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Valve plans to release a surprise before Portal 2

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Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
I <3 Memes said:
As a company they have had a lot of releases, but the main team that I assume worked on HL has not done much. L4D1 & 2 were made by the Turtle Rock team that also made the CS:S port. Portal 2 was made by the DigiPen team behind narbacular drop that Valve hired specifically for Portal. For Portal 2 they have that team + the DigiPen team behind Tag: The power of paint..

So what has Valves "A" team been doing since 2007? I'm pretty sure that I read that they have an entire separate team that deals with the multi-player bug fixes and balancing, so that leaves the main team as doing ....what? Doing what since 2007?
I'm fairly sure this is incorrect. I remember Kim Swift saying back in 07 that she was moving onto the L4D project. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure most Valve employees aren't really part of "teams" so much as they are allocated to whichever project needs attention.

Portal 2, certainly, was designer by more hands than the Portal and Tag digipen students.

Members of the "Episode 2 team", I would assume, have their paw-prints all over L4D and Portal and maybe even DOTA.
 

Angry Fork

Member
I <3 Memes said:
As a company they have had a lot of releases, but the main team that I assume worked on HL has not done much. L4D1 & 2 were made by the Turtle Rock team that also made the CS:S port. Portal 2 was made by the DigiPen team behind narbacular drop that Valve hired specifically for Portal. For Portal 2 they have that team + the DigiPen team behind Tag: The power of paint..

So what has Valves "A" team been doing since 2007? I'm pretty sure that I read that they have an entire separate team that deals with the multi-player bug fixes and balancing, so that leaves the main team as doing ....what? Doing what since 2007?
I know this is a depressing thought but i'm kind of thinking that they're waiting until next-gen consoles are about to come out before they release Half Life 3 that way they can either get it out at the same time on all 3 without having a weak PC version or so they'd be able to do a quick console port.

I really hope Valve doesn't turn towards consoles as the main focus for the next Half Life but the fact that they've been waiting this long is getting me worried that that may be the case. They haven't shown any signs of abandoning PC at all so I don't really have any evidence of it but I guess i'm just paranoid because of Crytek as a most recent example.

It's just mainly odd to imagine Valve releasing Half Life 3 ONLY on PC at launch the way they did with HL2, since consoles are the huge focus now. I HOPE they only launch on PC at first but I just doubt it's going to happen that way. Maybe i'm being paranoid though, maybe they just got tired of the Half Life series and decided to do other stuff for a while. It's definitely approaching 'too long' territory now though.
 

Koodo

Banned
At this point I don't care about connections to Half Life or achievements or whatever, all I want is more GLaDOS in my life. Portal is my first and so far only experience with Valve and I have grown to immensely dislike being Valve Timed. :C
 
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Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
I think, THINK, the long and short of the Ep2->3 wait is just that they were sick of making HL games so didn't make one for a year or two.
 
I <3 Memes said:
As a company they have had a lot of releases, but the main team that I assume worked on HL has not done much. L4D1 & 2 were made by the Turtle Rock team that also made the CS:S port. Portal 2 was made by the DigiPen team behind narbacular drop that Valve hired specifically for Portal. For Portal 2 they have that team + the DigiPen team behind Tag: The power of paint..

So what has Valves "A" team been doing since 2007? I'm pretty sure that I read that they have an entire separate team that deals with the multi-player bug fixes and balancing, so that leaves the main team as doing ....what? Doing what since 2007?


Mainline Half-Life games take six years to make.
 
Does anyone else think that the reason ep3/hl3 has been so long in development is that they couldn't figure out where else to take the gameplay? I mean, they were already starting to repeat themselves in ep2.
I can't fucking wait for some news re:Half-Life, but crossing toxic waste again?

I don't doubt that the connections between Portal and Half-life are well-planned and interesting, but that's not why I play the games.
 
Night_Trekker said:
Colonel Shephard needs to make a comeback in Episode 3. Making Opposing Force non-canon is a travesty.

OK that would blow my mind.

For the first half of ep3, you play as Gordon Freeman, until he dies, and the G-Man has to call in Colonel Shephard to finish the fight against the Combine.
 
Whoa, wait a second. Shephard is mentioned in Blue Shift, and that's canon. How do you explain that, Gabe? Huh?!

Forkball said:
The surprise is a Portal hat in TF2.

I laughed harder than I should have.

Cymbal Head said:
OK that would blow my mind.

