Vapourware Hypothetical Half-life 2 Episode 3 plot released by the lead writer Marc Laidlaw

[MasPingon]

The only genuinely good game Valve ever made was Half-Life 1, and that ship has long since sailed. Who gives a shit?

Left 4 Dead, noob.

 

[oldmanpaco]

So about 10 years ago I was playing HL2 and the FoV or something was wrong so I gradually got more and more nauseous. I knew I wasn't feeling well but thought that when I quit it would be just go away so I pushed through it. Of course it was like 12 hours before I could eat or watch tv or anything. The only time I have ever gotten sick playing videa. Anyway just thinking about HL makes me queasy.

tl;dr fuck HL2.

edit: I seem to be getting a lot of bad ratings... Just saying that in 30+ years of video games HL2 is the only one to make me sick.

 

[MasPingon]

So about 10 years ago I was playing HL2 and the FoV or something was wrong so I gradually got more and more nauseous. I knew I wasn't feeling well but thought that when I quit it would be just go away so I pushed through it. Of course it was like 12 hours before I could eat or watch tv or anything.

I got the same problem back in the day, my friend just started playing HL2 and he cries that he is getting dizzy. I wonder what is exact problem with this early Source engine.

 

[Ash]

The only genuinely good game Valve ever made was Half-Life 1, and that ship has long since sailed. Who gives a shit?

Left 4 Dead, noob.

I suppose. If it were a full-priced game I'd disagree, but since it was released at half the usual retail price (if I recall correctly) it gets a free pass. Appropriate, since it's half the quality and content you'd find in a truly good game.

 

[Dayyālu]

Fun thing, Valve has always stolen modders' ideas. CS, a mod, Dota, mod, Team Fortress, mod. Even Portal was "inspired" by a now forgotten standalone game and L4D was a CS map done for fun.

Whatever. HL2 was already a dinosaur, a good SP shooter in an era already in full decline bar some remnants. The decision of following the retarded episodic craze killed it, and that's it. There will be never HL3 because Valve now it's up to pursuit losing projects like VR machines and to sell RPGMaker porn games through Steam. Everyone knows they have no longer anyone inside that can develop let alone design a good shooter. Hell, the last "adequate" contemporary shooters were East Euro or stolen from mods (NuDOOM being pretty much Brutal Doom).

About teh plot, whatever. Alyx was a cancerous character (older I get, more annoying is to realize she is nerd fap bait - relatable, nerdy, cute yet so so strong and so so charming and FUCKDAMMIT I DON'T CARE STOP TALKING I DON'T CAAARE) and they would have kept throwing her at our faces. Whatever.

The child in me will miss knowing what happened to Barney and Shepard. Go and fight, random dudes. Go and fight.

 

[AngryEddy]

The problem with Half Life is that it is a gayme about a gay nerd tag teaming with his sassy mexican gal pal and her nig dad against White Nazis from the evil dimension.


Im surprised that the worm who sucked out the nig brain at the end of ep 2 was actually able to find information in there that wasnt KILL YT and MUH DIK. Can we have someone on youtube do a 2 hour lore video for me explaining how they even found a black father in this universe much less one who invents portals and missiles please?

 

[unfairlight]

I guess these days they're too busy making hats and skins to produce anything else. The old Valve is long dead, and seemingly only exists now to run Steam and print money. The last part of the story alludes to this.

Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final episode.

So... who's going to make the Epistle 3 mod?

Hey fuck you buddy, they're an active developer who are going to release GOTY 2018, motherfucking ARTIFACT and you whine about muh half life.

 

[Latro]

The problem with HL2 was the shit pacing

Wat

the boat, the cut-scenes, the vehicle drives along long stretches of nothing but maybe 1 or 2 zombie houses, etc etc

 

[Trodat]

We'll get DOTA card game from Valve in the near future. That should be sweet!

 

[MasPingon]

The problem with HL2 was the shit pacing

Wat

the boat, the cut-scenes, the vehicle drives along long stretches of nothing but maybe 1 or 2 zombie houses, etc etc

Agree, but cutscenes implementation in HL series is brilliant. It's something other devs can't do or don't understand the way it was done(Metro). You want to show something - don't take away control over player character from me. It's something I have been missing in games since HL.

 

[vdweller]

The problem with HL2 was the shit pacing

Wat

the boat, the cut-scenes, the vehicle drives along long stretches of nothing but maybe 1 or 2 zombie houses, etc etc

I always thought that the exchange between quiet time and tension is what made HL2 brilliant.

 

[ciox]

The problem with HL2 was the shit pacing

Wat

the boat, the cut-scenes, the vehicle drives along long stretches of nothing but maybe 1 or 2 zombie houses, etc etc

Yeah, I like exploration but in HL2 it seems you're constantly holding down the sprint button and getting bored when the meter runs out, too much emptiness and/or player slowness.

