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[Half-Life] End of an Era

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Posts

  • ZeroczZerocz Space Cowboy In SpaceRegistered User regular
    Really, I'm glad they're still patching and supporting it. It's the way it should be.

    Also, hello to everyone who saw thread activity and is hoping for HL3 news.




    No, there isn't any.

  • Handsome CostanzaHandsome Costanza Ask me about 8bitdo RIP Iwata-sanRegistered User regular
    edited October 2019
    Yeah I've stopped hoping. Now I just know that it won't be HL3.


    Man how do you squander perhaps the greatest gaming franchise of all time because you're afraid that the next game wont be as good and innovative as the previous, what cowards. I've got news for you Valve, 100% of the games you don't ship suck ass. You didn't make a game because you didn't want half life to become a joke, which directly caused half life to become a joke. I hope they just sell off the rights to someone else because Valve as we know it is dead. This new company is Steam.

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  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    Yeah I've stopped hoping. Now I just know that it won't be HL3.


    Man how do you squander perhaps the greatest gaming franchise of all time because you're afraid that the next game wont be as good and innovative as the previous, what cowards. I've got news for you Valve, 100% of the games you don't ship suck ass. You didn't make a game because you didn't want half life to become a joke, which directly caused half life to become a joke. I hope they just sell off the rights to someone else because Valve as we know it is dead. This new company is Steam.

    The answer is "Valve is an exceedingly weird company that does what they want while giving nary a shit about what fans or the greater market wants."

    Which sometimes leads to cool things like Steam and their HR work, but sometimes leads to Steam Machines and completely dropping the ball on Half-Life or, well, any kind of game with a narrative.

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  • Handsome CostanzaHandsome Costanza Ask me about 8bitdo RIP Iwata-sanRegistered User regular
    edited October 2019
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    Yeah I've stopped hoping. Now I just know that it won't be HL3.


    Man how do you squander perhaps the greatest gaming franchise of all time because you're afraid that the next game wont be as good and innovative as the previous, what cowards. I've got news for you Valve, 100% of the games you don't ship suck ass. You didn't make a game because you didn't want half life to become a joke, which directly caused half life to become a joke. I hope they just sell off the rights to someone else because Valve as we know it is dead. This new company is Steam.

    The answer is "Valve is an exceedingly weird company that does what they want while giving nary a shit about what fans or the greater market wants."

    Which sometimes leads to cool things like Steam and their HR work, but sometimes leads to Steam Machines and completely dropping the ball on Half-Life or, well, any kind of game with a narrative.

    That's just some horseshit used to cover for themselves tbh.


    Oh really, Valve's culture is that they're so weird and unique that they don't make good things? What an amazing company!

    Cowards, the lot of them.

    Much respect to the people who still tried to make it happen from the inside though. They deserve more.


    Edit: No, what really happened is that their Steam ship came in and they realized they no longer had to do the hard thing which was make something great for the fans, who made them what they are. They are the beloved indie rock group who sell out after making it and are never the same . Fuck Valve.

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  • Smaug6Smaug6 Registered User regular

    This was probably an intern summer project that they finished testing and pushed live.

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  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Half-Life is still my favorite game of all time, and the franchise is both important to me as a game I'm very fond of, as well as a major game during some important times of my life (Mid-teens and early 20's, respectively), but I'm at the point where I'm ready to let it go. Certainly if Valve announced a HL3 I'll be glued to its development, but I'm not longer waiting around for them to do something, and I honestly doubt they ever will. (I suspect "Half-Life VR" if it ever exists, will just be a repackaged HL2). I'm not even sure a new Half-Life can be made to my expectations; the series is so tied to old, FPS tropes that making a modern entry doesn't seem feasible, but I really don't want a modernized version either.

    I'm not mad at Valve over it, though at this point in my life, getting mad about whether a videogame exists seems like not a great expenditure of my time or energy, given how many shitty things are going on, both in and out of the videogame industry. (Only so much rage to go around. :wink:)

  • -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    8 posts in the Half Life thread?!

    Awwww it’s nothing.

    This thread needs a custom ‘new posts’ message. Like “8 new (not HL3)”.

