ep2 came out.
 
I didn't even know who Eli Vance was throughout the entirety of HL1, and didn't know he was in the first game at all until HL2 came out. Why should I care if he is in HL3? (especially in a game where you are alone most of the time anyway)
That's the thing, he wasn't even in HL1 aside from "generic black scientist that appears in random places throughout the game." Same goes for Barney. They didn't even have names in the original. They weren't characters any more than "Villager" in a random RPG.
 
#1 Half Life 1 didn't have much of a story to begin with either, and Valve took that and expanded on it a lot. Whatever is left of Half Life 2 can be expanded on as well.

#2 The Borealis ship. Anyone who's played Portal 2 and Half Life 2 would have heard about this ship. Aperture Science built this ship and teleported it somewhere. This is linking both games together in some fashion. This ship is suppose to play an important role that nobody is aware of.

#3 This is not a game where story really matters. Yes it's important to some degree, but that's not the reason why people fondly remember Half Life. People loved the game cause it's a well made shooter. This isn't like Dark Souls here where people make YouTube videos, talking endless about its lore. The story of Half Life is not meant to picked apart with a tweezer. The purpose of the story is meant to drive the player forward in this world they have created, and nothing more. It's nice that some of the story is interesting, but that's not the reason why people play Half Life.
 
Honestly I wouldn't be opposed to them just licensing it out to another studio with a proven track record and just providing some guidance. Or maybe a group of skilled fans should get together and just make a fanfic version of hl3 as a mod. I'm pretty over Valve at this point, they seem to turn their backs on the fans who got them to where they were (hell I was part of the few who had steam well before HL2 and CSS came out).
 
#1 Half Life 1 didn't have much of a story to begin with either, and Valve took that and expanded on it a lot. Whatever is left of Half Life 2 can be expanded on as well.

#2 The Borealis ship. Anyone who's played Portal 2 and Half Life 2 would have heard about this ship. Aperture Science built this ship and teleported it somewhere. This is linking both games together in some fashion. This ship is suppose to play an important role that nobody is aware of.

#3 This is not a game where story really matters. Yes it's important to some degree, but that's not the reason why people fondly remember Half Life. People loved the game cause it's a well made shooter. This isn't like Dark Souls here where people make YouTube videos, talking endless about its lore. The story of Half Life is not meant to picked apart with a tweezer. The purpose of the story is meant to drive the player forward in this world they have created, and nothing more. It's nice that some of the story is interesting, but that's not the reason why people play Half Life.

Nicely said!!
 
This doesn't make sense to me. Eli was basically a supporting character that ended up having a major role in the second game and the episodes. But to me the Half Life games were always about the G-man and what about this for a theory (albeit similar to existing theories). Gordon Freeman is the G-Man guiding himself to the salvation of humanity. Xen is actually Earth thousands of years in the future where war has destroyed the planet and created the strange floating island structure thanks to the after effects of the gravity gun tech during the war. The Xen race being humanity's enforced evolution as a result of enslavement from their future counterparts.

Half life 3 could be based around Gordon trying to prevent the war by using experimental tech in that ship at the end of episode 3 which i suspect is time manipulation tech (I haven't played in years btw).
We find Gordon fighting his way to the ship to use the time dilation equipment to go back in time and stop the initial invasion only for him to find he is transported far further back than he imagined. Before the foundation of Black Mesa. He tries in vain to block the creation of Black Mesa and realises all he can do is help create an overwatch group . And so he becomes the G-Man. The shadowy figure guiding Gordon along his adventure to defeat the Xen and their misguided mission.
 
At some point when you have so many loyal customers, you do something for the purpose of fan service. They could make HL3 for the fans who have been so loyal but they obviously care less. That is ok because I have given up on Valve and Gabe or whatever he is.
 
Just noticed...

Eli Vance is amalgam of "Eli David" and "Leon Vance"...
 
If they do a HL3, who says it has to be a continuation of the story after 2? Some times the best extension to a movie / story line involves a prequel rather than a sequel. I'm sure they could come up with a backstory to explain how HL1 got to where it was. Will they do either, I have my doubts. It's certainly a risk trying to redo an old game and make it work in today's world. Doom seems to have worked okay, but Duke didn't. The verdict is still out if Unreal 4 can try to bring back the magic.
 
I think it has more to do with the fact that Half Life has been a really important series.

On the one hand, if Half Life 3 were to be as today, there would be guaranteed sales there just because it is Half Life 3.

On the other hand, it will be impossible to satisfy the fans at this point. No matter how fantastic of a job is done, there has been so much anticipation built up that no matter what is released it won't be good enough.

It's just too much of a minefield project to take on, whether you are valve or a third party licencing the brand name.
 
