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"The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx" by Geoff Keighney is available now
- Thread starter Deleted member 2840
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I just finished reading it , wow took me 2 hours.
basically, they claims that most of their cancelled projects is due to the broken Source Engine 2, but the engine is fine and stable now. At the end of the documentary, they seems to imply they are working on a hardware, possibly a better VR headset in the future.
It has tons of spoilers for Half-Life: Alyx so beware
they also said they originally want Half-Life VR to be a mere 5 hours experience with Half-Life 2 assets, and they removed a mini shooting game with reused Half Life 2 assets for The Lab VR. Also bunch of beta videos, concept arts, idea and they also mentioned that the original protagonist for HL Alyx was a new female character (her model was used in the game but for shadow).
basically, they claims that most of their cancelled projects is due to the broken Source Engine 2, but the engine is fine and stable now. At the end of the documentary, they seems to imply they are working on a hardware, possibly a better VR headset in the future.
It has tons of spoilers for Half-Life: Alyx so beware
they also said they originally want Half-Life VR to be a mere 5 hours experience with Half-Life 2 assets, and they removed a mini shooting game with reused Half Life 2 assets for The Lab VR. Also bunch of beta videos, concept arts, idea and they also mentioned that the original protagonist for HL Alyx was a new female character (her model was used in the game but for shadow).
Its probably related to Machine Brain Interface. Its a thing GabeN talks a lot about (and that they are researching on there I think?).
I wrote up some of Keighley's biggest reveals:
More here:
arstechnica.com
More here:
Valve secrets spill over—including Half-Life 3—in new Steam documentary app
No VR headset is required to dive into this $10 multimedia explosion.
arstechnica.com
In their interview for Edge magazine, they confirmed more hardware on the way. Also the topic of Steam hardware for the lounge etc:
I've just finished reading it all. Absolutely amazing to read how the culture at Valve evolved over the years.
In esseance, it sounds like it was down to the scale of the engine. Numerous teams had innovative ideas that they wanted to push, but the engine wasn't there to support it all. That said, the working culture with a leaderless enviroment also caused some issues. While I agree having no decider can greatly improve innovation, sometimes you someone to give the final push. It reads like they won't change to something like that, but at least they are aware of the difficulty this sort of enviroment can bring.
Lastly, with the engine fully done, now they have the ability to continue or spin up lots of new projects that they always wanted to produce. It'll be exciting to see what things they create next.
In esseance, it sounds like it was down to the scale of the engine. Numerous teams had innovative ideas that they wanted to push, but the engine wasn't there to support it all. That said, the working culture with a leaderless enviroment also caused some issues. While I agree having no decider can greatly improve innovation, sometimes you someone to give the final push. It reads like they won't change to something like that, but at least they are aware of the difficulty this sort of enviroment can bring.
Lastly, with the engine fully done, now they have the ability to continue or spin up lots of new projects that they always wanted to produce. It'll be exciting to see what things they create next.
Thanks to the latest edition of Geoff Keighley's Final Hours documentary series, The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx (which is excellent, by the way), we now know details of some of the games Valve worked on and canceled in the last 10 years or so. And yes, they include third entries for Half-Life and Left 4 Dead. From IGN:
But before you get too despondent:
More from my reading of the documentary so far:
But before you get too despondent:
More from my reading of the documentary so far:
- Valve was working on Half-Life 2: Episode 3 in 2008, but was struggling to innovate in gameplay, problems that were exacerbated by the Source engine. Eventually, the team working on that was called in to finish Left 4 Dead and then work on Left 4 Dead 2. Meanwhile, some of the programmers took that time to build a new engine that could be ready for when the company returned to Half-Life. And thus Source 2 was born.
- In summer 2010, as an internal demonstration of Source 2, the plantation from the Swamp Fever campaign in Left 4 Dead 2 was rebuilt in the new engine. There's a short video of the demonstration in The Final Hours.
- Left 4 Dead 3 was in development in 2013 with a team of nearly 30 people.
