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Game Informer's Andrew Reiner on Alleged Half-Life 3 Prototypes (Live Action? RTS?)
- Thread starter dancrane212
- Start date
letmetrythisname
Member
Now it's never going to come out since Valve can't possibly make cosmetic microtransactions out of a singleplayer game.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Before he left Valve, Marc Laidlaw had resorted to writing Half-Life fan fiction on twitter. That's as close as you'll get.
Same thoughts, especially so since the only info is consistently gleamed from "leaks" (read - "plants") in game updates
Yes - lets go ahead and make HL an eternally sequelised game that is the same as every other game, just more of the same. No thanks. I happily don't care till they do whatever and put something out there. Could come out next decade or never; doesn't really matter.
Zomba13
Member
My fanfiction for the ending:
Overcome with grief at seeing Alyx's dad killed by a space grub, Gordon realised he could never do it, he could never beat the Convenant. No the Combine, sorry. So he gave up and went to work a boring job in City 17 after having changed his glasses and got a shave so the cops wouldn't know he was "The One Free Man" or whatever.
Alyx tried to save the world on her own and went to the snowy place to get the boat that had a link to Portal and ended up finding GlaDOS and became a test subject in Portal 3. Mothman was also there I think but it doesn't matter because she is dead too. The Gman made a lot of money selling hats for Dota and Team Fortress and Gabe lived happily ever after with his million knives.
Overcome with grief at seeing Alyx's dad killed by a space grub, Gordon realised he could never do it, he could never beat the Convenant. No the Combine, sorry. So he gave up and went to work a boring job in City 17 after having changed his glasses and got a shave so the cops wouldn't know he was "The One Free Man" or whatever.
Alyx tried to save the world on her own and went to the snowy place to get the boat that had a link to Portal and ended up finding GlaDOS and became a test subject in Portal 3. Mothman was also there I think but it doesn't matter because she is dead too. The Gman made a lot of money selling hats for Dota and Team Fortress and Gabe lived happily ever after with his million knives.
Alright, I'll give you Superhot, I forgot about that game. Titanfall 2 doesn't really have much in the way of revolution though. Yeah, even that level. Amazing game, awesome branch-offs from the norm, but nothing that signals a revolutionary shift in the way people play FPS games.
metalslimer
Member
Wtf happened to Valve?
Yeah, this really.
I mean what's left to say with the Half-Life formula that a billion other games haven't said? Hell we've even had major, AAA games specifically made to criticize and condemn its narrative shortcomings when used in specific context (Spec Ops). While Valve sat on the sidelines basically every other AAA studio in the 7th gen ran the design tropes into the ground to the point you had guys like CliffyB lamenting how stale it had gotten. The time for a proper HL3, in the form of what people really wanted, was about 08-11. Right now the market is too saturated with derivatives for the game to be anything other than Just Another Shooter.
I'd rather valve just try their hand at something else than waste time running an already stale and boring formula further into the ground, honestly.
Just because HL1 and HL2 broke ground doesn't mean they 'just' couldn't make another great shooter in the vein of EP2 and continue the story. I'm pretty sure most fans just wants Valve to continue/finish the story at this point...
CassidyIzABeast
Member
Gabe is a false prophet.
Whatever you say, Garry.
What does it say about Valve's management when their best-known franchise is butchered in this way? An RTS? Really? Someone actually thought the gaming community wouldn't completely reject anything other than a story-driven FPS?
To be fair though, it's not entirely Valve's fault. They're a business, and like with any business, people vote for what they want with their wallets. Right now people REALLY want goofy-ass Dota characters and CSGO skins. All we can do is hope that someone in the company wakes up and realizes what every fan already knows: that a new Half-Life, on a new engine bundled with a new CS or TF game has huge potential for success and won't threaten their current model.
Mushroomer25
Member
Each mainline Half-Life sequel defined the FPS genre for the decade that followed it. It's a huge legacy, one made all the more intimidating by the stigma any game that bears the title 'Half Life 3' gets to carry. Just a great 20 hour FPS campaign will be seen as middling. The bar is set impossibly high.
Which is why Valve is probably only going to make this game, when they can do it in VR with no compromises. They could be the game to define what shooters in that medium must aspire to be.
More_Badass
Member
Does that only apply to the main entries? Because the Episodes certainly didn't revolutionize how people play FPS's
And I loved it.
