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[ashecitism]

http://www.pcgamer.com/do-we-really-need-half-life-3/

For me Half-Life 3's absence feels like a symbol of Valve’s retreat from game development. I know this is ridiculous, because Valve is running Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive—two of the biggest games in the world. But I can’t enjoy Dota 2, because a) it demands massive time investment and b) in my experience as a new player in that community has been dreadful. I don't think I'm alone. I loved Left 4 Dead and Portal, and I had a great time with Alien Swarm, which Valve put out for free in 2010. I miss Valve’s humour and innovation, but if I’m honest I’m pining for Half-Life because Valve stopped making games for me. That’s a pretty petulant position, but there we are.

I've always speculated that an unspoken reason behind Half-Life 3's continued non-existence is the burden to reinvent the first-person shooter again, just as Valve had done on two previous occasions. Is it enough for Valve to just make a super refined sequel, even if it doesn't have the impact of either of the previous Half-Life games? Well, yes—Portal 2 is exactly that model of follow-up. It wasn't a reinvention, it was a welcome extension of the first game's existing ideas. If the level and narrative design is strong enough, it doesn't feel like diminishing returns.

The thing with Portal 2, Sam, is that it did reinvent—just not the campaign. Through its level editor, It made Steam Workshop creation accessible to everyone, and not just people who are really good at making virtual hats. It worked! Portal 2's Workshop page contains over 557,000 items, and, while most of those will have never been played, it definitely extended the life of an otherwise unsurprising—albeit hilarious and with a better ending song—sequel.

I think that's what Gabe Newell meant when he said, in his recent AMA, that Valve's products are, "usually the result of an intersection of technology that we think has traction, a group of people who want to work on that, and one of the game properties that feels like a natural playground for that set of technology and design challenges." If Portal 2 was the Workshop, and Team Fortress 2 the ability to sell a fuckload of hats, what would Half-Life 3 bring to Valve's ecosystem? Maybe it's Source 2. Half-Life 2 was a great showcase for the original Source engine. Perhaps Half-Life 3 will be how Valve demonstrates the power of its successor.

Half-Life has always had revolutionary storytelling, but never a revolutionary story. The groundbreaking implementation of elaborate scripted sequences in the first game is why people remember it so vividly. The game never took control away from you: you were there, in Black Mesa, watching that otherwise-familiar B-movie premise explode to life around you.

more at the link

My opinion is the same as always. I don't consider HL's story to be special, so I don't want another just to see the story continue and I also don't care if it would revolutionize shooters or not. I like that Valve touch about it, consider Ep2 to be the best of the HL2 saga, so if it's same-y to that, then fine. If it's closer to HL1, even better.

I agree with Senior in an unquoted part, that the FPS genre is in a fine place right now and doesn't need rescuing. DOOM showed people like simple, oldschool type gameplay. Only a couple of years a go I revisited the HL series and found its simpleness refreshing.

 

[TheMoon]

Expected one word article with a three letter word.

 

[Jibbed]

Expected one word article with a three letter word.

Nah.

 

[Slaythe]

This is a bad question.

We want Portal 3 not HL 3 .

 

[BigEmil]

Half Life imo is overrated just give us Portal 3 instead

 

[bishopcruz]

Honestly they didn't need to reinvent anything, all we really needed was an Episode 3. Not Half-Life 3 with everything that name implies, no reinvention, nothing like that. We just needed I dunno, a conclusion to the story. It was a shitty cliffhanger to end things on, and unlike Shenmue, Valve never had the excuse that the games didn't sell. I think the problem was that over time, as what was going to just be Episode 3, turned into HL3, no one wanted to, or could figure out how to make the game revolutionary or what have you.

 

[haveheart]

This is a bad question.

We want Portal 3 not HL 3 .

wha...

 

[TheMoon]

This is a bad question.

We want Portal 3 not HL 3 .

But I want both?

 

[ashecitism]

Portal ended fine with 2. Don't see a reason for another. 2 was already worse in terms of puzzles anyway.