  • SmokeStacksSmokeStacks Registered User regular
    I think people would be significantly less salty about not getting Half Life 3 if Valve hadn't spent three entire games getting players to become emotionally involved in a memorable cast of characters only to leave them on such a brutal cliffhanger like the one at the end of Episode 2.

  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    It's the double edged sword of building up a fan base.

    For all the people who (not incorrectly) state "GRRM ISN'T YOUR BITCH!", the simply untold hours (and yes, dollars) spent embracing either setting comes with (imo) a reasonable expectation that the story will reach a proper conclusion.

    GoT got an ending, and even if it's one that made many unhappy, at least it exists. Whether or not the books ever get there remains to be seen, but while DEMANDS that he conclude the series are of course wildly inappropriate, the legions of fans who made the books and show a huge success, and him wildly wealthy, aren't wrong to expect better than to be left waiting for years (or forever) for the series to be finished.

    Similarly, Valve is many things to many people now, but I don't think it's controversial to say that much of that fanbase ties (in some way, at least) back to the Half Life franchise. Gabe and the Valve crew might not 'owe' us fans a conclusion, but it's rather distasteful to, as noted, end on a brutal cliffhanger and then fail to produce anything. Yes, yes, I've seen the posts here, the articles, the videos, I'm aware of How Valve Works, that progress was made, shelved, etc, etc, etc.

    But here we are, a dozen years later, resigned to never get a proper conclusion. A writer has given a translucently veiled idea of where they intended to go. Mod groups are working on building a finale of their own, though given the usual rate of progress through a volunteer group (even one full of professionals), it might be another decade before a finished product is actually ready. We chuckle and sigh and wistfully ponder what might have been.

    As usual, I'm not angry, but I am disappointed. Saddened at the unfulfilled potential. That a HL2E3 or HL3 might have been a good game, even a great one, and didn't need to shatter the gaming world with absurd innovation.

    And really, we're lying to ourselves. Every exasperated note about how there's new posts but of course no news lays bare how raw that disappointment is.

    Even when we're waxing on a meta level about the whole thing.

    ...

    :-(

    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
  • Handsome CostanzaHandsome Costanza Ask me about 8bitdo RIP Iwata-sanRegistered User regular
    I'm mad, but there are levels of mad. I'm not like, my friends were just allowed to be massacred by Turkey levels of mad, for instance.

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  • GaddezGaddez Registered User regular
    Yeah I've stopped hoping. Now I just know that it won't be HL3.


    Man how do you squander perhaps the greatest gaming franchise of all time because you're afraid that the next game wont be as good and innovative as the previous, what cowards. I've got news for you Valve, 100% of the games you don't ship suck ass. You didn't make a game because you didn't want half life to become a joke, which directly caused half life to become a joke. I hope they just sell off the rights to someone else because Valve as we know it is dead. This new company is Steam.

    The thing is, Valve didn't need to invest time or money into developing games anymore since having a virtual monopoly for close to 16 years on distribution of pc games meant they could just endlessly siv money off of sales with almost no effort on their part.

    So as galling as it is for us consumers, it makes a lot of sense that valve wouldn't give two shits about HL2 at this juncture.

  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    edited October 2019
    I would have huge concerns about Valve making HL3 at this point anyway, I really doubt they're even a company that can make a decent game anymore, at least not without adding a lot of new people to the staff. They've been almost purely a service company for several years now, not a game dev.

    Ninja Snarl P on
  • SyphonBlueSyphonBlue The studying beaver That beaver sure loves studying!Registered User regular
    I would have huge concerns about Valve making HL3 at this point anyway, I really doubt they're even a company that can make a decent game anymore, at least not without adding a lot of new people to the staff. They've been almost purely a service company for several years now, not a game dev.

    What are you talking about? They just made Artifact!

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  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    I would have huge concerns about Valve making HL3 at this point anyway, I really doubt they're even a company that can make a decent game anymore, at least not without adding a lot of new people to the staff. They've been almost purely a service company for several years now, not a game dev.

    And let's face it, Half-Life 2 has aged. A lot. The whole "holy shit, physics!" thing was very impressive in 2004, but now it's the oldest of old hats. Valve's going to have to reinvent the thing from the ground up if HL3 has any chance of getting traction among people who aren't Half-Life die-hards.