Now we don't even have that anymore...
I don't undestand why Vavle just doesn't say HL3 isn't happening at this point. It makes no sense why they are still being coy about it all these years.
The only really interesting part of it was how everyone who has left the company will straight up not talk about HL3. It was either one of the worst experiences for them or they are under the tightest gag order ever.
Not even multiple random anonymous kinda legit sounding write up on 4chan/reddit has happened. Everything surrounding HL3 just seems to have a sense of dead air and no signs of it stopping.
One day, I hope we get the real story about what the fuck happened after Episode 2 that led us to this point in time.
Not even multiple random anonymous kinda legit sounding write up on 4chan/reddit has happened. Everything surrounding HL3 just seems to have a sense of dead air and no signs of it stopping.
One day, I hope we get the real story about what the fuck happened after Episode 2 that led us to this point in time.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
This is what I don't get about Valve's problem making Half Life: this isn't that difficult of a concept. There's nothing so heady about Half Life that it should be this hard. Developers the world over attempt more difficult projects than that all the time. They just don't want to do the work.
I can see the RTS stuff just being some spinoff game for the Half-Life universe where you fight off the Combine or something. Valve probably canned it. There is no way it was actually HL3 itself. The live action stuff was probably some dumb Quantum Break type idea that they canned as well. Good on Valve for cancelling both if they were actually true lol.
If we're really being honest with ourselves here, I very much doubt a conclusion to HL2's rather threadbare plot is the apex of people want out of a Half-Life game.
I mean I have fond memories of the game and for 2004 I thought it handled it's story well, but at the end of the day the main reason I'm there is the level design.
You're already getting flack for this, but I agree with that. It took me like 12 years to finish playing through half life 2. I kept waiting for the part where it got good. It turns out the best part is like the first 15 minutes.
AHA-Lambda
Member
This is what gets me more than anything.
I barely care for HL3 as a game anymore at all, I just want some closure.
I just want someone of some authority at Valve, whether past or present, to just admit it's just not going to happen.
Their tact on this after all this time is a mystery.
The risk + the potential reward for Valve is just not worth it, if you could even wrangle enough developers together to commit to developing a full game anymore. I get the impression from what is said by former employees that Valve is nothing but cliques that try to push various new revenue streams.
Why attempt something that is artistically risky when you a.) don't need the money and b.) have other, less risky things to work on
Valve doesn't care a great deal about fans or fanservice and never has. They enjoy a lot of unearned goodwill for some reason. They had me for awhile but lost me with the paid mods thing.
I ageee with you. I just have given up hope regarding getting an actual HL game at this point and now I just want a goddamn conclusion for the story and charcthers.
Fahzgoolin
Banned
The Half Life story and universe was great. The plot and characters were interesting.
I wouldn't have been so upset if the game just ended with the portal in the sky being closed and them celebrating.
Instead they freaking killed a beloved character with a huge cliff hanger for the story after revealing interesting details about the G-man.
I simply think they don't have a conclusion themselves. Otherwise they would be dying to tell it.
I wouldn't have been so upset if the game just ended with the portal in the sky being closed and them celebrating.
Instead they freaking killed a beloved character with a huge cliff hanger for the story after revealing interesting details about the G-man.
I simply think they don't have a conclusion themselves. Otherwise they would be dying to tell it.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
guybrushfreeman
Unconfirmed Member
I don't think those were all supposed to be HL3.... the idea of Valve making a lot of prototypes makes sense and we've even heard of some of them before (the RTS especially) but it doesn't make sense to assume every prototype was intended to turn into HL3 in the future
This is the logical conclusion to the OP, but I think most people realized that already and would rather talk about Valve in general and why the game hasn't happened yet.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
Ah well, at least I got a version of DooM that kicked more ass than I ever thought it would be possible for id software to do again.
The universe giveth and taketh...
The universe giveth and taketh...
This is the saddest realization really, Valve litterally don't care for making games or art for the sake of it or for fans anymore. They are just trying to wrangle cash out of peoples hands in new, lucrative ways, nothing more or less.
Maybe one of trumps kids is a half life fan.
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
Did we ever get any hints or rumors about what the "F-Stop" mechanic was in Kim Swift's shelved version of Portal 2?
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
Right, there's no need or motivation to do that. Valve has various small groups in the company play around with the idea of HL3 with no real intention of doing anything with it. They can easily hire some competent people.