For the first half of ep3, you play as Gordon Freeman, until he dies, and the G-Man has to call in Colonel Shephard to finish the fight against the Combine.

Or Gordon is stuck in a life-or-death situation with absolutely nobody to help him... and a familiar face arrives.
 
MikeE21286 said:
dammit....I'm gonna have to play through all the Half-Life games again before Portal 2 comes out now
:)


i....feel ashamed.....


i never played a single Half Life, though i own the games + Orange Box. Played the hell out of Portal. Every time I felt like playing HL I would play vanilla Call of Duty or Bad Company 2.


Guess I'll fire up Half Life 1 right.......NOW!!!!!




which reminds me.... I have an old Half Life 2 t-shirt from when it was announced at E3 long ago. Should I sell it? (never wore it)
 

Boonoo

Member
IchigoSharingan said:
i....feel ashamed.....


i never played a single Half Life, though i own the games + Orange Box. Played the hell out of Portal. Every time I felt like playing HL I would play vanilla Call of Duty or Bad Company 2.


Guess I'll fire up Half Life 1 right.......NOW!!!!!
I just played through HL1 for the second time this past week (my first play through was in 2004--it was my very first PC game).

It's so good. Better than I remember.
Rez said:
I think, THINK, the long and short of the Ep2->3 wait is just that they were sick of making HL games so didn't make one for a year or two.
Yeah, that's what I think, too. With the way they really jumped on L4d2 (after coming into LD1 so late in the game) it stands to reason that they were itching to sink their teeth into something non-HL. Looks like the same thing with Portal 2, where the first game was made primarily by a small team with Portal 2 being a full company effort.
 

Nessus

Member
Night_Trekker said:
Whoa, wait a second. Shephard is mentioned in Blue Shift, and that's canon. How do you explain that, Gabe? Huh?!


Parts of Blue Shift and OP are canon, like Barney's name and Black Mesa being nuked. The other alien race not so much.
 
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Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
Willy105 said:
Because that's how it should work? Orange and Blue. Something light balances something dark. If it's too dark then it's not enjoyable, too light and it's a joke. But together, it's a classic.

Yeah also the Half-Life logo is orange, the Portal one is blue. Like the portal colors. Right?



There you go again:
fkU27.gif
 

Goon Boon

Banned
Nessus said:
Parts of Blue Shift and OP are canon, like Barney's name and Black Mesa being nuked. The other alien race not so much.

I remember someone from Valve saying that while parts of the expansions are canon, they aren't ruling all of it in yet, but if it finds a place in the story they'll add it.
 

itxaka

Defeatist
kai3345 said:
Well, he does look a bit like an older version of
gordon


If this or Glados ends up being THE g-man I will be really mad because is a poor connection and too easy, especially the first one.

In other news: I NEED FUCKING EPISODE 3 ALREADY GABEN FFS
 

Catshade

Member
Beelzeboss said:
Wait a second I thought Gman was like a fan name or something since we have no idea what to call him yet

AFAIK Gman is the character model's filename. And that's what he's named in multiplayer.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I doubt Valve will ever truly explain the Gman.
 

Revenant

Member
Wouldn't it be odd to drop news on something like Half-life 3/ EP 3 before Portal 2 launches though?

You'd assume they'd wanna keep pushing Portal 2 until release date, unless they're that confident it'll sell well...which frankly, its probably going to, but still dropping huge news about something like half-life seems kind of strange.


not that i'd complain of course.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Revenant said:
Wouldn't it be odd to drop news on something like Half-life 3/ EP 3 before Portal 2 launches though?

It would be odd. We wont get word of anything from Valve prior to Portal 2 and DOTA2's release. Those two are the current focus.
 

itxaka

Defeatist
Revenant said:
Wouldn't it be odd to drop news on something like Half-life 3/ EP 3 before Portal 2 launches though?

You'd assume they'd wanna keep pushing Portal 2 until release date, unless they're that confident it'll sell well...which frankly, its probably going to, but still dropping huge news about something like half-life seems kind of strange.


not that i'd complain of course.


Half life 3 preview with purchase of Portal 2. BOOOM
 
It's been sort of echoed in this thread now but I have a suspision that either Portal 2 could be Episode 3 or Portal 2 ties into the events of Episode 3 - sort of acting as a prequel.