 

[Lafazar]

It seems the gaming community has now finally reached Stage Five of the Kübler-Ross Model: Acceptance

 

[TheDarkKnight774]

All I want is Half-life 2 episode 3. That's it. Just finish out the damn episodic episodes and finish the story.

If valve doesn't want to make a half-life 3 then fine but they owe us episode 3. It feels like that has been created in everyone's minds just because it's been so long

 

[Kintaro]

I don't "need" a HL3. Don't really care anymore. If Valve doesn't want to make it, oh well. I've moved on.

 

[Shai-Tan]

I guess I shouldn't have sent email when I was a teenager to valve saying how cliche the and bad the Half Life story is. Also how much they could learn from the 2000 game Clive Barker's Undying in their level and creature design for the episodes (both Newell and Laidlaw responded to me lul)

 

[Syraxith]

I'd like some closure to the story but if it doesn't come out I won't be disappointed.

 

[Chinbo37]

It's a game. No one needs it. It could be argued thats the same for all art.

It would be nice to have it though. And the fans definitely deserve it.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Portal ended fine with 2. Don't see a reason for another. 2 was already worse in terms of puzzles anyway.

This.

Portal doesn't need a new title, whereas Half Life does.

 

[jimboton]

I guess I shouldn't have sent email when I was a teenager to valve saying how cliche the and bad the Half Life story is. Also how much they could learn from the 2000 game Clive Barker's Undying in their level and creature design for the episodes (both Newell and Laidlaw responded to me lul)

What did they say? I liked Undying a lot..

 

[Adam_802]

Ep2 ended on a SAVAGE cliffhanger, and Valve was definitely working on Ep3 around the time of the Orange Box's release. The story needs to conclude.

 

[haveheart]

http://www.pcgamer.com/do-we-really-need-half-life-3/









more at the link

My opinion is the same as always. I don't consider HL's story to be special, so I don't want another just to see the story continue and I also don't care if it would revolutionize shooters or not. I like that Valve touch about it, consider Ep2 to be the best of the HL2 saga, so if it's same-y to that, then fine. If it's closer to HL1, even better.

I agree with Senior in an unquoted part, that the FPS genre is in a fine place right now and doesn't need rescuing. DOOM showed people like simple, oldschool type gameplay. Only a couple of years a go I revisited the HL series and found its simpleness refreshing.

I really don't want to believe that shooters are in their ultimate form atm. There's a lot more that can be done, I hope. And shooters definitely need rescuing!

One or two extraordinary titles (Doom, Wolfenstein) don't balance the shooter genre. What about the yearly installations of just the same game over and over? Shooters have become very generic. Good singleplayer shooters are really rare.

 

[CuNi]

I kind of disliked parts of portal 2s story. Aperture science always had this atmosphere "do whatever must be done for science", but this part where they assembled turrets and instantly disassembled them ruined the mood a bit. I really wished for it to stay dark in terms of story overall.

I hope if they ever make a Half life 3, they keep their dark atmosphere there until the end.

 

[IcyRhythms]

Valve should not feel pressured to do something that changes the genre in such a big way again. Just make an extremely polished shooter that tells a good story and has amazing visuals.

 

[legacyzero]

After this long, I really thing the whole thing has lost it's energy. It's like the Walking Dead Season 6 ending wait for S7 to start, but instead of waiting 8 months, you wait 12 years. I would have lost complete interest.

That said, All I need is L4D3 this year, and all is forgiven.

 

[Syinn]

After all this time it would probably fail to live up to the hype.

New L4D would be nice though.

 

[Seth]

do we really NEED any particular game?

 

[Garlador]

One day, HL3 will be released, but the behind-the-scenes story of its creation will be far more interesting.

 

[Rushersauce]

This is a bad question.

We want Portal 3 not HL 3 .

Speak for yourself.

 

[IcyRhythms]

After all this time it would probably fail to live up to the hype.

New L4D would be nice though.

