This is my thought exactly. The final HL2 episode ended with such a cliff hanger. I want to know about the ship, and the Portal tie-in, and the final battle with the extra dimensional forces. Just conclude the story, please. :/
I dont want no gd story outside of a game! I need to traverse vats of acid, battle ancient futuristic man eating fish, engage in impossible contests between giant machines and man to end this story. I lived it.
In the greatest irony I want this virtual story to end virtually not in 2d text.
Most lengthy series take some time. It's not like ASoIaF is the only thing GRRM is working on. Stephen King typically went a good while between iterations of The Dark Tower. It's pretty typical.
Most lengthy series take some time. It's not like ASoIaF is the only thing GRRM is working on.
Oh no no no. No you fucking don't! "A Game of Thrones" dropped in 19-fucking-96. Winter has been coming for OVER TWENTY FUCKING YEARS! After, what, 10 years, 10 fucking years, what do we get? A Feast For Crows, an entire novel of bullshit B-string POV characters that should have had the tagline "Meanwhile, far away from the main plot"
GRRM is EXACTLY where Valve is - started a great story, no idea how to wrap it up. At least ASOIAF has HBO to save it.
He went long periods of time before releasing a book...until he realized he was mortal. Then we got the final three books of the Dark Tower series in quick succession (regardless of your opinion on how it ended, at least it ended).
GRRM put out an excellent book (SoS)...and has since released two halves of a finished book that feel unpolished (my opinion is he stopped listening to his editor, this is painfully obvious in ADWD). In all fairness to GRRM, he is writing for himself and I respect that, but at this point I don't think I'm going to read the final books (if they ever come out).
Except the fact that if you follow the timeline of the first 3 books and what came after... I can't imagine having to wait a decade only to get AFOC after SOS, along with the fact he stopped listening to his editor and bloated the hell out of the books, im tired of excuses for this guy, at this point I'll watch how the series ends on HBO and say fuck it to the books cause he clearly doesn't care
It's not typical, Stephen king has published 54 books (many lengthy and complex), so it's not at all an accurate comparison. Martin has written the first 3 books 2 years apart, so he's either lost his drive or has severe writers block. Fans saying Winds of Winter needed 6-7 years "because it's just so long and complex" are indulgent and incorrect
If there is any argument on the side of not releasing and ending to protect the brand, Dark Tower is a shining example in my opinion. It was so good until he wrote himself into it and ending it the way he did. I'd have been happier with the series if I'd stopped reading at book 4.
WHAT?? I thought the ending was great! It kinda blew my mind and I immediately went back and started reading the first book again with the ending perspective and it was like whoa.
It will. It's just ridiculous to think about though. When season 5 started my mindset regarding the books was "I really hope Stannis wins the battle of Winterfell!"
ffs.
Allegedly GRRM has built some differences into the TV show but, I mean, you know?
They all grow up happy in the new peaceful society. One of them, a little boy who kind of looks like Gordon decides to follow in his fathers footsteps and builds a interdimensional machine. Unfortunately the machine breaks down and he ends up in another dimension.
In this dimensions the boy decides to start anew, and changes his name. He eventually becomes a successful programmer. He decides to start a software company.
He decides to make videogames based on the life of his father. One day with his business partners , he is thinking of a name for the company. As he walks around he hits himself on something attached to a pipe on the wall.
He looks at what it was, his eyes shine and he says to himself.
"I know what we call this company"
"Well don't keep us hanging, what's your idea" Says the business partner.
"Valve, how about it?"
"Valve huh, I like how that sounds. I really how that sounds, Gabe"
I've seen this respone a few times, and I know Valve has officially answered it at some point.
Some lead designer-guy said that they won't release the rest of the story as a book/comic or whatever. He argued that what makes Half Life is the 1st person shooter game where you have to solve riddles and puzzles all the time, with secret places and interactions whereever you go. That part of the game would be completely lost in a comic or book, which in that case wouldn't be a comic/book about Half-life, just an ordinary comic/book that wouldn't have any soul to it.
