Ex-Valve Writer Reveals What Might Have Been Half-Life 2: Episode 3's Story (eurogamer.net)

New submitter stikves shares a report from Eurogamer: Ex-Valve writer Marc Laidlaw, who worked on Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and its episodic expansions, has published a summary of the series' next chapter on his blog. Titled, "Epistle 3," it details Gordon Freeman's next adventure. Except, likely for copyright issues, the whole story has been genderswapped. So Laidlaw's tale speaks of Gertrude Fremont, Alex instead of Alyx, Elly instead of Eli, and so on. Naturally, Laidlaw's blog is currently down due to traffic, although you can read a backup of the page on Archive.org, or on Pastebin, where the names have been corrected.

Comments

Third post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Valve can't...

It's Fan Fiction

[richy freeway]

Even if it is by one of the HL writers.

https://twitter.com/marc_laidl...

Re:It's Fan Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's the closest we're ever likely to get to closure after over a fucking decade; especially as it comes from one of the writers.

THIS is all valve had to do. Say to the community "OK we messed up we can't produce HL2EP3 or HL3 so here's the story and/or plot outline. You've got the tools and assets in the source engine, feel free to make a mod based on the story".
That is what enrages me the most about what they did, they could've let the loyal fans who BUILT the damn company by throwing money at them for HL1 finally have some closure but they strung us along for over a decade. Fuck valve. Fuck you Gaben.
We built your company, we gave you our money and our hearts and you reward us by giving us the biggest blue balls ever while raking in the cash on your stupid TF2 fucking hats.

Re:It's Fan Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

> We built your company
No you bloody didn't.

Re: It's Fan Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be worse. You could be spending it making dumb posts on slashdot.

Re: It's Fan Fiction

[DontBeAMoran]

Ah! That's never going to happen to me because you see, I... eh...

D'oh!

Re: It's Fan Fiction

[allcoolnameswheretak]

It always amazes me how most people consider reading a book, going to a theater play or to an art exhibition as profound activities worthy of spending time on, whereas playing video games is a time waster for kids.

Consider that today's video games have multi-million dollar budgets, have dozens if not hundreds of people creating unique art assets, 3D models, sounds and music for an interactive experience the player can participate in. A good video game is an agglomeration of art, music, and other cultural assets, not to mention the interactivity and direct involvement if the participant "observer", and the technical expertise and cutting edge technology that went into rendering and running such a feat of technology to bring everything together on a screen.

If you look at it this way, video games are the pinnacle of human culture and creativity. In fact, one of the best ways of spending your time.

Re: It's Fan Fiction

[zippthorne]

No, it's a story with audience participation via game elements. A story which ended on a cliffhanger in act 2. People who bought act 2 basically on spec (of the forthcomingness of the final act) have cause to feel insulted by the failure to deliver on the part of the storyteller, as they have the additional investment from the participation in the previous acts.

Re: It's Fan Fiction

[sound vision]

It could have been worse. They could have given us a bunch of shitty novelizations like what MS did with Halo.

Re: It's Fan Fiction

[Bitmanhome]

It's only a failure in technical terms. Valve promised 3 episodes and never delivered episode 3. But episode 2 actually ended that particular story arc. Valve would either need to start a new arc for episode 3, or finally start to address who and what the Combine and/or G-Man really are. They didn't want to do that, so they just bailed out of the whole thing.

Also, the introduction of the Borealis signaled some kind of crossover with the Portal universe. "Epistle 3" above completely avoided that. In fact, it reads exactly like fan fiction, completely failing to change the universe, further the main story line, or explain anything at all. It might have been an acceptable game, but really not a good continuation of the story.

Re: It's Fan Fiction

[F34nor]

He's right. People could make art but they don't.

Re: It's Fan Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

The Combine, like the minions of "hell" in Doom, are a collective of extra-dimensional beings that were subjugated into service under the Advisors via mental compulsion, much like the Ur-Quan were compelled into slavery by the Dnyarri. Later the Vortigaunts rebel, much like the Kzer-Za did.