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  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    edited October 2019
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    I would have huge concerns about Valve making HL3 at this point anyway, I really doubt they're even a company that can make a decent game anymore, at least not without adding a lot of new people to the staff. They've been almost purely a service company for several years now, not a game dev.

    And let's face it, Half-Life 2 has aged. A lot. The whole "holy shit, physics!" thing was very impressive in 2004, but now it's the oldest of old hats. Valve's going to have to reinvent the thing from the ground up if HL3 has any chance of getting traction among people who aren't Half-Life die-hards.

    HL2 actually has a few tricks that are still impressive. In particular, a lot of the work with sound and echoes; I can't really think of a game which actually bothers to do echoes at all, much less gives sound actual travel time. And that sound work really adds a lot to the feel of emptiness and desolation for the game. It also still has some good setpiece battles that hold up well, even if the FPS gameplay itself is rather dated.

    I think if you took 2004 Valve and put them on HL3, they could make something just as bigtime as HL2. But that was a long time ago and I doubt they've got many of the same people around, given that those people probably wanted to keep actually making games instead of just working on Steam or TF2 hats.

    Ninja Snarl P on
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    It's not as impressive now that so many games do it, but HL2's facial animations still hold up, for the main characters anyway.

  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    The jump from Half-Life to Half-Life 2 graphics, was metal gear to sons of liberty level stuff. We'll probably never see a graphics jump like that again.

  • SorceSorce Not ThereRegistered User regular
    SyphonBlue wrote: »
    I would have huge concerns about Valve making HL3 at this point anyway, I really doubt they're even a company that can make a decent game anymore, at least not without adding a lot of new people to the staff. They've been almost purely a service company for several years now, not a game dev.

    What are you talking about? They just made Artifact!
    That's probably the best proof that they're not a game dev anymore.

    But the updates for HL/HL2 I'd imagine at this point are bugfixes (like the aforementioned upthread) or making sure the games can run in the ever-changing future/platforms. Linux, VR, 4k/8k, etc.

    sig.gif
  • SmokeStacksSmokeStacks Registered User regular
    I would be perfectly fine with Half Life 3 just being HL2: Episode 2 but with current era visuals.

    Not every game has to be a major paradigm shift.

  • vamenvamen Registered User regular
    edited October 2019
    Just give me a game totally focused on Dog, please.

    I think I mostly still want HL3 because I want to see more G-Man. His way of speaking unnerves me in the best of ways.

    EDIT - Crap. Reading through this thread made my desire for HL3 resurface, which had previously been put to bed. It also makes me want to replay the series...not HL1, it's not aged well enough. But HL2 and onward.

    vamen on
  • -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    vamen wrote: »
    Just give me a game totally focused on Dog, please.

    I think I mostly still want HL3 because I want to see more G-Man. His way of speaking unnerves me in the best of ways.

    EDIT - Crap. Reading through this thread made my desire for HL3 resurface, which had previously been put to bed. It also makes me want to replay the series...not HL1, it's not aged well enough. But HL2 and onward.

    There’s always Black Mesa for HL1 but modern.

  • ThegreatcowThegreatcow Lord of All Bacons Washington State - It's Wet up here innit? Registered User regular
    -Loki- wrote: »
    vamen wrote: »
    Just give me a game totally focused on Dog, please.

    I think I mostly still want HL3 because I want to see more G-Man. His way of speaking unnerves me in the best of ways.

    EDIT - Crap. Reading through this thread made my desire for HL3 resurface, which had previously been put to bed. It also makes me want to replay the series...not HL1, it's not aged well enough. But HL2 and onward.

    There’s always Black Mesa for HL1 but modern.

    Aye, black mesa does a darn good job at updating everything for a more modern FPS, while still holding to HL1s mechanics. Some of the voice acting is a bit hinky, but the improved animations, models and textures are definitely worth it. The only negative thing I can really say about it is the enemy AI has damn near perfect accuracy and will target you mercilessly if you're ever out in the open. It makes fighting the marines more of a chore than I ever remember in HL1. Also be aware it currently does not have the Xen chapter done at this time. The game currently ends when you finish the lambda complex and jump through the portal. The developers said they hope to have it out soonish, potentially by the end of this year or early next year.