That's the thing, he wasn't even in HL1 aside from "generic black scientist that appears in random places throughout the game." Same goes for Barney. They didn't even have names in the original. They weren't characters any more than "Villager" in a random RPG.

Even Barney was less generic than Eli, simply because you get to play him as the "hero" of Half Life: Blue Shift (Same with Adrian Shephard in HL: Opposing Force)
 
Valve should release a well-produced, short video that mimics the infamous "it was all a dream" season from the TV show Dallas. For HL3, we'd see the young Alyx Vance waking from a restless night, hearing someone in the shower. She'd rush into the bathroom, throw open the shower curtain, and be greeted by a smiling Gordon Freeman who consoled poor, heart-shaken Alyx by telling her everything she (and we) thought happened in HL-HL2-Ep1-Ep2... was all just a dream.

 
Valve just has to release literally anything with a 3 in the title. I'd happily take a Portal 3, Team Fortress 3, Left 4 Dead 3, DOTA 3, Half-Life 3: Lost Interest...
 
So, here’s a thought: Valve can’t/won’t/shouldn’t make HL3 because they have nowhere to go narratively, as they killed Eli Vance, who was arguably the driving force for most of your actions in the sequels. Does this guy have a point, despite there being many unanswered questions (e.g., G-Man) in the Half-Life mythology?

Half-Life was about you proving yourself to other people, a personal journey as you attempted to escape from a bad case of Science Gone Wrong and Government Coverups. Half-Life 2 was about spending all your time trying to get to Eli while everyone masturbates your ego, presumably to disguise the fact that you’re nothing but a glorified errand boy, whose only purpose is to do things that help Eli out, and then the guy just straight up DIES on you, and now you’re stuck. You know what? I think the problem is that Valve never really knew why you were there.

how about some spoilers alerts? geez :D
 
There was no story. Half Life is the 'Lost' of video games. They just kept throwing twists and mysteries in to keep you interested. Nothing wrong with that, they were fun games, but eventually it gets too convoluted to resolve the plot in a satisfying way.
 
Too much time has passed. HL2 was 12 years ago. The kids who are playing games now have never heard of Half-Life. Fans of Half-Life are now old, lame, and farty, and most no longer buy or play games. HL3 would also never live up to the hype and impossible expectations of the internet age. And Valve is no longer a serious game developer. They're primarily a distributor, with Steam being such a massive success and raking in so much money, that they have no reason to care about developing games. Gabe himself has become a fat, lazy blob who looks perpetually on the edge of slipping into a diabetic coma. When asked why Valve no longer makes games, he always just gives some smartass evasive answer. So he won't be making any games any time soon, or probably ever again. I'm sad that HL3 is never going to happen, but I've come to terms with it and moved on.
 
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The only thing HL3 could do at this point is make money. It can never meet the expectations & hype it is drowning in. To be honest I think the best thing Valve could do is hire someone like Joss Whedon to make Half-Life 3 the movie and close the story.
Isn't it money what they want at the end of the day? I'd make it just to shut up people about it at this point.
 
Isn't it money what they want at the end of the day? I'd make it just to shut up people about it at this point.
Sure making money is good but Valve already makes a ton of it. They have an insanely loyal following (not on Apple's level but still) a lot of whom would want HL3 to be 'their' perfect game, something it will never be. Anything released as HL3 would be a letdown and harm their image. The Half-Life universe is so open that everyone seems to have different ideas of where it should go. Be it movies, a TV show, an FPS, an RTS or even an MMO it could be huge but nothing will ever please enough fans to be worth it at this point. Fan comes from the word fanatic which means "marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion". Fans are great but as Mass Effect & many other franchises have shown, they can be unforgiving when you burst their bubble.

I'd love more from the HL universe in almost any form. As others have said theres a lot of unanswered questions and story left and I personally want to see where things go from here. I just dont see it happening.
 
So you're saying that you'd rather have nothing, than risk disappointment?
 
I reckon they'll do it when/if they have something to add technologically.

HL did new things with narrative and tech, HL2 did new things, mainly with tech/gameplay (kids forget how mind blowing and innovative bringing physics into the gameplay to the extent they did was at the time), not so much with narrative.
I don't think they are interested in making more of what they already did, and it'll only be when/if they feel they can bring something new to the gameplay table they'll consider going further.
All of their games have that signature, nothing they've made has ever been "more of the same"

I believe that their exploration into VR could be (or not) one of those new things, I could totally see Valve wanting to bring HL to VR, but only if they can do something more interesting than just replacing monitors with a headset, which is the "boilerplate" VR model (and only if it's financially viable. VR is barely "niche" right now, and may never go much beyond that, so it's highly unlikely we'll get major "aaa" stuff anytime soon, if ever)
 
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