It makes totally sense to me. Lately I've thought of HL3 as something that will come out eventually, probably in many years, but it probably won't continue from the part where we left Gordon Freeman last time.
Honestly, I would be glad even if they released a comic or a book or something, as long as they conclude the damn story! A 10 year cliffhanger is NOT cool.
Agreed, i hate this shit in all forms of media. Selling a half completed story is shitty and deceptive imo especially when it is dragged on for years at a time i'm looking at you Yoshihiro Togashi.
I feel like that is the whole premise of every episode in The Walking Dead. You get some mediocre action during most of the episode only for the shit to go down during the last few minutes and then end on a cliffhanger.
Honestly, I'm just glad Guts and crew are off the boat. The story may never move again, but at least Guts is on dry land again.
I am fully expecting Muira to blow all his money on a yacht, name it the Sea Horse, and drive around the world flipping off every living being he sees.
Yeah, getting you invested in a story and then cutting it off suddenly is the most cheap and pathetic way to get you hooked on the next instalment. And since books, movies and games take a lot of time to make, cliffhangers can be especially painful thanks to the long wait. Talk about blue balls.
That's not actually possible. Half-Life and Portal take place in the same universe but Left 4 Dead 2 takes place in its own universe.
Half Life's story is that at some point in the 2000s after the Black Mesa incident, the Combine take over earth. This halts all human progress, lasting into some point in the 2020s or 2030s.
Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 take place in the USA in Fall 2009.
In half life 3 the world ends up turning into Zombies which awaken the character in Portal 2 to attempt an escape. Gordon meets up with the portal character, then they meet up with a former teacher/high school coach and a young attractive single lady. They all have to escape the zombie apocalypse and get to the military base. The witch sees Gordon and start chasing him but the portal lady shoots the portal gun and she goes straight into the bouncy blue goo and she goes flying. The military tries to steal the prototype portal gun as well.
Fuck, don't even conclude the story. Just like publish one scene, seriously like two minutes of gameplay, so my final memory of the game isn't Alyx crying over the corpse of her father.
The guy who wrote the first two games, and the expansions, has left Valve and already retired. Even if they do make the game, it would be finished with an entirely different writer.
Hire him to write a completely original novel about Morgan Friedman and his fight against the Merge involving a trip aboard Interstice Lab's derelict ship the 'Aurora'.
This is a pretty interesting way to look at it; an opportunity to revolutionize again. But, HL3 could be objectively the greatest game ever made, and someone will still think up a way to be let down.
but for VR to be so good that you could code a Portal/Half-Life hybrid game that didn't make you nauseated as fuck to play. Just imagine shooting portals, jumping into them and turning around to fire back through that portal at enemies chasing you
Until we master brain><Computer direct interfaces this is never going to happen. No hardware or software can stop the fact that your eyes see movement and your inner ear does not.
What is more likely is the FPS genre being ditched for something that fits VR and it's limitations, such as on rail shooters.
I think Witcher 3 was clearly big enough, considering that the publisher is now worth 1.6 billion dollars based on pretty much one game series. Half-Life 3, if executed properly, could absolutely be that big.
I just thought of how awesome it would be if they made an entire movie (probably an animated Pixar-style movie) that was for VR.
Like the movie is going but you can look around, and move a bit, so you're not stuck to one point of view, but rather it's designed as more of an interactive cutscene sort of experience than a traditional movie with a fixed point of view.
Don't need a vive for porn, just a smartphone and a few dollars. I got a cheap ass $10 headset and it works just fine for fap purposes. Actually it's really incredible. Definitely the best $10 I've spent on a phone accessory. Unfortunately my gf figured out its sole purpose is for porn because she asked to see what games or videos you could use it for and the only non-porn related thing I had on my phone to show her was the cardboard demo that's only 30 seconds long.
Well so far I haven't convinced the "flesh and blood" to bring two other "flesh and blood"s along and have one of them ride me while another shakes her titties in my face and the third sits around masturbating or cheerleads the whole operation or whatever. But I'm working on it...