  • AkimboEGAkimboEG Mr. Fancypants Wears very fine pants indeedRegistered User regular
    10/07 Orange Box
    11/08 Left 4 Dead
    11/09 Left 4 Dead 2
    07/10 Alien Swarm
    04/11 Portal 2
    08/12 CS:GO
    07/13 Dota 2
    04/16 The Lab
    11/18 Artifact

    With Dota Underlords and In the Valley of the Gods coming this year or next.

    They might not be making the games you want them to, but saying Valve doesn't make video games because it's been a while since HL2:EP2 is silly.
    If at all, they only started slowing down in recent years, which I feel is reasonable considering their focus on SteamVR, Vive, Index, and Linux.

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  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    L4D and CS:GO were made by teams outside of Valve.

  • BloodySlothBloodySloth Registered User regular
    I wish Alien Swarm had gotten more support. I know it was basically just a tech demo for them, but the original mod was something I put a lot of time into as a kid, and I was hoping for something of a resurgence when Valve released their version.

  • NEO|PhyteNEO|Phyte They follow the stars, bound together. Strands in a braid till the end.Registered User regular
    I wish Alien Swarm had gotten more support. I know it was basically just a tech demo for them, but the original mod was something I put a lot of time into as a kid, and I was hoping for something of a resurgence when Valve released their version.
    It sorta has, they did the ole make a standalone update version, there's now Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop. Not sure what all is different but poking at its store page says it's had an update as recent as July of this year.

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  • BloodySlothBloodySloth Registered User regular
    NEO|Phyte wrote: »
    I wish Alien Swarm had gotten more support. I know it was basically just a tech demo for them, but the original mod was something I put a lot of time into as a kid, and I was hoping for something of a resurgence when Valve released their version.
    It sorta has, they did the ole make a standalone update version, there's now Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop. Not sure what all is different but poking at its store page says it's had an update as recent as July of this year.

    Oh wow! Maybe I'll give it another whirl.

  • CanadianWolverineCanadianWolverine Registered User regular
    I wish Alien Swarm had gotten more support. I know it was basically just a tech demo for them, but the original mod was something I put a lot of time into as a kid, and I was hoping for something of a resurgence when Valve released their version.

    IIRC, they were hoping Steamworks aka the mod community was going to fill out most of the content on that one. There are a few fun campaigns to work through with friends who like team work, its extremely rough just trying to go in with the remaining randoms.

    steam_sig.png
  • ProhassProhass Registered User regular
    Playing metro exodus, glitchy as hell but just a phenomenal game, it really feels both like a spiritual successor to half-life while also completely it’s own thing. Just fantastic

  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    The good news: strong rumors of a new Half-Life game!

    The bad news:



    Oh Valve, you wacky scamps.

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  • Handsome CostanzaHandsome Costanza Ask me about 8bitdo RIP Iwata-sanRegistered User regular
    Half Life is dead and they are just grave robbing their own relative at this point.

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  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    Tyler McVicker of Valve News Network has been talking about this for a while, and had a video bringing people up to speed on the topic about a month ago.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaXGA_wSWDA

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  • AbsalonAbsalon Lands of Always WinterRegistered User regular
    edited November 2019
    set it after episode 2 god damn you

    Absalon on
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    I mean, we all knew this would happen. That if another Half-Life game were made, it would be to entice people to buy into another Valve-made ecosystem.

  • urahonkyurahonky Registered User regular
    I will buy and play the shit out of that!

  • ProhassProhass Registered User regular
    edited November 2019
    Honestly anything even a vr game is better than nothing at this point, especially in terms of maybe sparking interest and the ball rolling on something else happening again

    Prohass on
  • Linespider5Linespider5 ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGER Registered User regular
    It would be something if this new VR game is actually amazing. I don’t know if I have any capacity to expect that it, but it would be nice if Valve revealed they have been spending serious time developing something substantial after all.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited November 2019
    I'll be interested in if they can make this more appealing than the rest of the fare available right now for the platform. Hopefully they have a good pitch or hook for this thing.

    Also, could a mod kindly lock this old dusty thread now that we have an actual new game coming out.

    EDIT: New thread. Enjoy the smell.

    https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/231526/half-life-half-life-alyx-vr-exclusive-game-to-be-announced-11-19/

    Undead Scottsman on
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