Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wondering when they show up in AC: Fires of Rubicon.
Every time I see "AC" I just think "Animal Crossing". Fires of Rubicon would be an interesting entry in that series.
Same for me with assassin's creed:D
Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
191–200 of 277 posts
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Valve is still a top tier org, but they simply make too much money in the publishing business to bother with game development anymore. Any sales would be peanuts to what they are making through developer fees and the marketplace. This is why all of their releases in the last decade have been F2P.
Also, supposedly the whole radically flat org structure thing. Which I imagine doesn't lend itself to doing hard things like making Half Life 3... Why would any game dev choose to go through a death march to perfection, if they had other project choices?
> Which I imagine doesn't lend itself to doing hard things like making Half Life 3...
Does it lend itself to do other hard things like half life alyx?
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all have physical releases for most of their games that they can't take from my cold dead hands. Valve has singlehandedly killed that market for PC games.
Nintendo has some where you can't rent anymore, because the save data is on cartridge. They all have limitations on regions. Again, Steam /could/ do this. Has it? The others have done the things.
3DS saved to the cart and had region-locking. Neither applies to Switch. You can get a JP copy of Splatoon 3, play it on your NA Switch, swap to the NA version of the game, and not lose anything.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#19420-25 years ago a handful of companies had a weird hold on me. I’d jump on anything Google made back then. Blizzard could sell me any game they came up with. If it was from Blizzard, it was gonna be great. Lost all of it obviously. Not a single company has my loyalty anymore. Except if valve were to release a mystery black box with faint lambda symbol on it. I’d pay whatever they asked for it.
Same here when the Raising the Bar reprint releases. I never managed to get the first edition, so I'm beyond excited they decided to make a second one after all this time. And as a fan, I need to have it.
The reprint with added content is wonderful news. I have a prized copy and wish I had the space for a coffeetable by which to flaunt and share it.
As neat as it is to see how rare it is these days (w.r.t. the asking prices I currently see online), I've always wished other fans could enjoy and appreciate it as much as I have.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#195It looks like the Mac and Linux ports are now gone
The Mac port seems to be missing, but the updated HL2 definitely has Linux support.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#196I never played it. What makes it being rated so good?
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#197I never played it. What makes it being rated so good?
It's a bit dated now, but at the time it was revolutionary. A bit like the genre-defining movies such as Star Wars, the Matrix, or Terminator 2.
It's hard to put a finger on it, but it was a combination of a truly imaginative setting on-par with a decent science fiction movie or novel and the "show, don't tell" style of proper world-building. It presented a uniquely interesting dystopia, discoverable through a game instead of a movie or book.
I think it was one of the first games I played that was dark. For example, the "police" are cybernetically enhanced, but in a disturbing way ("transhuman"). The low-ranked troopers "just" have permanently worn facemasks a bit like Darth Vader, with an implication that they may not be functional without them. The higher-ranked shock troops have increasing levels of augmentations until some have only a single central "eye" in their visor. You shudder to think what's hidden underneath.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#198I never played it. What makes it being rated so good?
It was revolutionary when it came out due to its physics engine, character facial animations, graphics, and most of all it had a captivating story and great gameplay.
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, supposedly the whole radically flat org structure thing. Which I imagine doesn't lend itself to doing hard things like making Half Life 3... Why would any game dev choose to go through a death march to perfection, if they had other project choices?
> Which I imagine doesn't lend itself to doing hard things like making Half Life 3... Does it lend itself to do other hard things like half life alyx?
Alyx wasn't just another HL game in isolation though, it was related to their adventures in VR along with developing hardware and APIs for it, and exploring how it works in a game
Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
VR continues to lack a Killer App to sustain the field (I say this as owner of 3 VR devices, including the Index) Valve tried to make it with Alyx, and while it is amazing, it did not inspire the industry to follow up on. I do not blame Valve for moving on when nobody followed them.
I think it's pretty obvious that Alyx didn't inspire the industry because it's a giga-budget game addressed to a tiny potential market, that Valve could only afford to make due to Steam being an infinite money printer. It wouldn't surprise me if Alyx never recouped its development costs despite the immense hype around it. If Valve wanted more Alyx'es to happen they needed to spread their wealth around until the VR ma…
Valve moved a lot of Indexes because of it.