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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.
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.
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.
Could be worse. You could be spending it making dumb posts on slashdot.
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.
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.