New information revealed about Valve's first cancelled game Prospero - General

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB4Z0B2NkUE[/media]

This was rather awe-inspiring, especially the combine spires part. Its the little things that build upon a greater universe.

The concepts of Prospero were way ahead of their time.

[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;45433627]Definitely lots of what-ifs to this and it raises a lot of questions. After years of silence and patient waiting for Episode 3/Half-Life 3, I wonder if they'll end up using the Half-Life/Portal universe and story as a conduit to a reborn Prospero. So basically after all this time Half-Life, Portal, maybe even some of Valve's other games, will all turn out to be smaller pieces of a much more expansive and interesting universe repurposed from what Prospero would have been (or still might become). If that were the case then i'm sure the Borealis would be the specific bridge between the stories of HL/Portal and this much larger universe. G-man (as we've come to know it) and its possesing of Gordon and Adrian, if Laidlaw ends up taking HL1's expansions into account, would probably be made to have some connection with it too. I swear I'm not high right now. [editline] July 18, 2014 [/editline] Keep in mind we still don't really know what the Combine is/are. Until now they've been the generic alien bad guys of Half-Life, but some clever writing could turn what has probably been the most cliche story ever into something so much more. They need to unfuck the series before they have another DN:F on their hands.[/QUOTE] Well according to Half Life lore the Combine are inter dimensional, and a multi-species slave army. So in theory, all Valve universes are somewhat connected. (In my bullshit theory that is :v:) In one instance of Earth, it's overcome by Zombies, in another Aperture, a third it's a constant gridlock between terrorism, and police/military forces. As for how TF2 and Dota fit in, not sure, maybe different dimensions entirely.

Wouldn't be an interesting Valve find without marphy rating it late :downs:

Prospero /is/ the Steam desktop program, essentially. Just without the graphics/story 'n all that.

[QUOTE=redBadger;45437276]Wouldn't be an interesting Valve find without marphy rating it late :downs:[/QUOTE]These screenshots have been known for a while, but it was deemed prudent to ask Laidlaw directly for permission to publicly demonstrate them as an act of good faith, something that also allowed Laidlaw to answer some additional questions about the game. Unfortunately, the mysterious level designer Duncan X, last known to be working on [url=http://www.gamesinasia.com/popcap-games-adapted-plants-zombies-resounding-success-china/]Plants Vs Zombies in China[/url], could not be tracked down for comment. I will be uploading the unwatermarked versions of the Prospero screenshots to the Combine OverWiki's [url=http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Prospero]article[/url] in a week's time.

Prospero - Database: Episode 3 Hmm...

This channel is GREAT. I suggest you subscribe to it as soon as you can because damn, I've been there for a while and they always provide quality content. GG VT.

Y'know, concerning the nature of Prospero with infinite worlds, and the fact that infinite worlds are addressed to an extent in the Half-Life universe, and that Valve said that all their future games would have a multiplayer component of some description, if and when Valve finishes Half-Life 3 (yeah I know laugh it up fuzzball) they could potentially have the game be both Episode Three AND a spiritual rebirth of Prospero bundled into one. The way I'd envision it panning out would be the first half of the game starts with Gordon recovering from the events at the end of Episode Two, the White Forest team makes a few improvements to the HEV Suit, and Gordon travels north with Alyx, D0g, and hopefully Barney, to the Borealis, as was intended before the events of the last 7 years caused Valve to focus on its other IPs. After fighting across the cold wastes and getting into the Borealis, they fight their way through its corridors to prevent the Advisors from "extracting" Dr Mossman's know-how of the ship, but in a twisted climax of sorts the ship vanishes from the Half-Life world and returns to the Library dimension where it had remained for the past few decades. Once Gordon and his "crew" step out into the surreal worldscape of the Library, the second half of the game begins, with Gordon encountering other "protagonists" including Adrian Shepard and other alternate "Gordons" (Ivan "Space Biker" Petrovich, Dyson Poincare, Ross "Speaks His Mind" Scott, etc), engaging in "jolly cooperation" (you'd be able to play in co-op with many other players) to explore various alternate realities and set up a chain of events to destroy the Advisors and restore the administration of the multiverse to the Aleph Librarians, the timeless order of scholarly psykers that once kept the worlds in balance, of which the Gman was once a high-ranking member. Kind of like BioShock Infinite meets Myst with a similar theme as The Dark Tower (they could even sneak in a "Roland" Freeman with his own posse), only very much Half-Lifey at its core. Most of the worlds could be based on the other Valve properties, like the Green Flu world seen in Left 4 Dead, the spytech 60's/70's world of Team Fortress 2, the twin worlds of Parisian anarchy and Knights Templars glimpsed in what could have been The Crossing, the machine-ruled world-after-man we discover in the Portal franchise, even a visit to the Forest of the Ancients we frequent in Dota 2. And there'd be plenty of room for some original worlds or even "mock-ups" of the worlds Valve "gave up on" like the Fairy world and the Stars of Barathrum world. And the kicker is that even after the Universal Union is pacified and the Librarians are back in control, there could be a sort of ongoing "end-game" wherein all the worlds open up, including ones made by the community, so players can keep world-hopping and playing through custom levels long after the main campaign has ended. THAT would be a fitting way to end, and in many ways continue, the story of Half-Life for years to come.

