It's that time of day again

I'm sorry if I'm annoying you with this thread, but let's talk about Half-Life.

I recently went through the developer commentaries for Episodes 1 and 2 and I noticed that the developers were really excited. They found new techniques, toyed around with player psychology a lot more, found several new ways to improve graphics. Even Alyx's VA was very excited as she talked about her experiences with the game series. Constant references to episode 3 were peppered throughout the commentaries. The impression I'm getting is that everyone was at the top of their game, the peak of what they could accomplish. The HL series has always struck me as a very clever and conscious one, which sets itself apart from most FPS games. With all of this knowledge in tow, I am baffled with what we are faced with. Almost complete radio silence for almost 10 YEARS. Sure, we had an informal statement from Gabe that if there's no interest from within Valve, they're not going to make a game. But there clearly was interest and people were very excited to work with the HL series. It couldn't have been that they didn't know where to take the story, since they said that they had plans for the G-Man as well.

It has to be more than money that's at the root of this problem. Was there a death within the family? Did someone get cancer? Is the Mafia involved? What was so catastrophic that ended development and resulted in this lack of communication?

oh it's this thread again

Realistically? I think everybody's ignoring that companies aren't static. People move around a lot. The guy who wrote HL2 doesn't work at Valve anymore and I assume many other HL2 devs don't.
HL2 started development around 2000 if I recall correctly, and think about it; would you really want to working at the same company for over 15 years? Episode 3 started taking longer they initially thought and many of the old devs probably just started leaving around 2008-09. Why do you think there was such a tonal shift between Portal 1 and 2?

It's something Valve will always have in their back pocket if their value starts to decline. All they have to do is go public about HL3 development and Valve's value would increase greatly.

Chances are the guys who were working on HL3 went for something ambitious and got caught up along the way. Eventually people working on HL3 left and goals for other people in Valve shifted away from single player games. It all just slowly collapsed and no one wants to make an effort to build it again.


Valve is privately owned so this doesn't really make sense.

Company value =/= stock price, user. Their value would still go up.

Of course there are changes within companies, but surely once you've committed to a project it's only reasonable that you finish what you start? Even if you leave the project incomplete, you can still give some final pointers on what to do to the people that are still around.


This sounds like what most likely happened. But the way I've seen it is that Valve takes a rather humane approach to things. They seem to me as very conscious of their work and time, and it seems strange that a usually calm and collected team would knowingly take off more than they could chew.

They would have to be selling for it to really matter, though. HL3 as a desperate move for profit would make no sense because they would either have to invest plenty of money and time to make sure its up to par and risk not getting enough of a return or trash their reputation. Would make a little more sense as a move to earn back market share for Steam if it were to fall, but if the market was moving that way I don't think one game would be enough to stop whatever is causing that change.


HL2 and TF2 both took a ton of development time before they were released. I think development can get halted regardless of how well organized the devs are anyway.

Knowing that it took so long to develop them still gives me hope. Ridicule me all you like, but I still believe. Someday we will have those promises fulfilled. It can be as bland or revolutionary as it wants, because I won't care. Just so long as the story comes to a close.

i don't want to work at all but maitaning a stable job for 15 years would be pretty nice

I'm hoping for Half Life 3 either later this year or early next year, if not I'm giving up hope completely..

Why can't I go to the universe where episode 3 was released? Why am I stuck with shitty bald-tail pikachu universe?

Fuck all of you that were always from this univserse. Your universe sucks.

I don't care anymore. what's stopping some fans from making their own episode 3 and just ripping of Evangelion?

only thing I look forward to is operation black mesa.

It's dead, and it should stay dead.
Let it rest user.

looking at the beta stuff for hl2 I think I may have an explanation

the beta of hl2 was alot more authority dystopian then what came to be and then at some point I can only assume during play testing that they decided to streamline the game and this mean toning the game down in almost every way


by the end of it I think the director was utterly disheartened by what came to be then what he had in mind that he lost all motivation to even continue properly

From what I hear it probably has more to do with the way Valve itself is structured, where anyone can really do what they want. So if they want to sit around all day and make TF2/CS GO/DOTA Cosmetics they can do so.

So how the fuck are teams coordinated into projects like making actual games? Or is that why valve doesn't make games anymore?

I don't even know if they even make video games after CS:GO, even then I hear Turtle Rock did a good chunk of it when it was just supposed to be CS:S HD on 360.

It's a miracle if they can even make a new IP anymore.

Several interviews from ex-valve employees say that the downside is the fucking clique culture and how Valve is touchy with making a new IP and branding it with their company logo.

Why not make an off shoot company where they experiment with games then? Its amazing how one company can shoot itself in the foot due to 0 structure, but yet make money solely due to the Steam platform.

It’s the new DNF. Get over it.

Too busy raking in the dough with their Steam monopoly, their focus on Dota 2 and CS:GO is their top money makers, Hat Fortress 2 is secondary, it's how we keep seeing a lot of their big names shuffling from one company then back to Valve.

mediocre gameplay, mediocre story

Shit.

Remember that Gabe Newell was the original SWATter, attempting to trick Axel Gembe into coming to the US for a federal police surprise and an extra-judical trial.

what does this even mean?

It means your pikachu lacks stripes or any kind of markings on the tip of the tail. Its a standard Bernstein Bears thing.

grow a fucking spine, faggot.

lurk moar

Wait hold the fuck up why isn't there the brown bit at the end of his tail. There was always a brown bit at the end of his tail. What the fucking shit is this. Oh god I've moved into this shit universe too.

FUCKING CERN REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

stop the meme bollocks now.
You're mentally swapping his tail and his ears.

Valve destroyed its own reasons to be enthusiastic about Half Life. They wrote themselves into a corner with EP2, started getting more money from Steam and their newer games, were able to use those other games as a creative outlet instead of Half Life, and as a result of their apparent inactivity have understandably caused a lot of people to grow pessimistic about the future of the Half Life series. For a normal AAA dev this wouldn't be too much of a problem, but this is Valve we're talking about.

This only confirms that Half-Life 3 will be a retcon of a retcon (Half-Life 2) that only redditors will care about. Nice blue gatorade by the way.

What is that Bernstein Bears thing supposed to mean
ive seen people use it before but i never understood why

idiots, reddit retards and tumbler faggots cant make a good game, they made portal and its lame memes. only a few people are working on hl3.

some people remember it being berenstain bears, other people remember it as berenstein bears.

this theory claims that our reality has shifted from its original timeline and some people are able to remember things from the original timeline and other people cant remember anything from the past timeline and think this is the original timeline.
——–

let's say for example in this original timeline apples went extinct and it was common knowledge that apple's went extinct. then a shift happened without anyone realizing and you see people casually eating apples on the street. you go up to them and claim that this is amazing and claim that apples are supposed to be extinct. the guy claims you are mental and apples have been around forever. the more people you confront this about the more you seem crazy, eventually you are thrown into a mental asylum for believing such a crazy thing.

Some idiots misremembered random shit from their childhood and decided this must mean they were transported to an entirely different universe where only stupid trivial shit, like the spelling of Berenstain, is different.