If it ended up as Episode 3 then what we've seen in trailers could be the like the whole MGS2 scenario. Where the story of the two Apature Science bots takes place before jumping back into Freemans shoes (ala Snake to Raiden and the whole location change trick).

Or I'm terrible at assumptions.

Still excited by talk of a surprise, as it's bound to be HL3 /Ep3 related if it coincides with the release of Portal.
 

MNC

Member
OH MY FUCKING GOD DON'T DO THIS TO ME VALVE. EVERYTHING YOU ANNOUNCE HAS ME IN GOOSEBUMPS.

Okay, so naturally, what everybody (and me) think about is the 'interim time' (which is after HL2, before Portal 2) are the episodes, and mainly episode 3.

MAN OH MAN OH MAN SHIT WOO HAH WOW

But that would be too obvious. So it can't be. It's probably a portal 2 backstory comic.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
V_Ben said:
Surprise could just be entry into the DOTA 2 beta...

It's something that will give story on the time between Portal and Portal 2.
 

MNC

Member
Okay, the way I see it, judging from the news itself in OP:

There's a gap between Half Life 2 and Portal 2. A gap of about 100 years. Technically, the episodes still fall within this gap, way at the beginning. They technically also didn't say they would release something portal 2 related. They also didn't specify if the release would be a trailer or something else. Trailers are to be 'released' as well.

I'm setting myself up for disappointment :(
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Not only would releasing Episode 3 to cover the time gap be the most unlikely situation, but it would break the internet, and Valve need the internet for Steam.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Portal is a dark comedy puzzle game and HL1/2 are pretty brooding shooters. They just don't mesh very well IMO.

I completely disagree.
There is absolutely nothing funny about Portal outside of the way GlaDOS itself was written.

If GlaDOS had been written like SHODAN you would have had the exact same game, but a lot fucking darker.

The fact they made a crazed murdering AI a memorable (and funny) character doesn't at all change the worldview of the backstory allowing both to exist in the same universe.

ThoseDeafMutes said:
The portal gun also seems way too advanced to be in HLverse since the super advanced alien race doesn't have local teleportation, and the super genius Black Mesa people have a far worse system involving large fixed devices that take 30 seconds to spin up. I would just prefer it to stay separate because they don't fit together very well.

IIRC, it's heavily implied in the HL backstory that the Combine are technology thieves, and basically steal whatever they want / need from whoever they invade and capture.

It's also heavily implied that despite Aperture Science having the better technology, Black Mesa were pulling some political strings to get the government funding they needed and to get Aperture Science shut down.

Backstory wise, it seems like Aperture Science hadn't successfully realised the Portal technology fully until Chen starts her test - presumably all of the other unnamed abductees had been using faulty tech that GlaDOS had been tweaking until the beginning of Portal.

I <3 Memes said:
As a company they have had a lot of releases, but the main team that I assume worked on HL has not done much. L4D1 & 2 were made by the Turtle Rock team that also made the CS:S port. Portal 2 was made by the DigiPen team behind narbacular drop that Valve hired specifically for Portal. For Portal 2 they have that team + the DigiPen team behind Tag: The power of paint..

So what has Valves "A" team been doing since 2007? I'm pretty sure that I read that they have an entire separate team that deals with the multi-player bug fixes and balancing, so that leaves the main team as doing ....what? Doing what since 2007?

I don't think Valve work like that, and they don't have 'assigned roles' and projects, they just work as a collective on any given project at a time.

There are loads of blogs from the 'makers' of any given Valve game discussing work they've been doing on 'other peoples' games.

Angry Fork said:
I know this is a depressing thought but i'm kind of thinking that they're waiting until next-gen consoles are about to come out before they release Half Life 3 that way they can either get it out at the same time on all 3 without having a weak PC version or so they'd be able to do a quick console port.

Valve are never going to be 'console first' developers.

At worst they'll be concerned that their console versions are up to par with their PC main game, so delay that for a bit until they can get the console versions running nicely.

Backfoggen said:
I hope its no digital comic. Did anyone actually read the L4D ones?

I did. It was pretty good.

You pretty much missed out.

The occasional TF2 comics they do too are also great.
 
EatChildren said:
I doubt Valve will ever truly explain the Gman.

Nor should they. Valve's strength in story telling is that they don't ever actually sit the player down and say "Look, let's explain every single detail of everything that's happening right now."

Outside of the immediate, right-here right-now kind of stuff, the player is largely left to deduce for themselves what the "big picture" is, and that's really great.
 
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