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Valve Explains Why Half-Life 2: Episode 3 Was Never Made
- Thread starter Deleted member 18944
- Start date
So basically, they wanted to do something great, but lost motivation after some failures. I guess That's life. Half life.
Doesn't make half life, starts copying whatever other genre is hot at the moment to make money.
Noice.
Noice.
I think Episode 1 and 2 were supposed to push content delivery forward via the Episodic game approach. That obviously didn't work for Valve (and generally for the industry with a couple of notable exceptions).
So this will be the very last Half-Life game until something else revolutionary like VR comes about that they want to push forward?
Half-Life is dead again, long live Half-Life
Half-Life is dead again, long live Half-Life
Seems so. Don't think we're getting HL3 until Gabe is done wanking around with "brain interfaces".
I'm done with this series.
Nonsense answer. Episode 2 literally ended on a cliffhanger and Valve/Gabe Newell talked quite a bit openly about their plan of concluding the story with Episode 3 after the release of The Orange Box.
Even after the explanation from them, people still dont get it
They havent been sitting on their arses doing nothing all this time
They wanted to make Episode 3 the conclusion to the storyline.
It couldnt have been a game just like Episode 1 or 2, it has to be something special, that pushes the media forward
You guys will get that with Half Life 3 in VR some years from now
They havent been sitting on their arses doing nothing all this time
They wanted to make Episode 3 the conclusion to the storyline.
It couldnt have been a game just like Episode 1 or 2, it has to be something special, that pushes the media forward
You guys will get that with Half Life 3 in VR some years from now
What was Half Life 2: Episode 2's big innovation? I'm lost on how that is a reason they stopped there
Couple that with fucking people they told were going to get an ending so they invested in the product and got no ending... yeah I don't think this is a great answer.
Hope they figure out their future better than they have the past near-decade where they haven't made a campaign.
Couple that with fucking people they told were going to get an ending so they invested in the product and got no ending... yeah I don't think this is a great answer.
Hope they figure out their future better than they have the past near-decade where they haven't made a campaign.
It sounds like Nintendo's reasoning (see also: excuse) for why they don't make a new F-Zero, they can't think of anything new to bring to the table with the series so they just shelve it instead. I don't necessarily buy it or think it's a good reason.
They do, but as you can see in this thread, for some reason people simply ignores it and tries to come up with some conspiracy theory or "they had problem developing episode 3". I don't know why people can't seem to just accept that they didn't wanted to make it.
They've released bad, universally underwhelming titles and content since stopping Half Life in 2007 (which they felt fine making Episode 2 for despite no "it needs to raise the bar" crap answers, and they very publicly said Episode 3 was coming back then before they just ditched it for now 13 years). They also released Portal 2 just fine. This is just an excuse that doesn't hold water to what the truth of their output shows:
Episode 2 is the best half life game and I'd be hard pressed to say it really pushed tech forward. If that truly is the answer, I'm disappointed. So few of the best games of all time were technologically incredible leaps for the medium at the time of their release when I think back on my favorites, in fact. A disappointing trap to fall into.
That's such a dumb reason honestly.
"Half-Life games can only be made when they push tech forward"
Like, why? There's a ton of fans who just wanted an ending and cared little for whatever technological thingamajig you weren't able to come up with. Sound kinda self-important.
"Half-Life games can only be made when they push tech forward"
Like, why? There's a ton of fans who just wanted an ending and cared little for whatever technological thingamajig you weren't able to come up with. Sound kinda self-important.
This is a really wise explanation of why Valve did what they did.
Thanks :) I think being there helped glean some perspective.
I think that's the problem: Only few actually care about that in most game development studios. It was only going to happen if the technical and market ambition was there, and after Episode 2 they started shifting to other ideas as soon as they started getting non-validating feedback or through series of it.
Marc Laidlaw probably had the outline ready for years. Even if he didn't, Epistle 3 is authentic as fuck for the storyline.
But honestly this isn't really news, and IGN hasn't really made news. We already had accounts of Gabe suggesting that people could freely begin development and prototype it and that after a while there just weren't internal interest in continuing Half Life and then once that bubble burst there didn't seem to rise an emergent interest in going back.
Why did they make crap like Artifact then...?
They've had numerous crappy monetization scheme projects and failed ideas, certainly some that don't look like noble problem solvers.
lol nah dude they were probably just burnt out on half life and didn't want to make it
The whole "game as episodes" thing was a really new, early-DLC-era approach to making and distributing content. The innovation wasn't 100% in the game in that case.
This reminds me of Nintendo's "Well, why would we make a new F-Zero? What else is there to do with it that hasn't already been done?"
Sigh.
If they were interested in that distribution model, then actually completing the project they set out to make would be an important part of it. They talked about being able to alter their game during development based on how people played/enjoyed the early episodes, stuff like that. They never even got around to exploring what would have made the episodic model interesting or innovative.
That is what you get when you are a company like valve who's main interest is to make ground breaking entertainment that always pushed the medium forward. You can't really lower the bar for yourself just to satisfy fans and I totally understand their point of view on this, every studio wants their next game to be a slam success, but often don't have the resources to cut projects that clearly don't deliver and meet their own expectations.
After Episode 2 it was clear that the model wasn't working and the industry was already moving away from it. They wisely cut their losses.
If it was just Half-Life 3 then it wouldn't have been such a big deal. They sold Half-Life Episode 1 with the promise of Episode 2 and 3. Then sold Episode 2 with the promise of Episode 3. The whole point of the episodic nature was to get the games to consumers faster and it's now 10+ years later.
IIRC, after Episode 2 they did a lot of press that was like "Well, this is dumb and hard. We're moving on!"
Here's the thing though. They kinda promised just 3 episodes, and they had a cliffhanger, and Epistle 3 definitively ends the "Half Life 2 Episodes Saga". All they had to do was spend a year or two and make the last game, then move on. Instead they started doing other shit, didn't go back and eventually ended up almost not making video games for a number of years.
If all they cared about was innovation they wouldn't co-opt Half Life into their big VR blowout.
Honestly this feels like nonsense. Whatever you wanna say Valve.
You could have just finished the damn story.
You could have just finished the damn story.
I always find it interesting that Valve always frames the decision of whether or not to make a new Half-Life game as "must be innovative and fresh" or "churning out sequels because we're cynical bastards," as if to say there's no point if there isn't some technical or gameplay wizardry going on. The idea of finishing the story, or even considering the story as something other than a driver of/backdrop for innovative gameplay, seems totally foreign to Valve. This is weird to me when the story and characters are a big reason why people wanted a new Half-Life. It also implies to me that Valve doesn't really think of storytelling as a vital artistic endeavor on the same level as gameplay or technical prowess.
But yeah, this isn't exactly new, though I don't know if Valve have been this explicit about their reasons before now.
But yeah, this isn't exactly new, though I don't know if Valve have been this explicit about their reasons before now.