Agree, but cutscenes implementation in HL series is brilliant. It's something other devs can't do or don't understand the way it was done(Metro). You want to show something - don't take away control over player character from me. It's something I have been missing in games since HL.

If you're talking about HL1 then agreed, if HL2 then not really, the cutscenes are much longer in 2 and you can just run past a lot less often.

 

[Jaedar]

. Even Portal was "inspired" by a now forgotten standalone game

That's bending the truth a little. In reality it was a student project called narbacular drop, and they had some uni expo of student projects, someone from Valve was there (might even have been GodGaben hisself) and is rumored to have hired them on the spot to make a real game out of it.

Agree, but cutscenes implementation in HL series is brilliant. It's something other devs can't do or don't understand the way it was done(Metro). You want to show something - don't take away control over player character from me. It's something I have been missing in games since HL.

Unskippable cutscenes where I have full 3d control of the camera is still an unskippable cutscene. Giving me background props to play with is no excuse either (and a really sad thing to put in anyway. If the story/characters were any good, I'd rather pay attention than play with toys, and if they are not, why force me to stand around and listen with one hear for 5 minutes?). I never understood the praise they get, and I doubt I ever will.

And yeah, valve are never going to make another HL. They figured out that there's way more money in online games. And in truth, nothing much was lost, HL2 is a very generic game polished to a mirror sheen and nothing else. I can't speak for the state of the games industry when HL1 came out as I was a bit young, but I am told it was quite inventive for its time, with AI, scriped encounters and such.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Half-Life 3 and/or Episode 3 would be too expensive to produce and singleplayer games aren't as profitable nowadays. Not to mention the fact that it's become a meme and the expectations are crazy high. If they just made a reskin of your average modern shooter (like say, Doom 2016) with HL elements, people would be pissed. And even if it's popular, there's no way in hell a singleplayer game can make as much money as something like Dota 2, which is also much cheaper to produce than a top tier first person storyfag game.

No matter how you look, the numbers just don't sway in the hypothetical HL3's favor. IMO, these are the main reasons that Gaben never really wanted to continues the series. He's ALWAYS been all about the profits, first and foremost. He's made Valve one of the most successful private businesses in the US history, so no shit he doesn't want to blow 50-100 million dollars to end up with another Mass Effect: Andromeda.

 

[Icewater]

The old Valve is long dead, and seemingly only exists now to run Steam and print money. The last part of the story alludes to this.

Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final episode.

I didn't bother reading the full thing but wow, I think you're right on the money that this is referring to current day Valve. They've completely sold out and totally forgotten the passion that lead them to make things like the original Half-Life.

 

[Maggot]

All I want is for valve to release the source code for HL1 and remove speed caps added with steampipe or at the very least update the OpenGL renderer so it doesn't run like shit and can handle non power of 2 textures but Valve has made it clear they don't want to do any of that.

 

[sser]

I still think HL3 is being made and will be used to debut the new Source engine.

 

[buru5]

The only genuinely good game Valve ever made was Half-Life 1, and that ship has long since sailed. Who gives a shit?

Left 4 Dead, noob.

I suppose. If it were a full-priced game I'd disagree, but since it was released at half the usual retail price (if I recall correctly) it gets a free pass. Appropriate, since it's half the quality and content you'd find in a truly good game.

Lol this faggot again. "Everything I don't like is objectively shit".

 

[Roguey]

Eh, good riddance, that all sounds utterly disappointing.

"Let's make a series of games all about player pandering only to turn your virtual girlfriend into an unlikable murderer and reveal at the end that you can't actually succeed at the goal we've set for you. You wanted to know what the deal with the G-Man was? Too bad."

 

[MapMan]

This was the plot of EP3, not HL3. That's why it ended with a cliffhanger. Borealis and other locations from 2003 leak were all reused in the episodes. HL2 was supposed to have such a big scope that it's no wonder ultimately it got broken down into main, more coherent, game + expansions. Given the fact that source modding community is still kicking, I wouldn't be surprised if people got together, threw 2003 beta stuff together with some new content and release that as fan made Ep. 3.

 

[MapMan]

All this is... very interesting. Many people are saying the last paragraph is a direct message from Marc to Gaben:

And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final episode.

Yours in infinite finality,

Gabe, the rest of the crew, and ultimately and consequently Valve itself have all changed a lot. This paragraph almost feels like a small open letter to Gabe and it saddens me, it's easy to go into Laidlaw's shoes when he gazes at the corporate behemoth that Valve has become and its role at being a very default-y and plastered services company that doesn't really give a fuck about the things it once did.