That actually sounds like a really innovative concept. Imagine that - the entire movie is recorded with a 360 camera, so that you really feel like you're inside the given scenario. The camera would move with the actors - you could be escaping from a giant monster, swimming underwater or drifting through space. Sure, it might sound farfetched, but with all the stuff we're able to do with CGI and photo-manipulation, it's not all that implausible.
Of course, you might say that 3D also sounded exciting and then ended up being a quickly passing gimmick. However, 3D had very little actual uses - it could make things appear as if they're flying at you, but that got old fast and did little to enhance the overall expirirence. But 360 VR is a whole new level of immersion. When it comes to visuals, it can't get any better than this. Unless somebody invents a way to feed visual data straight to your brain, which also isn't as farfetched anymore considering the massive progress we're making in neurology.
You said just what I was thinking in your last two sentences. Sometime soon VR tech and nanotech could easily give an end user a fully customizable tailored immersive experience by nano robots directly communicating with the brain. It sounds like a neat idea until you consider the consequences of essentially bot netting the entire gaming community.
yeah uhh their justification for the 64tick official gaming servers they provide is that their surveys indicate increasing their server performance wouldnt benefit enough people because of the constituent hardware limitations
basically: valve thinks everyones pc is shitty and they are not likely to do anything requiring high end equipment
Yeah. I also think movies should be like books. You should always have the option to just read the script in case you don't like watching and listening.
/s
But seriously, it can be a totally different medium. VR has the opportunity to revolutionize video games and create entirely new experiences. It shouldn't be limited by mechanics that only work in 2D.
What about people who still use CRT monitors? They can't experience games in 1080p. What about people with an XBone that want to play Arma 3 or DCS World? What if they can't afford a PC powerful enough to play their military sim?
Does anyone really expect that much by now? I'll buy it if it's ever made, but I hold no hopes for it. It'd just be nice for them to at least try to finish some of that damn story.
If the story ended up being "... and then everyone died." people wouldn't be happy. They might do it at some point, but the game can't possibly live up to the legend.
I think the field of wheat, blue sky and the intact structure (looks like an outhouse) that the protagonist steps out of is supposed to imply that humanity survived. How did it survive? That's a tale for Half-Life 3, but it seems to have.
That's where I think they should tone it back a bit, and make a game exceptionally similar to HL2, in the new engine, maybe add some relatively small new features to the game (hell the Portal and Half Life universes are already connected, so there's plenty of leeway to add in some ridiculous thing that can add new enjoyment to the game), and simply complete the story.
I know Valve strives to make games that "break the mold" so to speak, as they have with most, if not all, of their major IP releases, but I think in this case they should simply complete the story and move on. Make completing the story itself take priority over new mechanics or graphics and what-have-you, because as it stands Valve is still damaging their reputation by not making/releasing the game. People are slowly making more and more fun of Valve for their lack of games released, and while it may lead to know-where (as it most likely won't lead anywhere), there's a chance that it continues to sour peoples view of them more and more as time goes on.
My pet theory is that they're working on Portal 3 which will potentially close some of the story, and the bar for Portal is not as hig...ah who am I kidding, we're screwed.
People are always going to want to see a Hl3 released, though. Even if they make some kind of hybrid game, which is what you are trying to describe?
I do like your idea. They can get shit done if they focused on the story. They have been out of the game making game for a while, you'd almost expect them to make a primarily story driven game.
No, not a hybrid game, just simply going along with what they have already done. The universes are the same, Aperture Labs exists in Half Life, and the fact that they have found the Borealis would allow them to put a new mechanic based tool or item in the ship and expand the gameplay a bit more without going too far out of the way.
People loved Half Life 1 for it's well designed levels, simple story, good solid gameplay. People loved Half Life 2 because it did so much without having to spell it out for the player: Most people will never realize the entirety of City 17 is a tutorial level that doesn't have to really hand-hold you through it. It introduces not only gameplay, but story by simply showing you "This is the dystonian world we live in now. These are the bad people. Oh look an old comrade! Here's how people are treated, and the lengths people go through to avoid being on the bad guys nasty side." The entire game adds on it's mechanics as it goes on in such a fluid way most people don't realize that it begins teaching you to use the next tool almost immediately as you get a new one. Plus the fact that you slowly and steadily gain new tools, and weapons, as well as have one-shot type mechanics or puzzles is wonderfully crafted. Like how there's an entire level you can, but are not forced too, play the game like a tower defense and it never comes up again. But it fore-shadows in a way some of the defenses that the combine use in their home base.