- As part of Halo-Life 3, the team ported 350 "entities" (characters, objects, and other files) from Half-Life 2 to Source 2.
- The IGN article is a little misleading. Frank Sheldon was not scanned for Half-Life 3. He was scanned in 2010, long before the Half-Life 3 mentioned in the documentary.
- To quote Dave Speyrer, who headed up the HL3 team. "There was no lighting solution, no save and restore, no visibility solution. A huge amount of tech was needed and we honestly didn't get very far."
- There are screenshots of A.R.T.I. in the documentary. It is adorable and definitely reminiscent of Minecraft.
- There are even pages from a work-in-progress script for A.R.T.I.
- According to a timeline in the documentary:
- RPG started development in spring 2012 and lasted until late summer 2014.
- Half-Life 3 was spring 2013 to early summer 2014.
- Left 4 Dead 3 was from about the same time Half-Life 3 started but was paused a little sooner, spring 2014.
- A.R.T.I. was late 2013 all the way into summer 2017.
- Borealis VR was early 2015 to early winter 2015.
- HOT DOG was fall 2015 to early 2016
"The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx" by Geoff Keighney is available now
As shown by our Doritos resident Geoff Keighley I am so incredibly hyped about this, not only because it’ll show a lot of stuff about the development of Alyx itself but because it’ll apparently also talk a little about what projects Valve has been working on for the previous 10 years.
www.resetera.com
I think these things are being discussed in this thread.
I mean not just that ARTI sounds great, so did Borealis VR aaaaa VALVE.I will forever mourn the loss of Left 4 Dead 3. Damn you Valve!
I swear I'd get a job there just to play these games.
In the interactive documentary, Jeremy hints that the Index is 'two years old technology' by this point, and that "the push into VR, and perhaps other types of hardware, will continue". They are definitely talking about VR. But that might also be part of the brain-computer interfaces thing that Newell is talking about.
This is really fucking funny
Releasing HL Alyx likely just made this guys year.
OP
OP
Finally got the time to go through.
What an amazing read, really great insight into such a secretive company. Also full of hope.
BUT you got me with your cheeky Headcrab jumpscare Geoff Keighley , so I had to give it a thumbs down review, not recommended on my Curator Page, refunded the game and burnt my HDD.
What an amazing read, really great insight into such a secretive company. Also full of hope.
BUT you got me with your cheeky Headcrab jumpscare Geoff Keighley , so I had to give it a thumbs down review, not recommended on my Curator Page, refunded the game and burnt my HDD.
OP
OP
Oh yeah nice jab at Artifact. Its release date in 2018 is never shown on these graphs, lol. Only the announcement.
Really nice to have some closure on what's been going on at Valve. Really seemed like an era of growing pains and wanting to spread themselves too thin and work on too many things at once. A few of those projects were shelved straight up because Source 2 wasn't finished. Now that it is, I wonder if those are what's coming next. Not super sold on that idea of Half-Life 3 to be perfectly honest but they wouldn't release it if they weren't happy with it if this 10 years of nothing was anything to go by.
It's kinda crazy how little of what was revealed in this project has permeated to other parts of the web. No-one seems to be talking about this. Am I just not seeing it? Like we just learned about multiple cancelled Valve games. Maybe people don't care that much anymore.
Im surprised I didn't see a thread either, but maybe it was just what we all assumed? They were working on stuff and when it doesn't work out they don't release it. To be fair valve has been absent for more than a complete console generation.
Yeah, a lot of people have moved on from being interested in Valve's game output
Some of the most interesting takeaways I had from reading this:
- Hearing someone tested positive for COVID and they spent the last few weeks developing it remotely was interesting.
- Axe RPG could have been cool. Hell an RPG about a cast of Dota heroes could have been really cool. Given their abilities with the lore and presentation in Artifact, I think they could have easily made something compelling there. Maybe make something involving Axe, Sorla Khan, and Disruptor (Axe's cousin).
- The Minecraft-like project looked weird, and I'm not sure how that would have turned out honestly.