The story behind Half-Life really isn't all that deep and mostly just rips off the story from better games.

Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[Uberbah]

Articles on HL3 invariably contain the cop-out comments that "it couldn't live up to the hype" so Valve might as well pass on it. Except that's crap - there's gaps between classic games and movies all the time but that doesn't stand in the way of them getting made. It was 8 years between the release of Deus Ex: Invisible War and Human Revolution, but that didn't stop the sequel from being a critical and financial success. Or when the thing is made, it's used as an excuse for dreck - the problem with Phantom Menace wasn't Jar Jar or Lucas's shitty directing, it's because the fanboys just couldn't be happy with any sequel. /sarcasm

No, what's happened here is that Valve has gotten fat and lazy off of Steam. Why do all the haaaard wooork of actually making something when they can just charge a percentage as a publisher? It's a shame that Valve didn't spin off it's game development into a subsidiary ten years ago, to leave it's Steam team focused on the store and a Game team to focus on Portal 3, Half Life 3, and a Portal Life to wrap up that universe.

Re:Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[shigutso]

There won't be a HL3, but yes they are still making new games. Valve released a teaser for a god damn Card Game based on Dota2 universe, that will be available in 2018.
Valve has no interest in releasing HL3, and that's why they never, ever spoke about it.
I hope I'm wrong, but probably not.

Re:Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[chihowa]

I wouldn't expect them to make HL3, even though I'd really appreciate it if they did and I don't care about it not living up to hype (and I have way more money to spend on games than I did when HL2 came out).

They left HL2 unfinished, though, and really should have released episode 3. They can even call it "Episode 4" if the number three is that objectionable!

Re:Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[chihowa]

I don't think Valve ever came up with a story that was strong enough to conclude HL2 after episodes 1 & 2...

Which is the irritating problem with following the J. J. Abrams method of story arc creation (ie. just make it up as you go along and hope that it all works out in the end). Mass Effect was a great example of this too, with its extremely half-assed conclusion to an otherwise well-written story.

Once you realize that you're going to turn a game into a franchise (when you release the sequel), come up with at least a few compelling story arcs and make sure that you keep them viable throughout the series. Be ready to wrap it up at any point, but make sure that what you're doing is actually telling a story and not just flinging bullshit. This applies to TV series, too.

Re:Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[Uberbah]

Phantom Menace was garbage, whether you're a SW fanboy or not.

Which is why I brought it up. But it sucked because Lucas sucks at writing and directing, not because "it had been toooo looong". Contrast the prequels to Force Awakens, or even better, Rogue One - good movies that came out long after the original trilogy.

I don't think Valve ever came up with a story that was strong enough to conclude HL2 after episodes 1 & 2

That's just going back to the 'can't live up to the hype' chestnut.

not to mention other games which came out after that and pushed the bar even higher, such as Mass Effect 2

Since you bring up Mass Effect, it's a good thing it didn't take EA ten years after ME3 to come out with Andromeda, or else people would have used the 'toooo looong' talking point to excuse that game's flaws.

The other problem is that a lot of people were expecting HL2:E3 as a DLC to conclude the story of HL2, so you'd have to produce this epic finale for very little financial return.

How so? Valve had a good idea on episodic content - maintain production on a franchise with more frequent but smaller releases. So they sell HL2:E3 for $25, then proceed on to Half Life 3, Episodes 1 through Whatever. This is when they should have split the company into a Game Development division and a Steam Store devision.

Re:Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[Uberbah]

Which is the irritating problem with following the J. J. Abrams method of story arc creation (ie. just make it up as you go along and hope that it all works out in the end). Mass Effect was a great example of this too, with its extremely half-assed conclusion to an otherwise well-written story.

That's why reason why if I were god of the universe I would make a mandate that all story arcs must be run past Joss Wheadon or JMS for quality control. B5 in particular had flexibility in characters and story arcs (like squishing what would have been season 4 and 5 into one when they thought it wasn't getting renewed) but the major elements were all planned out from the beginning.

