I agree with Jim here. As much as I love the series, it's been too long. The original writers and devs are not there anymore. It won't be the same. Even if they make it and it turns out to be a great game, it wouldn't be good enough. Especially in the current climate where everything is an outrage and everyone wants everything to cater to them. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for valve.
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Jimquisition: Cancel Half-Life 3
- Thread starter ashecitism
- Start date
Kadayi
Banned
Nah. This notion that concluding the series is somehow a bridge too far, is kind of BS tbh. Valve don't qualify for a pass. They sold the whole HL2 episodic model on the basis of smaller titles faster turnaround in order to illustrate to other developers that Steam could be a viable platform for digital sales. In that regard, it worked fairly successfully, and Steam ballooned into the monolith it's become today. Unfortunately, once the sales money started rolling in, so did the hubris.
When you look at all the great games/series that have come out since episode 2 was released from other developers, this 'can't please everyone, so best not do it' defence just comes across as rather trite I'm afraid.
Memorabilia
Member
Agreed. I'd be ecstatic to play a HL3 to continue/conclude the story if it was roughly equal in quality to, say, Prey. I dont think thats setting the bar too high by any means. Just get it done or license it out to the Prey devs so we can play the end of the damn trilogy. This whole line of reasoning that "anything they do will be a disappointment so might as well not even try" is total bullshit. Make a good game and people will play it and love it. It doesnt need to be life-changing to qualify as a Half-Life sequel. This notion that the series has some sort of mythical quality to it needs to stop. It's counter-productive. The Half-Life series is great. But they're just really good games for their time...not some "religious experience which a sequel can never hope to match again". That's silly nonsense.
Kadayi
Banned
That whole avenue of thought was something espoused by various game Journos IIRC. The same ones that likewise pooh-poohed the idea that developers owe their supporters anything, despite the very fact that Valve actively sold the episodes on the basis of fast turnaround and a definitive wrap up within a couple of years. Gamers were suddenly no longer viewed as consumers/customers, but 'fans', and entitled ones at that.
I can't think of any other arena of business where a company can spectacularly blow their own deadline, adopt an attitude of radio silence and customers complaining about it is regarded as wrong think tbh. It just doesn't hold up to any degree of scrutiny. If in the restaurant your dessert hasn't turned up 2 hours after you've finished the main course are you 'entitled' if you inquire what happened? After all, you've not paid for it yet. That seems to be the line of thinking, with little consideration as to who exactly is likely to buy a franchise product, save the very people who bought the previous ones.
The 'GRRM is not your bitch' defence is often trotted out but I wouldn't say it's one that scales particularly well when applied to a company with hundreds of employees, infinite manhours and a pretty secure income line at its disposal to throw at a problem no matter how thorny, versus an eccentric old man who loves to procrastinate over his ever more expansive masterwork.
As regards concluding the series. Laidlaw's blog post does the business as far as I'm concerned. I think at this juncture it would be very difficult to just push out Episode 3 as a standalone given the significant time gap, and the only viable alternative would be to remaster the entire series and that becomes quite challenging given modern tech and gamers expectations have moved on quite a lot (AAA games and gameplay are a reflection of their tech limitations to some degree, so they don't date that well in my view). In reality, you'd really be looking at a full re-imagining from scratch (think BSG level rework) to avoid coming across as antiquated versus other modern titles and that in itself makes it much more of an endeavour and certainly not the sort of thing I'd envisage Valve is likely to try in the foreseeable (they're a different entity now). Certainly, nothing to stop them from rolling out to a third party like Gearbox (who made HL: Blue Shift), but again, I'd say the window of opportunity on that has likely of passed. Happy to be proven wrong, but certainly not holding out for it.
Anyway if you are hankering for more Half-life you might want to have a look at Half-Life: A Place in the West, a Valve approved fan written comic that's available on Steam. The guys who write it are very committed long-term fans of the series (I know them from a long-dead Half-life forum).
http://store.steampowered.com/app/466270/HalfLife_A_Place_in_the_West/