-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Marc Laidlaw reveals Half-Life 2 Episode 3's story synopsis
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
old manatee
Banned
The next Half-Life game is going to be whip ass.
Team Fortress 3 and CS2 isn't going to happen anytime soon. TF2 and CSGO are games as a service with in game economies and Valve won't wind down support for them anytime soon side sequels would likely cause the valve of items to go down significantly and people to lose a lot of money.
Left 4 Dead 3 as a big Source 2 F2P game with an in game economy does seem like it would make sense.
Icedburden
Member
I think you'd be surprised...
I was only surprised by the assumption
It's funny because it's probably true!
Youtube marked the video as not appropriate for all advertisers so his ad revenue got really cut down for the video. It's an automated process that's happening to a lot of videogame videos (and a lot of videos in general) and it's a huge issue because many youtube content creators rely on that ad revenue.
tioslash
Member
That video you just linked that got flagged too.... what's going on? Is Valve really going after VNN?
Read my post 2 posts up, it has nothing to do with Valve.
Okay, but what could possibly trigger it in that video? It's just HL gameplay.
What A Time To Be Alive
Member
The fact that there are guns in the video and such.
YouTubes system for demotization has been terrible in terms of Video Games with any lick of violence in them. Lot of creators have been dealing with it for a minute now.
Basically it was discovered that ads were being run in front of videos of hate speech so naturally a bunch of advertisers pulled out of Youtube. Youtube built an automated system to detect if video content was suitable for advertising (since hundreds of minutes of video are uploaded to Youtube every minute it's impossible for Youtube employees to watch everything and determine if videos are suitable for ads) and many content creators are seeing huge declines in ad revenue, to the point where it's no longer viable for a lot of them to make videos on Youtube anymore.
Youtube did put up a page that says what stuff isn't suitable for ads. This system can either mark a system not suitable some for ads or not suitable for all ads. Videogame content creators seem to be hit extremely hard by this system and the system/Youtube doesn't tell you why your video is marked as non advertising friendly.
I think Valve were/are in an impossible position with HL3/EP3. For some reason the hype level surrounding these is insane. Don't get me wrong, HL2 is amazing, I love it - but I don't think it deserves the god tier treatment it sometimes gets.
Anyway, I think Valve are in an impossible position because no matter what they release, it simply won't match up to peoples expectations for the game. HL2 brought new stuff to games/the genre with all the physics based stuff. That's a part of most games now so what can HL3 really do that is new/interesting that is on the same level?
If I were Valve I'd just milk CSGO as it is, release a new L4D and possibly a new Portal.
Anyway, I think Valve are in an impossible position because no matter what they release, it simply won't match up to peoples expectations for the game. HL2 brought new stuff to games/the genre with all the physics based stuff. That's a part of most games now so what can HL3 really do that is new/interesting that is on the same level?
If I were Valve I'd just milk CSGO as it is, release a new L4D and possibly a new Portal.
beelzebozo
Jealous Bastard
if i were valve i'd have some nuts and make HL3
Playing HL2 again because of this whole thing.
It's kind of cool how there is a lot of foreshadowing for certain things.
Threats to send failed Combine soldiers on "permanent offworld" assignment. Breen negotiating in the Citadel to "deliver Earth" and saying "I can't survive in that kind of environment.... a host body!? Surely, you must be joking. Oh, all right if that's what it takes." Etc. I get the feeling that the Combine were sort of like the Show Me What You Got aliens in Rick and Morty, and collected planets to break down within their Dyson Sphere for resources - water, in Earth's case. They wanted to bring the actual planet there since it was hinted that their portal tech was one way once they were on the surface of the planet.
This was definitely going to be the ending. Really sad that it never made it since it's actually good and sensible.
It's kind of cool how there is a lot of foreshadowing for certain things.
Threats to send failed Combine soldiers on "permanent offworld" assignment. Breen negotiating in the Citadel to "deliver Earth" and saying "I can't survive in that kind of environment.... a host body!? Surely, you must be joking. Oh, all right if that's what it takes." Etc. I get the feeling that the Combine were sort of like the Show Me What You Got aliens in Rick and Morty, and collected planets to break down within their Dyson Sphere for resources - water, in Earth's case. They wanted to bring the actual planet there since it was hinted that their portal tech was one way once they were on the surface of the planet.
This was definitely going to be the ending. Really sad that it never made it since it's actually good and sensible.
Everybody keeps saying that "It can't possibly live up to expectations" and I think that is bullshit.
Case in point: the reaction to this synopsis itself was overwhelmingly positive. If they made what Laidlaw wrote here, I guarantee it would live up to the hype.
Valve just doesn't want to make it, doesn't see the money, or both.
It's easy to say "this is what would have happened" and give a summary and get a positive response, it's harder to make that into an actual working game that lives up to the hype that's been built up over the years.
If we got Episode 3 today with the same art design and game play quality of Episode 2 I would be more than satisfied. I think there would be a small percentage of people disappointed, but I think the vast majority would be cool with it.
Now if they called it "Half-Life 3" then I think it would be way more disappointing. But as an end note to HL2 it'd be more than fine.
The episodes didn't iterate as much between releases. Reading it now, it's hard to understand why EP3 lapsed the way it did. They might have at some point figured "may as well make HL3" and then it just never happened. I don't think anyone would be genuinely disappointed with EP3, as written, as an ending.
Valved cared too much and then it swung the other way to where they don't care at all.
Read the whole thread. I had to - this is such an important moment in the industry's history that I had to say I was part of it.
We're moving away from traditional single-player games, we've all known that but it took Half-Life to finally let us come to term with that. For sure, Sony and Nintendo still wave that torch but it's going to be less and less as time passes by.
It's deliciously fitting that Half-Life, a franchise long agreed upon to have shaped games, serves as a milestone to the industry...even in death.
We're moving away from traditional single-player games, we've all known that but it took Half-Life to finally let us come to term with that. For sure, Sony and Nintendo still wave that torch but it's going to be less and less as time passes by.
It's deliciously fitting that Half-Life, a franchise long agreed upon to have shaped games, serves as a milestone to the industry...even in death.
But of course everyone knows hype is on a logarithmic scale. The longer it goes the higher it gets with no upper limits. With over ten years of hype not even a full body massage with extras, from Jennifer Lawrence or Chris Hemsworth, would suffice.
Or would most people be happy with just a good game that finish's what Valve started.
Lol, at like 47 seconds. Wow
Lmao