Nope, they are still sittning on that "amazing and groundbreaking mechanic" for some reason even though they had it working like 7 years ago.
Pretty sure it's bullshit, just like HL3.
DeadlyParasite
Member
It's so absurd that they think we care more about innovation and ground-breaking gameplay features than a resolution of the story. The in-game universe, its characters, and the story that's told is the only thing I care about. That's not some impossible hurdle to manage.
But as long as Valve wants to keep beating that dead drum about expectations we'll never see an end to Gordon Freeman's story.
But as long as Valve wants to keep beating that dead drum about expectations we'll never see an end to Gordon Freeman's story.
PumpkinPie
Banned
The only thing Gabe Newell finishes off is bags of Cheetos.
Valve doesn't tell people what to work on. There's a lot of strange free market worship shit going on over there, and I don't mean the flat hierarchy. They've essentially created an environment where making a full, new AAA game is not incentivized at all because that requires years of effort with a large team. There are other, more profitable and less risky ventures to work on.
I doubt we will see anything approaching Portal 2 or Half Life 2 out of them ever again, unless there's a major shift or Gaben personally leads the charge on something.
FantasticMrFoxdie
Mumber
lol Valve lost it a long time ago. Dunno what people are expecting.
Half Life 3 is now a MOBA
Half Life 3 is now a MOBA
Yeah, at this point I'd even be happy with that. A visual novel; comic; novel; a simple text dump of whatever rough draft they might have... anything.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
I dunno at a certain point I would think developers would like to do it. I mean you, your kids, your grandkids etc, will never have to work a day in their lives with the revenue from steam. So why not? Who knows maybe some have, but it just bumps on the runway for awhile, and they end up giving up.
JigglesBunny
Banned
Not buying this. That said, HL3 is dead in the water.
In the last few years, we've seen "dead" projects like FFV be resurrected and release, albeit reworked from it's original inception. We've seen titles like The Last Guardian come back from the dead and turn out great. But we've also seen titles like Duke Nukem: Forever.
If there is one thing you can say about modern Valve it's that they don't take many risks.
Releasing a new Half Life game brandishing the "3" after all of the pandemonium is far too great a risk. Plus, if you're Valve, why would you even bother?
Most of the people who loved Half-Life and were passionate about the IP have left Valve, Global Offensive put Counter-Strike on top of the shooter hill and made it one of the most popular games, well, ever and DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2 are absolute monsters as well. Valve has almost nothing to gain from releasing HL3 after all this time.
I think it's best to accept this is just one dream that isn't coming true. HL3 is as dead as dead can be.
In the last few years, we've seen "dead" projects like FFV be resurrected and release, albeit reworked from it's original inception. We've seen titles like The Last Guardian come back from the dead and turn out great. But we've also seen titles like Duke Nukem: Forever.
If there is one thing you can say about modern Valve it's that they don't take many risks.
Releasing a new Half Life game brandishing the "3" after all of the pandemonium is far too great a risk. Plus, if you're Valve, why would you even bother?
Most of the people who loved Half-Life and were passionate about the IP have left Valve, Global Offensive put Counter-Strike on top of the shooter hill and made it one of the most popular games, well, ever and DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2 are absolute monsters as well. Valve has almost nothing to gain from releasing HL3 after all this time.
I think it's best to accept this is just one dream that isn't coming true. HL3 is as dead as dead can be.
ChimpBottle
Member
Every Valve game I've played (the single-player ones) seemed to have a lot of passion go into them, with the writing and overall quality.
Pretty disappointed that they're not going to finish their creation for monetary reasons. To me it feels as weird as it would if JK Rowling never finished the Harry Potter series because she made enough money off the first six.
Pretty disappointed that they're not going to finish their creation for monetary reasons. To me it feels as weird as it would if JK Rowling never finished the Harry Potter series because she made enough money off the first six.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
I wonder what their next thing is going to be.
TF2 is almost 10 years old now. Dota 2 was beta'd in 2011, and released in 2013, CS:GO was overhauled after its release by them, but even that is from 2012.
TF2 is almost 10 years old now. Dota 2 was beta'd in 2011, and released in 2013, CS:GO was overhauled after its release by them, but even that is from 2012.
poppedcollar69
Member
A fan made valve sanctioned paid mod for half life 2