Re:Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[tlhIngan]

There won't be a HL3, but yes they are still making new games. Valve released a teaser for a god damn Card Game based on Dota2 universe, that will be available in 2018.
Valve has no interest in releasing HL3, and that's why they never, ever spoke about it.
I hope I'm wrong, but probably not.

There will probably never, ever be a HL3, or a conclusion to the Half-Life series.

Pretty much all the writers for Valve have left in the past year. At least, all the writers for Half-Life. There is a very unique writing style to it that unless the new writers "get it", they're not going to duplicate. (E.g., Gordon Freeman NEVER speaks, because you're playing him. And yet, the characters act completely natural and having conversations with you, despite you never replying. That takes skill to write, especially if you want to avoid cheesy word plays around the fact you can't speak).

I also would be surprised if there weren't assets already created - plots, storylines etc - this is not a production "make it up as you go along" but is well planned out already, so HL2E3 would be a solid follow-up and probably lead to HL3. Given the writers have stayed on this long, I wouldn't be surprised if it was all laid out and ready to produce, if they ever got the OK to start development.

It really makes you wonder what's going on at Valve - you have all these game development resources available and sitting around - what are they doing? You're paying a bunch of employees to create, ...?

I imagine Steam probably takes up a lot of time, and given some of the coding blunders of recent past it probably grew a bit too big too fast for them, but I can't imagine it grew so big it consumed all their coding resources (plus, I'm sure the coders were there to create games, not what is effectively a web application, so I can't imagine they'd be happy doing that for very long). And I'm assuming the writers and everyone else wasn't sitting there doing nothing but coming up with creative ways to do the next sale event.

Re:Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[pots]

Valve could/should have gone the Gearbox route and just picked a dev to make the game on their behalf. They could still do this. They make some copout announcement: "It's time for us to acknowledge that our uncompromising pursuit of quality is just not going to allow for the development of a project so large and dear to our hearts as Half-Life 3, while maintaining the level of service that you expect from Steam. With this in mind we have reached an agreement with Dev X to complete the series in our stead. They'll be working from our notes and will have lots of input from the original Half-Life team. We think they're do a good job."

This allows Vale to rake in all that sweet licensing money, while putting no work into it themselves. It also gives them an excuse if the game doesn't live up to expectations, so the pressure's off.

Re:Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[JThundley]

My opinion is that the devs are under immense pressure to live up to the hype, which of course is compounded by their rabid fanbase. Half Life 2 being leaked to the public early was probably a huge blow to morale. That being said, I also get the desire to wanting to live up to the original hype of Half Life 2. Half Life 2 was a pretty big revolution in game quality of the time. I think they'd prefer the next Half Life to be a big game changer like this. If a Half Life 3 is ever to get made, I'd put my money on it being a VR game of some sort.

Re:Skip the 'couldn't live up to the hype' posts?

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to fire whoever is in charge of game development at Valve. He's got George Broussard syndrome.

Barney

[Kunedog]

Just announce Half Life 2: Episode Three: Blue Shift 2. You once again play as Barney, this time explaining where he was and what he was doing in Episode Two.

Everyone would love you for this, and it could be a much smaller game than a full-blown Half Life 3 if you need a stop-gap test-balloon type of title.

Sight.

[ledow]

Why the hell you think that would stop you being sued for copyright infringement, I can't fathom.

Read more in my latest book: Harriet Petter and the Quarter-blood Princess.

There's parody (e.g. Barry Trotter books) but you have to be REALLY careful even then. This guy's going to get sued.

F8ck V8lve

[Anonymous Coward]

F8ck V8vle, F8ck Gabe Newell, F8ck dota-playing lazy valve employees who won't make video games any more. F8ck valve hardware gathering dust in my drawer.

Re:F8ck V8lve

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake Vatevle?!

HL3

[Anonymous Coward]

They should just make HL3 and Portal 3 into an half-arsed open world sandbox with micro-transactional hats and be done with it. Then no one ever wants to talk about HL again.