- The replayable version of Half-Life 3 being cancelled was probably for the better. I can't see that kind of thing working out well with Half-Life, but I could be wrong.
- I'd like to see another Left 4 Dead but I definitely agree with the idea of bringing out when they have something truly new for it.
- The approach of Alyx being announced late to avoid getting Valve timed, was a good one. While it was frustrating to not hear anything about Half-Life for years, having it be announced and actually release on the promised date was really cool, and really rare for Valve. The last time I remember something like that happening was for Left 4 Dead 2.
- I had wondered before reading this if Prospero was maybe resurrected and one of the cancelled games, but I guess not. One day I'd like to hear more about Prospero. For those that don't know about Prospero: https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Prospero
- Pretty much the first thing established in the storyline was the G-man being in the vault, and the objective being to go free him. The Gordon fakeout wasn't added until really late in development.
- We had already seen some of the evolution of Jeff before this, but the whole chapter on him was really neat. I liked that we got to see an animated prototype of the Combine robot version of Jeff. Ultimately the version we got was definitely the right decision though.
- Gabe was on board with the change in Eli Vance's fate. I thought his initial reaction to that would have been a lot different.
- I still think after reading all that, Half-Life 3/whatever Gordon's next adventure is, will come sooner rather than later, like within the next two years. That ending of Alyx pretty clearly stated "It's coming", with literally handing you the crowbar as Gordon.
- We had already seen some of the evolution of Jeff before this, but the whole chapter on him was really neat. I liked that we got to see an animated prototype of the Combine robot version of Jeff. Ultimately the version we got was definitely the right decision though.
- Gabe was on board with the change in Eli Vance's fate. I thought his initial reaction to that would have been a lot different.
- I still think after reading all that, Half-Life 3/whatever Gordon's next adventure is, will come sooner rather than later, like within the next two years. That ending of Alyx pretty clearly stated "It's coming", with literally handing you the crowbar as Gordon.
- Hearing someone tested positive for COVID and they spent the last few weeks developing it remotely was interesting.
- Axe RPG could have been cool. Hell an RPG about a cast of Dota heroes could have been really cool. Given their abilities with the lore and presentation in Artifact, I think they could have easily made something compelling there. Maybe make something involving Axe, Sorla Khan, and Disruptor (Axe's cousin).
- The Minecraft-like project looked weird, and I'm not sure how that would have turned out honestly.
- The replayable version of Half-Life 3 being cancelled was probably for the better. I can't see that kind of thing working out well with Half-Life, but I could be wrong.
- I'd like to see another Left 4 Dead but I definitely agree with the idea of bringing out when they have something truly new for it.
- The approach of Alyx being announced late to avoid getting Valve timed, was a good one. While it was frustrating to not hear anything about Half-Life for years, having it be announced and actually release on the promised date was really cool, and really rare for Valve. The last time I remember something like that happening was for Left 4 Dead 2.
- I had wondered before reading this if Prospero was maybe resurrected and one of the cancelled games, but I guess not. One day I'd like to hear more about Prospero. For those that don't know about Prospero: https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Prospero
Just watched this summary on some of the unfinished products. The way he talks about them being cancelled, it seems like it was often a very technical reason and not anything beyond that, like 'x couldn't be figured out with Source 2' and not 'the game was boring'. Assuming that's true, I wonder if Valve just had a lot of hypothetical savant programmers or something if any of these would have ended up being released, or if there actually were non-technical reasons for most / all cancellations.
I feel like many of people calling for Half-Life 3 all these years ain't being serious. I believe a good portion of them are just in for the joke but they have never touch Half-Life games before.
Yes, the interactive documentary indicates that a good portion of that was due to the unfinished Source 2 engine. The engine is seemingly stable now and they should be able to go forward easier.
I mean, I think everyone knew there were a slew of games that were started and never finished. Even for people who don't follow Valve and its data-mines and stuff over the years, no one though Valve literally just never worked on games for that entire time, right?