Farewell, Episode 3

[fragger]

After all this time, I've been pretty sure that this was the case, and the video below essentially confirms it: there will never be a Half Life 2 / Episode 3. It seems Valve got in a mess with it, never got it sorted and now just have no interest in it. They're raking in the megabucks with Steam and the sales of other major games, so they aren't interested in working on the old HL franchise any more.

Nice attitude... The original Half-Life was the game that really established that company, now they can't be arsed repaying the fans who made it so by finishing off the damned story for them. It appears that they have had no intention of wrapping up the series for quite a while, but said nothing of this to any of the fans who have been waiting and hoping all this time. We've in effect just been strung along.

Looking at some of the You Tube comments for this clip, many people feel the same way I do - Episode 2 ended up in the air and I'd just like to know what happened next. Did Dr. Eli Vance survive? Who, or what, was the G-Man, and who did he answer to? What happened at the arctic research station, and how does it relate to both Black Mesa's Lambda Project and the Aperture company? We'll never know.

Neither will Valve, nor have they ever. They claim that Ep 3 was never written at all, and they themselves didn't know where the story was going to go. It's not mentioned in the clip, but I'm wondering if another factor in their decision to axe the series was that they simply couldn't figure out how to end the story so they just dropped it. Maybe they shouldn't make cliffhangers if they don't know themselves what is below the drop.

(Dripping with sarcasm) Thanks, Valve. Thanks a lot.

[LowPolyOWG]

Valve can't for whatever reason count to 3

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yep, the best we can hope for is Portal 3 that might link some things together, but considering Portal 2 ended sometime in the distant future, that might not even be a possibility. Portal being made by another team of developers, that is, I think the team that made one and two have been scattered to the winds.

[mandru]

*** After studying the material in the link (I've included below) I do hope dear reader that you will forgive me for waxing poetic ***

As it has often been noted by many of us here in these forums 'it's funny how things coincidentally happen to fall together.'  The inexplicable harmonic synergistic results that reveal themselves from the spinning and meshing of gears (within gears) of happenstance.  After encountering this thread yesterday the ever active tapestry of topic, time, and space chose to coalesce like waves depositing lost items (curiously timely jetsam? a beach comber's treasures?) on the serendipitous shores of topical dark oceans.

In my random wanderings online I happened to stumble across this earlier today from Half Life's lead writer Marc Laidlaw regarding The conclusion to Half Life 2: Episode 3.

www.imgur.com/gallery/gTJLk

It is a communication posted in the voice of Gordon Freeman.  Though he remains mute throughout the Half Life series reaching out from beyond the broken thread of continuity he evidently after all had quite a bit to say. 


*** And even now.  After several years have passed since my last involvement with the Half Life series.  I can't get the G-Man's voice (in which this post was written) out-of-my-head!    ***

[fragger]

As far as I'm concerned mandru, you can wax lyrical to your heart's content. It makes for great reading

So at least we know what happens now. It would have been nice to have played it instead of read it, but it's something.

I guess I can put my crowbar back into storage then

Or not. I might just swing it through Half-Life 2 again, all Eps. I just need to download it all from Steam (I had it on my old PC, don't have it on this one). At least it won't take as long to DL now that I have a decent connection. It literally took days last time via my old crummy access.

Old as it is now, I still love the story, characters and sheer immersion value of that game. It was something special. The graphics still hold up very well too, even after all this time. It's a pretty linear game, but given the nature of the thing and the story it pretty much has to be.

Heh, I can just see the opening of Half-Life 3 if it ever gets made. Cue the G-Man:

"Rise and shine, Ms. Vance! Rise and... shine..."

[LowPolyOWG]

Looks like Marc Laidlaw released HL3's supposed story.

[Art Blade]

 
nice new avatar, fragger 

[PZ]

 

[fragger]

Thanks Art Time for a bit of a change

[fragger]

The good news: Half-Life 2 Episode 3 may finally be realized - kind of.

The bad news: Its looking like it'll be in VR only.

I don't want to wear a bloody monitor on my face.

[Art Blade]

yeah, I came across some announcement, I think on steam.. checking right now.. OK, checked:

Notice: Requires a virtual reality headset. See the VR Support section for more info.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yep I saw this last night in the steam coming soon box and was all excited until I saw it was VR only. I don't have anything particular against VR, I just don't think it's quite mature enough yet. Not sure when it will be. I'd like to play this game but I'm not buying a VR setup just for it, and there are scant few other VR games out that I would want that would make it worth my while and money.

Penny Arcade had a comic about it today that pretty much puts a point on it,

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2019/11/22/

or if you just want to see the comic and not the whole page:

Guests are not allowed to view images in posts, please Register or Login

[Art Blade]

 

[LowPolyOWG]

Modding will be supported and I guess one of the first mods is keyboard/mouse functionality.

[Art Blade]

they'd have to mod the graphics as well, I suppose, to w0#k on a monitor. Including having to pass a system check. A "sorry, there's no 3D device connected" message and refusing to cooperate with a monitor would be a bit silly..