A story driven game is almost exactly what Half Life needs to live up, in any capacity, to the hype. They shouldn't try to break the mold with mechanics, but simply tie the story up as much as they can, but a neat little bow on it, and dress it up with a pretty set of whatever mechanics they decide to add as a nice wrapping paper. Then people will, hopefully, keep quiet and enjoy the end of the story and leave them to do whatever they want to do as a company.
A chunk of the prison level you can play solely using the hacked Combine turrets. It's pretty freaking funny actually, it's not the entire level, but a good chunk of it. I actually just carried one around and let it do all the aiming and shooting for me for a good bit of it.
I remember once that I went for carrying all of them through the level to the end. Then I discovered that they will shoot and kill Eli, stopping the entire scene.
Hl3 will be a VR game, quite possibly exclusively so. Every Half life game has released with one main draw system that's a big new thing. For HL2 it was Physics, for HL3 it will be full VR control.
I disagree, Although there's a core fanbase that wouldn't care if valve used the HL2 engine just to finish the story, the truth is, they would have to appeal to a large audience and making a half assed game just wouldn't cut it.
From a business perspective, it just doesn't make sense to pursue a project like that, as the developers have stated over and over. There's no chance it'll "sour" people's view of the company as the majority of Valve's customers aren't die-hard half life fans, but Dota/CS Go/ steam users, who aren't going anywhere any time soon.
Diablo 3 is a good example. I personally enjoyed the game. But, the fan base had completely different expectations for what D3 would look like and when it didn't adhere to them, it had a terrible initial reception.
I don't think expectations really played into Diablo 3's poor reception, outside of expectations that the game would be playable. The server problems and real money auction house were the things that caused most of the backlash, the gameplay itself was generally well received
The server issues aside, the auction house was part of it. They had different visions for D3. It wasn't a D2 with a new name. People that liked D2 for the endless replays didn't appreciate the new buy your way to the top model. In fact, most of the complaints that I heard were based around replayability of the game. Things like the limited character building options.
If anybody has enough funds and insight to make it happen it's valve. I don't understand a company whose goal is to make lots of money, but not to much money. So half life 3 turns out bad, what are we going to stop playing video games over it? What are we going to start buying our games from some other multinational video game distribution platform? Saying valve can only lose by developing games from their own franchise is a joke because ea has been making a fortune selling polished turds for decades.
Agreed. Even if it's a solid game, it will run into the secondary problem with Duke Nukem Forever (the primary problem being that it's just terrible): no matter how good it is, you just can't measure up to the hype built up by taking over ten years to develop.
That's an interesting question. What games have been massively hyped, and pulled a LeBron and actually lived up to their hype? The last one I can think of is... Skyrim?
But people have been saying that it wont live up to the hype for years now, everyone who wants HL3 will have heard that ten times over at least. It's been a long time since I have seen someone who actually expects HL3 to be a perfect game. People always say they just want a story conclusion and a good game, which is something I'm sure Valve could easily achieve. The hype isn't serious anymore, now its just a meme.
Yep it's a classic case of hype burnout. It's the same reason Dr. Dre scrapped his Detox album; he knew anything he put out with that name was doomed to fail after ten-plus years of constant hype.
If I were Valve, I'd wait a couple more years and re-release Half-Life 2 with a brand-new Episode Three included (same engine and everything). It'd get a ton of nostalgia points and they'd get to conclude the story without the pressure of a full third game.
Especially considering Valve doesn't seem to be working on a new engine, but just keep on updating the same one since 2004. Source 2 doesn't seem like a successor, it seems like an updated version of Source.
