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Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

half-life.com

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Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#41

Post by solardev »

lapetitejort wrote: post #36

I got my first real introduction to first person shooters with Quake II. I used keyboard only, with page up/down keys for vertical look. When Half-Life came out my friend would only let me play if I looked with the mouse instead. I thought that was so dumb. Why not just use both sides of the keyboard? Why split controls across two devices? But I relented and picked up this wonky control scheme pretty quickly. Then I…

It's funny that two decades later, basically the only games Valve still actively develops are Half Life mods (Counterstrike and Team Fortress).

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#42

Post by solardev »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #35
solardev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are first person shooters on the Deck? Do you just use the analog stick to aim, or is the gyro actually helpful?

Either work just fine, IMO. The gyro is just as good as on the Switch

The Switch has gyro aiming?

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#44

Post by simonlc »

One of my favorite documentaries was made by Noclip, which tells the story of Half-Life and Valve. It is soo good, a must watch. Interestingly, though, it features no one from Valve, as they, in typical Valve fashion, ignored their requests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQLEW1c-69c

So I'm very excited to watch this new documentary featuring people who worked on the game, made by the same people, such a surprise haha.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#45

Post by justin_oaks »

doublerabbit wrote: post #25

To those who are unhappy with the graphics of HL1, you can download Black Mesa which is an remake of the original. https://www.moddb.com/mods/black-mesa

Black Mesa has an extended Xen portion of the game. Otherwise it's a faithful reproduction of the original with better graphics.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#46

Post by zavertnik »

ender341341 wrote: post #10
reallymental wrote: post #2

Besides the low brow "wen half-lyf-3?" comment, is valve planning on releasing any other games like hf? Anyone in the industry have anything to spill regarding this?

def no insider info on my side but from what I've heard/read they pretty regularly have a team spun up to explore a half life 3 but at this point they're afraid of a duke nukem forever (not that they'd make a shitty game like that) and that even if it's a great game it'd be seen as underwhelming because the community has hyped itself up so much on it over the nearly 20 years.

(no spoiler) From a storytelling perspective, Half Life 2 Episode 2 (the last mainline Half-Life game which Half-Life 3 was expected to be the sequel for) sets up Half-Life 3 as a proper ending to the game's story and confirmed by Mark Laidlaw's release of Epistle 3. I can see why they wouldn't want to rush quickly to the exit but at the same time, HL2E2 left them without much wiggle room. This issue alone is addressed in Half-Life Alyx.

From Valve's perspective, the Half-Life property is pretty valuable and its served them well as a means of demonstrating the newest source engine updates with a ton of hype bootstrapped because it is Half-Life.

Despite it's popularity, Half-Life is a delicate property in the sense that the story hinges on a lot of unknowns that are not revealed straight forwardly, similarly to LOST, the lack of detail stokes that mystery to the audience's delight, because they know there will be a big payoff that explains these mysteries at the end of the tunnel. That's a lot of pressure for the writers room @ Valve, especially so considering the development process of the game engine/assets itself.

It works for Valve. It sucks for fans, but the alternative is ending the property early or extending the property far beyond its intended shelf life. As long as I live to see the end of the narrative, I'll be happy. If not, then valve pls fix.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#47

Post by the_snooze »

deelowe wrote: post #11
bjord wrote: post #5

Aside from just generating tons of goodwill, does anyone have any insight into why Valve would do this? Obviously, I think it's great regardless of the motivation, but are there rumblings of Half Life 3 that I've missed or something?

Because Valve does whatever it feels like doing and honestly, I love them for it. I wish more companies would follow in their footsteps (e.g. not going public), but few have the luxury of being founded by someone who was already set for life financially at the time.

Valve isn't beholden to any external shareholders, and Steam is as close to a money-printing machine a private company can have. Combine that with the fact that Gabe and company seem to have pretty decent values in line with their customers' interests, and you get nice outcomes like this.

Re: Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

#48

Post by they4kman »

doublerabbit wrote: post #25

To those who are unhappy with the graphics of HL1, you can download Black Mesa which is an remake of the original. https://www.moddb.com/mods/black-mesa

Black Mesa is definitely a beautiful experience – especially for "younger" folks like me who missed the HL1 boat by a few years.

Mind, though, that development appears to have ceased on Black Mesa; and while it's basically 99% complete, I encountered a few show-stopping crashes and performance blackouts requiring some intense googling to bypass. I'd still recommend it, though.

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