I once read that due to the flat structure bullshit Gabe very likely has lost a lot of practical power inside Valve and the mafia bosses that deals the cards for the development groups pretty much took charge. If Gabe decided to punch the table and fire these people, that would be met with massive shitstorms and many of their godsons and kneelers quitting right after, which could cause Valve's demise or at the very least severe problems. That would be one way to explain this third party leech state that Valve seems to be confortable in for quite some time now. Either that or Gabe is actually in for all this too. We'll never know and Laidlaw's message is ambiguous: he believes there's still some of the old spirit inside Gabe and he's the one that knows "the appropriate course of action", but that doesn't tell us if Gabe is a hostage inside his own company or if he's the leechmaster himself.

-

As for the script, this is a huge blow to Valve, if one day they actually decide to make HL3 they'll have to use a completely different story that will most likely suck hard. This one feels like a coherent sequel and they'd be in trouble to come up with something similarly logical and decent enough. I especially liked dr. Breen's comeback with his consciousness transported to one of those huge slugs, eventually admitting to Freeman and Alyx that he's no more than a slave for the combine and begging to be put out.

Anyway, I personally think snowy environments in this kind of games tend to be incredibly boring, generic pieces of crap. Then you have snowy military complexes, which is adding two cups of generic to the pile of generic. Then the complex's interior, which would be your typical snorefest. Then the ship. I don't think I have ever seen a non-boring modern ship in any game, as a playable sequence or simply as the environment of the moment. So I think environment/atmosphere wise this game would've sucked ass except for the final moments with the paradoxes and crazy shit flying around.

Well... we won't see this game anyway. Not that I had any hope left after all these years, nor that I care anymore, but this very obviously settles it. HL series are done.

 

[Dayyālu]

Eh, good riddance, that all sounds utterly disappointing.

"Let's make a series of games all about player pandering only to turn your virtual girlfriend into an unlikable murderer and reveal at the end that you can't actually succeed at the goal we've set for you. You wanted to know what the deal with the G-Man was? Too bad."

Plotwise, it's a mess, sure. Alyx was cancer and now she becomes even more cancerous and central to the laughable plotline. But who cared about Half Life's plot?

G-Man? Anything they could write on him would have killed the mistery. Whatever.
Aperture Science? it's from Portal or something, awesome, now we can do cross-universe cameos. Throw in the L4D zombies, or hats
The Breen Slug is a old scifi trope, but whatever, it's probably the best piece of the incoherent mess
Making Alyx even more of an obnoxious asshat was difficult but not impossible (The Only True Waifu that you had to save with magical shenanigans now is the Chosen Waifu and a brutal bloodthirsty savage to boot)

I can foresee some nice gameplay from the set-up, maybe some extra gameplay focused on time distortion (dunnow, maybe a mixture of Singularity and Cryostasis? HL2 Ep3 being influenced by the time-traveling FPS craze of the late 2000?) but this is all moot.

Game's dead, long live Gordon Freeman. Probably now in Ukraine in another dead series.

 

[Roguey]

But who cared about Half Life's plot?

Lots of people do, considering all the anticipation all these years for Episode 3.

Solid-but-shallow gimmicks aren't worth that much emotional energy.

 

[Latro]

The only genuinely good game Valve ever made was Half-Life 1, and that ship has long since sailed. Who gives a shit?

Left 4 Dead, noob.

that was mostly Turtle Rock

l4d2 was mostly valve, and l4d was far better

 

[Latro]

G-Man seems to be portrayed like a interdimensional headhunter who finds very resourceful individuals and then creates a portfolio out of them, selling their services to the highest bidder. Dr. Breen himself tells Gordon his contract was up for the highest bidder.

The problem with this, and the problem with making Alyx the next G-Man target is that there is nothing to back up what he/she are supposed to be. You have the Black Mesa survivor and then you throw him into HL2 and that's it. Who the fuck cares about Gordon Freeman besides BM scientists? Why would aliens/clients care about him over someone like Shepard? Gordon never did anything outside of escaping BM and being sent to Zen, there was nothing in-between stasis to justify Freeman being this God-Hero to anyone outside of a few ex-BM people anyway.

When I drop the rose-colored glasses I think HL2 was a narrative mistake from the start.

This expansive 1984 world dominated by aliens is filled with nothing but the occasional robot-alien thing and cyborg mooks in masks. And the actual world is just large swathes of nothing except for maybe headcrab nests and alien ants with big empty cities of pseudo-european architecture. I appreciate Laidlaw following logic and having the giant inter-galactic combine slug people don't care about some stupid bomb, but the world stunk.

I particularly dislike making the vortigaunts literally african slaves too. Half-life needed that other-world alien presence, and HL2 took that away.