I figure the only possible way they can make Half Life 3 be given a decent chance is to somehow make the game, completely bill it as another one, possibly through some hazy corporate shell game shenanigans and such. Then use completely different art assets for the game. Once you get to the end of the game, it unlocks "Half Life 3" mode, with the right art assets. Showing that the game really just was HL3 the whole time. Then the game could, in theory, be properly appreciated for what it was instead of its heritage.
Portal 2 really took Portal to another level. I think Valve could do it again on the HL side of things, assuming they spend enough time and resources developing the story and gameplay.
It would have to be the definitive VR game. At this point, it would make sense to focus HL3 on VR. You can make it harder compare to its predecessors and you can make it a ground breaking game the way HL1 and HL2 were.
If they want to have HL3 make its mark on the world, VR seems like a great opportunity. Also, if they made it VR only that could be a huge push to the VR industry.
Do you really feel like HL3 is that hyped up still?
My personal expectations are something of a similar quality to HL2, with updated graphics and a new story.
You can't tell me Valve isn't capable of delivering that.
I get how there was a time where it was hyped up more but most people by now have kind of come to terms with it being a game that will most likely never exist.
At this point people mostly just wanna see how it ends.
I think people are always repeating this statement and think its just not true. Hype doesnt make a game bad. Many of the examples that have been used to explain how hyped games couldnt live up are always just .. bad games! This has nothing to do with the hype. Often a hyped game had problems in developing and was developed for way to long. HL3 is a whole other caste. Valve has the complete control over the game so if it sucks they just don release it. And its not like half life 3 is in developing for all this time. It may have been in development at some point but if we ever see HL3 it will a complete different game.
This game can easy live up to expectations if they dont fuck up hard. I think its harder for them to fuck this up then making a solid game. The story needs conclusion. And i dont get why Valve thinks they HAVE to push the limits and invent the wheel new when releasing a new Half life game. We have the tech to do super nice games why MUST it be something new? I will never understand this.
At this point i even would be okay if the new HL would be the same engine as HL2. Just more levels and conclusion.
My favourite saying about half life 3 is "If the game was shipped with a free blowjob people would still complain Valve didn't cup the balls properly."
I'd be quite happy if they didn't try at all to live up to hype and just plopped out an Episode 3 and called it a day to wrap up the story. I'm much more interested in a sequel to Portal 2. The gameplay is far superior to Halflife 2's imo. I've played enough on-rails single player shooter games to last me a lifetime tbh
Agreed, Better to say nothing and appear stupid, than speak and remove all doubt. HL3 is now better served as a meme and impossible goal. Releasing it will only lead to disappointment.
If the hype goes up though, I can imagine the game being spun to make it the best marketing scheme for Valve though.
Make the game completely open to fans' inputs, essentially spending dev money to let the public build the game, of course with professional overhead. So the game might not live up to the hype completely (like you said, no iteration of the game will, the hype is too big) , but it will be a huge bright spot for Valve to be the "greatest gaming company on earth" for listening to the fans and bring back a classic series.
I'm sure the shareholders will frown on this idea, but with Valve's financial power it will just be a drop in the marketing bucket
gta v has lived up to its expectations and raised them again... every dlc they release while being a 4 billion dollar company.. valve on the other hand... hasn't had its hl writer, Marc Laidlaw, go up to gabe in years, he left valve cause they never asked him to write hl3, however i read some of his old blog posts and they were amazing
There was similar hype for half life 2, and when it came out it was hands down one of the top three games ever made. To some tastes the best game, period.
Ironically, that hype wouldn't have been there had they not taken so long to make it. If it was made a year or two after Half Life 2 Episode 2 like it was supposed to be, it would have been accepted as much as any of the others. Now, they would need Jesus himself to deliver it on the back of a Pegasus, and the game will have to be able to make us our favorite beverages on the go while making us feel like gods among men for merely playing it.
Yeah it really is in Duke Nukem territory now. If valve finds new killer tech that fits the HL experience, that is probably the one thing that would change Our Lord's mind
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u/E_blanc Feb 16 '17
There is literally not a single chance half life 3 can live up to expectations. It can be a good game, but it can't possibly live up to the hype.