On this fucked up timeline we live on, there is at least something nice left
I had given up hope that this was still being worked on. This looks gorgeous
There must be some insane taboo to never aknowledge HL at all for them. Some company wide trauma. It's not something I get angry about, just concerned and confused.
I completely understand them not releasing a new game because they want to move on to something different, and telling us that. I don't get never aknowledging the existance of HL at all.
Being kept in the dark is way worst than a "we moved on, we don't want to make HL games anymore sorry", because as a creator myself I can understand that feeling, as you grow as a person and a company you want to make different things. But something else happened that we're not being told and it sucks.
Yes a lot of them have left since, but it doesn't take much more than someone (presumably at Valve, but not necessarily) who wants to begin on producing Half-life 3, following around the already established script and all the source material and references you could possibly need to create HL3.
Then slap some Multiplayer to it, notably the Half-life Deathmatch. Best case scenario, you get multiple gamemodes, from Deathmatch to Team Defend/Attack between the Combine and Resistance in destructible environments, with fully player-controllable Combine and Resistance units/vehicles ranging from Combine Hunters to Gunships, plus a new generation of stand-alone games like TF, Portal, CS, hell maybe even shit like TTT and win the internet.
As a game, HL1 is one of the greatest games ever made from both its scope and its storytelling. From a franchise HL is one of the worst franchises ever because HL2 and HL1 are two completely different games and HL2 hasn't aged well at all, and the aesthetic looks like ass today, and the franchise has been on life support for over a decade.
Absolute disagree on HL2 visuals aging poorly visualy, it aged better than any 2004 game to me. The environnement design was insanely ahead of its time and is still impressive today, Viktor Antonov's art direction had a huge impact. Facial animation still holds up. It's an example of good design carrying a low polycount.
Even the best design becomes boring after hundreds and hundreds of hours of seeing them across many games HL2 generated, gmod etc. If you've seen it long enough you forget what it's like in its context and how well it works for what they were going for, and how much the game's visuals set it apart from everything else at the time.
What life support? One of the lead writers that obviously still cared about the franchise leaked the script of potentially the final game that we now know will never be released.
What?
"Oh cool the sequel to the game where we ran around an industrial complex fighting aliens, the military and solved puzzles using guns, bombs, and some superscience."
"pickup that can!"
the total change of setting between HL1 and HL2 never felt right to me, I love both games but HL2 is not the same thing as HL1
I gave up on HL3 a long time ago but I still had one last thread of hope left for today.
Because HL1's setting and visual design was a product of its time, and simply remaking it at higher fidelity wouldn't have been as interesting. HL2 liberating itself from HL1's most cliché elements took the series to another level. I love HL1 for what it is but it's a good thing they liberated themselves from clichés they had to use to make a very early 3d game work.
Both games are linear narrative-driven first person shooters with a silent protagonist. Half-Life 2 had to continue the story while keeping it fresh, IMO the change of tone was a great decision that made the sequel far more immersive than the first game.
It's not a taboo. It's not trauma. It's just that no one that currently works at valve gives a shit about anything other than making money. (I'm speaking generally here - there's a few good people left, like the TF2 team and the recently bought out firewatch developers. Perhaps the Half Life Vr team too.) And Gabe Newell, the man who started it all, is quite possibly the greediest cunt of them all. Remember how he said many year back that he considered Half-Life 2 to be the most disappointing Valve game, because it didn't live up to his expectations? That Gabe is long gone, and will never return.
People want to believe that something happened behind the scenes that caused them to swear off the Half-Life franchise. Like, some huge developmental hurdles that turned off the company from wanting to finish the series. What people haven't been paying attention to is that they've sworn off games without skinner-box elements entirely. It's not just Half Life that is dead in the water, but also Portal, and Left4Dead, and numerous other projects that never even saw the light of day. (Stars of Blood, that fantasy co-op game, etc.) And even the previous games they've produced that feature microtransactions a plenty haven't exactly been doing so hot. We're not even certain if TF2 is being developed, and CS:GO and Dota 2 development has also slowed to a near crawl. And all because Valve is pouring a massive amount of resources into a virtual card game that is looking to be the single greediest piece of shit in the history of their company.