[IMG]http://puu.sh/aiM9q/4ee68e5fa4.jpg[/IMG]

That would be kind of cool... Integrate community workshop to such an extent that in your hub of the library, where you can access infinite worlds, you really just choose from worlds that were made by the community, seamlessly, which download during the load screen How that could be used I have no idea, but it's a fancy enough concept

If they ever make this game, it should be like an over-world which allows you to enter almost an endless amount of other games. The catch being that you can use Aleph instead of DK or Banjo Kazooie or whatever. Sort of like Wreck-it-Ralph in a sense.

[QUOTE=Zenreon117;45443738]If they ever make this game, it should be like an over-world which allows you to enter almost an endless amount of other games. The catch being that you can use Aleph instead of DK or Banjo Kazooie or whatever. Sort of like Wreck-it-Ralph in a sense.[/QUOTE] That would have the potential to get very creepy very fast. I like the idea. [editline]19th July 2014[/editline] meta as fuc

i like to think all video games are just alternate universes

So G-man could be like an old Librarian? Already knowing his shit, he's like an Aleph with a higher number and from such a long life in the library and going through worlds he got tired and old and his voice is all fucked.

He might very well be a former Librarian, considering his powers. But rather than holding firm the Old Ways of the cosmic balance or embracing the techno-visceral augmentative unity of the Universal Union, I bet that he's now a mercenary or independent contractor of sorts, given how he said he'd received some interesting offers for Gordon's services. Such a statement implies that he has a penchant for collecting specialized individuals and putting them in "the wrong place", where they can be manipulated into making changes desired by those who commission the Rogue Librarian's services, such as Gordon sabotaging Nova Prospekt, heralding the uprising, liberating the Vortigaunts, severing the worldlink between the Combine and Earth, etc. It's likely that, as Doctor Breen alluded to, his services were open to the highest bidder, but what they offer him in return is anyone's guess. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world...

[QUOTE=ironman17;45445480]He might very well be a former Librarian, considering his powers. But rather than holding firm the Old Ways of the cosmic balance or embracing the techno-visceral augmentative unity of the Universal Union, I bet that he's now a mercenary or independent contractor of sorts, given how he said he'd received some interesting offers for Gordon's services. Such a statement implies that he has a penchant for collecting specialized individuals and putting them in "the wrong place", where they can be manipulated into making changes desired by those who commission the Rogue Librarian's services, such as Gordon sabotaging Nova Prospekt, heralding the uprising, liberating the Vortigaunts, severing the worldlink between the Combine and Earth, etc. It's likely that, as Doctor Breen alluded to, his services were open to the highest bidder, but what they offer him in return is anyone's guess. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world...[/QUOTE] So who bid against the Combine? Was it Eli and co? Was it someone else?

[QUOTE=GÃ©za!;45445496]So who bid against the Combine? Was it Eli and co? Was it someone else?[/QUOTE] Maybe one (or some) of the Librarians sought to make use of his services despite knowing he wasn't in their fold anymore, kind of like Garrett in the Thief games where he was once part of the Keepers but went solo to become the titular thief, whilst the Keepers tried to sway him into doing things that benefited their end goals of protecting the City. To patch up a potential hole in this theory, wherein the other Librarians could easily use their own powers to set events in motion, perhaps they have a treaty of non-aggression with the Combine wherein they can keep their Library so long as they cannot directly interfere with the machinations of the Universal Union, so instead they used the wayward black sheep of their flock, the Rogue Librarian Aleph-Gimel, as a volatile unpredictable proxy to undermine the Combine and return reality to balance. Either that, or the bid was made by another unseen power that held a common perspective that the Combine were "bad for business" and paid Aleph-Gimel to take them down a notch. Wanna know why I suggested his name was Gimel? Well, for starters it starts with G, but also, check out the Hebrew sign for gimel. ג See any similarities? Could be coincidence, but it's still a thing of note. So not only is the sign of the Resistance the Lambda, but it could also be construed as the mark of the Gman, the Aleph-Gimel.

[QUOTE=Zenreon117;45443738]If they ever make this game, it should be like an over-world which allows you to enter almost an endless amount of other games. The catch being that you can use Aleph instead of DK or Banjo Kazooie or whatever. Sort of like Wreck-it-Ralph in a sense.[/QUOTE] All it needs to be is Sven Coop done by Valve, because Sven Coop 1 was essentially what you described, at least with the endless amount of possible games, hell even some servers had maps that acted as overworlds and you would vote on your favorite maps to go to a new one by destroying shit. It would be sick if the transition between loads/maps was seamless, just constantly hopping from world to world like you would server to server in sven.

It could be like the one ending of Stanley Parable where you [SP]get transported by the Narrator into Minecraft and then he sends you into Portal because apparently minecraft sucks[/SP]

Like this; But 3d with contemporary graphics and an overworld, perhaps even a '2d'ifier machine. [url]http://www.explodingrabbit.com/games/super-mario-bros-crossover[/url]

[QUOTE=FreeHat;45437456]Prospero /is/ the Steam desktop program, essentially. Just without the graphics/story 'n all that.[/QUOTE] Steam has been a huge ARG all along. We've been had!

Great now I am hyped for hl3 even more.