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Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

half-life.com

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Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#261

Post by account42 »

justinrubek wrote: post #178
chii wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> virtually limitless resources so the staff can strive to make art with love and without the corruption of chasing a bottom line. which means they have no obligation to ship. And so it is with the valve-time, they never shipped. Some pressure (monetary usually) is required. Not to mention that "strive to make art" is not a commercially viable objective - the owners of steam will basically be operating a charity for…

Obligation to ship is overrated. Not everything has to be made in a crunch time marathon. There are lots of avenues to be explored without the constant pressure to perform. I think it's a good thing if they take their time crafting things.

Sounds good in theory but doesn't usually work out in practice. In the real world, art benefits from restrictions.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#262

Post by account42 »

educasean wrote: post #75
keyringlight wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that there's a period when a studio has huge early success (plus in the case of Valve, they started with huge amounts of money from being former MS employees) that lets them devote themselves to their mission of making games, before either mission creep or dilution with new hires occurs over time either from staff naturally changing over time or expanding. Another factor is that when aiming to 'go big' a…

Valve still knows how to make excellent games. Deadlock is a Valve game in alpha, and I think it's going to be very popular once released.

Wow great, yet another generic microtransaction platform. Yawn.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#263

Post by account42 »

danpalmer wrote: post #103
karim79 wrote: post #95

I can never understand why they haven't made a HL3. Given that they could literally make approximately 3.88 bajillion dollars from it in 24 hours. I suppose this is the very definition of developer integrity.

For a while their stated reason was that they felt they couldn’t live up to the hype and the gaming community was too toxic and would have crucified them for it. True or not, I can see why they’d think that. However it’s also worth noting that they were spending that time on other projects making them likely even more money. HL3 isn’t going to have live service or esports applications that make money like their other…

> For a while their stated reason was that they felt they couldn’t live up to the hype and the gaming community was too toxic and would have crucified them for it.

[citation needed]

Valve has been mostly silent on the issue (after hyping up EP 3 themselves).

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#264

Post by account42 »

riffruff24 wrote: post #138
kllrnohj wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they also said they don't want to do more of the same, they only want to work on something new. Hence why the only new Half-Life anything in 20 years is Alyx - it did something genuinely new. We all want HL3, but other than the story it would probably be fairly stagnant in terms of gameplay - nothing new has really happened in the genre.

I wished they hire the Arkane team that got laid off. Put them to work on a new single player ip and let Victor Antonov add some of his design into it. They dont have to do anything new, just make it good enough, like Titanfall 2.

They already did hire the original Arkane to work on Episode 4, then cancelled it along with 3.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#265

Post by account42 »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #148
paulryanrogers wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to leaks they tried several times and gave up. Which is strange, it's not like episodes 2 and 3 were revolutionary. They're just more of the same. Alyx too wasn't particularly deep, it's only innovation was showing that narrative action games can work in VR.

Alyx is so far beyond any other VR game. It is a masterful accomplishment and a masterpiece in its own right.

That says more about the VR game industry than Alyx.

HL1 and HL2 each changed the industry. Alyx is mostly forgotten.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#266

Post by account42 »

jcranmer wrote: post #159
karim79 wrote: post #95

I can never understand why they haven't made a HL3. Given that they could literally make approximately 3.88 bajillion dollars from it in 24 hours. I suppose this is the very definition of developer integrity.

The documentary on this page does explain why they didn't make it, at the very end (it's half the section on the HL2 episodes). In short, they started working on episode 3, and made it about the point where the game development progresses from "here's demos of what could be set pieces in the episode" to putting together the sketch of the game narrative [1] when the developers were pulled to crunch for Left 4 Dead. Af…

Too bad that they didn't communicate that instead of continuing to egg on the fanbase for years.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#267

Post by account42 »

kingkawn wrote: post #157
karim79 wrote: post #95

I can never understand why they haven't made a HL3. Given that they could literally make approximately 3.88 bajillion dollars from it in 24 hours. I suppose this is the very definition of developer integrity.

As everyone pointed out there’s lots of reasons Valve as a company hasn’t done it, but also the corner they wrote themselves into of convoluted story telling, everything about it was headed toward being a mess and unsatisfying. It’s almost better to be left undone so that nobody has to take responsibility for trying to tie all this randomly assembled stuff together

We already have Laidlaw's own version of what an EP3 could have been in Epistle Three.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#268

Post by account42 »

Trasmatta wrote: post #140
karim79 wrote: post #95

I can never understand why they haven't made a HL3. Given that they could literally make approximately 3.88 bajillion dollars from it in 24 hours. I suppose this is the very definition of developer integrity.

Half-Life: Alyx is as close as we got For what it's worth, I never even wanted Half-Life 3. I just wanted Episode 3, which was what they originally promised. It didn't need to be some gigantic groundbreaking thing, just another episode to finish off the story.

Exactly, the Ep2 cliff hanger was a particular shitty place to leave the series to rest. Just some closure would have been nice.

Re: Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

#270

Post by kingkawn »

account42 wrote: post #267
kingkawn wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As everyone pointed out there’s lots of reasons Valve as a company hasn’t done it, but also the corner they wrote themselves into of convoluted story telling, everything about it was headed toward being a mess and unsatisfying. It’s almost better to be left undone so that nobody has to take responsibility for trying to tie all this randomly assembled stuff together

We already have Laidlaw's own version of what an EP3 could have been in Epistle Three.

I too am unfortunate enough to have read that version of the ending
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