Is there any real hype? I'm guilty of saying this myself, but, is there really any true hype? We don't even have true confirmation from Valve themselves that it exists in any shape or form.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

The non-existence of Half Life (Ep) 3 irreparably damaged my opinion of episodic gaming, and the fact that a story can be left off the way it was in Ep 2 weakens the entire franchise's status in the story-driven first person continuum of gaming. Do I need Half Life 3 to exist? Not really, anymore. For all of Portal 2's strengths, I now view it as inferior to the original. Valve only seems interested in making games as a platform for selling DLC. Their technical prowess is lately invested in satisfying high-end niche hardware enthusiasts and keeping the DOTA2/CS:GO gravy train running. The state of TF2 tells me that if HL3 comes out and doesn't sell hats by the truckload, their long-term support is going to be a n e m i c at best. The only thing I feel comfortable predicting is that if HL3 eventually does exist, that it will it for the franchise, for better or worse. There will be no Opposing Force or Blue Shift followups, community efforts notwithstanding. Assuming that miracle happens and we get HL3, I reckon the Valve of today will not reap much long term reward from its production and rapidly lose interest, as they have with a lot of their initiatives.

Regardless I think most people would prefer it if we had HL3 behind us than having only what its non-existence means for the abandoned fans of the franchise and Valve as a producer of compelling single player content.

 

[Vital Tundra]

personally I don't even care if I never get to play it, I just want to know what happens in the story. Not knowing who G man is bothers me to this day.

 

[OBias]

If Valve can't make another Half-Life game, we should at least get F-STOP, the supposedly mind-blowing game that could have become Portal 2.

 

[Hip Hop]

I definitely don't want it.


I'd rather have Portal or Left 4 Dead sequels.

 

[Woffls]

I honestly just don't give a shit any more.

 

[hanspampel]

HL 3 is a great meme, but i don't think it would be a good or successful game.
that ship sailed

 

[Guess Who]

The fact that the last entry in the series was ten fucking years ago and people still talk about it constantly shows how much demand there is.

 

[dreamcastmaster]

If Valve had just finished an Episode 3, then I think most gamers would be satisfied. Being an episode entry to the franchise took all the pressure off to be revolutionary.

 

[nightmare-slain]

i have never played the half life games and don't intend to until they finish it. from what i hear it has a big cliffhanger. i am not playing through multiple games to be left hanging.

if you aren't gonna finish it then why bother starting. that said i think we will get half life 2 episode 3...but only if VR becomes affordable and matured. valve seem to create games to show off technology. i think that is the reason we haven't seen it and probably won't see it for a long time yet if at all.

 

[Arklite]

I could wait forever, but if its going to be an eternal wait then I'd at least like to know what happened to development. All these years and we've known nothing of episode 3s troubles.

 

[Won]

Not sure if I would ever use the word "need" in context of HL3 or any Valve game. I do think they had a very unique approach to game design and the included worldbuilding and I personally have never found something that fills that hole Valve left behind and this industry is worse off because of this.

 

[MUnited83]

This.

Portal doesn't need a new title, whereas Half Life does.

The other way around. At this point HL3 will never ever live up the hype. It will just be one more FPS lost in the middle of other FPSs. Being me a new Portal, there's still a lot that can be done with portal puzzles.

 

[Soodanim]

Did the episodes aim to push or sell a particular idea, technology or concept? I think if they had finished up the story with Episode 3 this wouldn't be something wanted so badly.

 

[RipperGrim]

Just finish the damn story already, I don't care if it's a potato pic of the script written on some toilet paper as long as it's a conclusion.

 

[JaseC]

Portal ended fine with 2. Don't see a reason for another. 2 was already worse in terms of puzzles anyway.

I think there's room for the prequel that F-STOP was to be. The (actual Portal 2 spoiler)

Spoiler

yesteryear ApSci levels were nice but ultimately not much more than a glimpse into the company's enigmatic past

. I still hold hope that Valve will revisit the project at some point, though I must admit that I'm not as optimistic as I was pre-JIRA leaks, which revealed without a shadow of doubt that nobody was working on it (the group was completely empty).