Face the facts: Half-Life didn't die, Valve murdered it, and then committed suicide. (Remember the massive layoffs years ago, not long after Portal 2 released? That was the day the Valve we knew died.) Now it's just a shambling undead corpse that exists solely to siphon money out of gamers' wallets.
At least we got some form of closure with Epistle 3. I think that story draft really disproves the idea that "oh even a perfect game wouldn't have lived up to the hype they can never release it!!" cause a game made off that script would have been fucking awesome.
I don't know if I agree. HL1 pushed the envelope and set the standard for what an FPS was and could be, HL2 pushed the envelope with amazing physics tech and facial animation. I figure HL3/HLVR would push the envelope and set the standard for what a VR game should be.
But of course I'm soberingly aware of the fact that many creative minds have left Valve for greener pastures. I'm really not holding my breath, when all is said and done.
I don't want to fuck with valve like that, but I also really want to fuck with valve like that
I've heard just mentioning Half-Life during hiring is immediate grounds for not being hired.
It needs that killer app, man. Then things are gonna go faster than you think.
Vinesauce Joel's tweet about the anniversary is what reminded me of it. I hopped on the Half-Life train rather late (2010, a year after I bought CSS+Garry's Mod), but I can't say that it hasn't played a huge part in my life. Some of my friends and I wouldn't be nearly as close today if we hadn't bonded over Gmod's sandbox mode, and Facepunch has played a huge part in how I present myself online.
I think it's simpler. Valve doesn't say anything unless they have something definitive to announce. Due to the nature of the company, the game will likely never be officially cancelled, so they will never comment on it.
Also, while I'm not happy with Valve as a game devloper anymore, I am extremely happy with Valve as an R&D house. Their research into VR is very interesting, their contributions to open source projects such as graphics drivers is respectable, and their work on Proton, DXVK, and the Wine project in general has extreme promise for freeing us from Windows and has displayed very fast progress. So I'd like for them to keep up their work in those areas.
That's more a matter of them not swallowing their pride imo.
I'm talking specifically about going to Valve to discuss the creation of Half Life for the purpose of the documentary I quoted. How many key people from any of the games are even still around?
What kind of video game company doesn't even acknowledge the 20th anniversary of one of their biggest franchise?
I love Half-Life 1 and 2 and regard it as one of my favourite games ever. The HL2 episodes however was kinda lackluster with no new weapons, minimal new enemies and having to escort Alyx everywhere. I also did not like how EP2 changed the overall theme with the whole green lush forest which is very different from the whole wasteland feel in HL2.
Wish we could get a HL2 remake because the cutscenes are boring with minimal interactions and earth environments are pretty dated compared to the city/town levels.
Posted in the Artifact thread, but it needs to be here too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asalw1H6NH0
If they acknowledge the existence of the franchise then that means they have to deal with the difficult and awkward questions related to it so they would rather remain silent like always.
Hey buddy fuck off with this review bomb shit, it's a terrible practice.
I wonder, how does Gabe feel about all of this? Is he happy about what his company has become? Has he secretly been some sort of greedy business man and it wasn't until a few years ago we finally figured it out? Did he start out with good intentions and then slowly seclude himself, letting his company do all the work while he just watched?
Apparently when not looking at new projects, company management etc he plays Dota 2 against bots all day.
I like to think that he secretly despises everything that is happening at Valve but at the same time does not have enough balls to shut the thing down and feels that it would be too cruel. I mean if you watch interviews with him and his general demeanor throughout the years as Valve was transitioning from being actually game oriented to being whatever the fuck is happening now oriented you can clearly see how he goes from being ultra cheery and enthusiastic to just being professional and apathetic and almost melancholic.
I think that Valve is an example of a company that got corrupted from the ground up instead of the other way around, and Gabe did not stop anyone before it was way too fucking late instead of putting his foot down in like 2008-11 and fired all of the parasitic fuckers out of it.
Review bombing is one of the most effective tactic consumers have to express distaste with a product. It may be a bit overused nowadays, but review bombing has been attached to some really nice changes in certain games.
If the mainstream gaming market refuses to simply not purchase games with shady practices attached, then review bombing is the next best thing. It ALWAYS gets them sweating.
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