 

[Boem]

I've been saying this for years, but I never understood the gaming world's obsession with Half-Life 3. Yes, it ended on a cliffhanger. But it was also always a bog-standard videogame story. Is anyone really left on the edge of their seat to see how it all ends? Half-Life was always more about its set pieces than it was about any sort of story.

Also, as already pointed out, the real reason people remember Half-Life 1 and 2 is because of what they did for the FPS genre at the time. There's no real room for that at this point in time, quite a lot of studios are doing impressive storytelling things/experiments in this genre. What would Half-Life still have to add in that regard? There's a reason they made Portal a couple of years back instead of a new Half-Life - there were simply new gameplay possibilities you couldn't do in a pure Half-Life context.

There's no secret team working on another Half-Life, there hasn't been for many years, and if a Half-Life 3 ever does come out it'll never match the weirdly high expectations the gaming community has of this franchise. I don't blame Valve for not doing another one. No matter what they end up releasing, they'll get bad press for it.

And that's fine. For the few that are still hanging on - it's really time to let go. There are more important things in life.

 

[Zombine]

Imagine a book series which people have invested money into (regardless of popularity). Imagine the latest book in the franchise ending on a storybeat where shit hits the fan and one of the main characters are dead, clearly meant to keep fans interested in the work that was supposed to follow after.

Now imagine none of the answers to those questions coming to fruition. The bad guys are winning, and there are story threads still left open. It's cheap, it's tacky, and it does not respect the time and money that people have invested into the series.

We may be waiting on the next Game of Thrones book, but the franchise is carrying on elsewhere. We have answers, just not where those questions were raised initially. We have none of this with the Half Life franchise. It has seemingly been dropped and the only response fans (who helped keep the company afloat) is a giant fuck you and a middle finger.

 

[Abstrusity]

We don't have to have HL3. We just have to want it. That's the real HL3.

 

[zombieshavebrains]

How is this even a question?

 

[ashecitism]

I think there's room for the prequel that F-STOP was to be. The (actual Portal 2 spoiler)

Spoiler

yesteryear ApSci levels were nice but ultimately not much more than a glimpse into the company's enigmatic past

.

Thought about that, but problem is Valve dropped it because it would have been a Portal without portals. If they're still worried about it then just make a new IP with that mechanic, or don't name it Portal.

I still hold hope that Valve will revisit the project at some point, though I must admit that I'm not as optimistic as I was pre-JIRA leaks, which revealed without a shadow of doubt that nobody was working on it (the group was completely empty).

We also saw that L4D3 had a sizable team and as I recall there was no VR team listed (we knew they've been dabbling in it and AR at that point though), meanwhile the latter has materialized and the former has yet to be seen. Anything can happen.

 

[Twookie]

I mean we would never "need" any video game really, but I wouldn't mind playing it one day.

I totally have sympathies for Valve though, how on earth are they going to meet the expectations of fans after all this time?

I honestly just don't give a shit any more.

I'm kinda at this point too.

 

[JaseC]

Thought about that, but problem is Valve dropped it because it would have been a Portal without portals. If they're still worried about it then just make a new IP with that mechanic, or don't name it Portal.

Yeah, it doesn't necessarily need to be Portal Zero. The Lab, while more a toybox than a game, has established ApSci being a madhouse of science as a backdrop for creative/experimental new IPs.

We also saw that L4D3 had a sizable team and as I recall there was no VR team listed (we knew they've been dabbling in it and AR at that point though), meanwhile the latter has materialized and the former has yet to be seen. Anything can happen.

Of course. As I said, I still hold hope that the project will be revisited in the future. It's just that prior to the JIRA leaks I was somewhat confident that the game was or would soon be in development to some extent due to Wolpaw and co. continually being extremely coy about the key mechanic, even after the release of P2.

 

[Rygar 8 Bit]

This is a bad question.

We want Portal 3 not HL 3 .

speak for yourself i want hl 3