Message To Valve

Doom · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

Oh my God, a company doesn’t give us information about a certain video game? I’m gonna cry!

Medevilae · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

Read first post.

However, this is a bit doltish. Even though there are only 2 little CONCEPT ART pictures that they gave, but Valve owes you nothing. Heck, as bad as it would be, it wouldn’t be the slightest bit “rude” if they didn’t release it at all.

Fnoigy · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

A cold shoulder is still rude whether or not you’re paying to have a conversation.

Someonerandm · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

Okay, having actually read the thing, it sounds like all you want is confirmation that they are working on Episode 3. They are. Move on.

Medevilae · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

Ok.

Let’s change the argument, then. Shall we?

PROOF! PROOF! PROOF! :rabies:

CatzEyes93 · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

:lol:

Fnoigy · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

Are they? Where did you hear this?

Jeannotvb · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

concept art is years old

hercule_poirots_nuts · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

lawn dartz wicked acez

King_Kaddo · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

Fuck Episode Three. It’s just 2 and a half year old.There are other things to wait for.
BLACK MESA
aaaaaaaaand
BLACK MESA

Eric_Fong · August 11, 2020, 4:35am

Pats catzeye93

I hear they just draw the picture just to shut us up then continues work on L4D and L4D2 that time.

Someonerandm · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

Do you really think that they’ve scrapped the Half Life series?

Exactly.

koolkalang · August 11, 2020, 4:35am

From the Marc Laidlaw vault, in the steam forums. (Marc Laidlaw is the lead writer for the half-life franchise, I think)

Here’s the thread:
https://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=920482

tl;dr

Marc Laidlaw talking about what they consider when making gameplay and the storyline work, and his restrictions for talking about ep3

Valve’s Story-Telling Process + Episode Three

Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Laidlaw

(other things tl;dr)

…You say that the consensus is that our silence regarding Episode Three is due to our inability or difficulty in writing up a suitable story for the game? I admit I find that rather perplexing. When we had completed the final story for Half-Life 2, and when we decided to under-take the prospect of delivering episodic content to our audience, we knew that moving the story along in denser packages called for a more refined process. Issues needed to be addressed. Questions needed to be addressed. Answers needed to be given. We began writing a rough draft for the Episodes in very early 2005. We had a direction we wanted to take, an overarching story we wanted to tell, and very specific questions we wanted to resolve.

Understand that telling a story in context with the gameplay we want to explore does not always work. Our medium has a great deal many more restrictions than, say, a book or a film. Books, for example, have no such external variables. With a game, you need a perfect equilibrium between the story you are telling and the gameplay you are offering. That is a complicated and ever-present task for us. We have a Bible of sorts. We know now all about the most important things in our story. So, no, in that sense I suppose we do not make it up as we go along. As I said, however, the story does not always bode well with what we want to deliver in terms of gameplay. The uncertainty is in our ability to move the greater story along in relation to that. That is where the difficulties lie.

But I am dragging on. Your fears about our ability to write and deliver the final chapter of the story for the arc are unfounded. We have had this particular story fleshed out since before Episode One was released. Our ‘silence’ as you have opted to call it has nothing to do with the story we have written.

Now, your next question. I believe I answered this before through an email. I am not certain whether that was you or not. Perhaps I am wrong. You can sort of get lost in the countless emails that arrive daily badgering you for information you just cannot divulge. Half-Life 1 is very much a part of this singular over-arching story that we are currently telling. However, I can see why a number of people may feel differently. Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 are two very different games fundamentally. There is a drastic difference in setting, characters, and technology. But they are very much directly and prominently related, and I hope that will become clearer for you as time goes on. In the end, does making such a distinction really matter? I suppose it depends on those people whose opinions on this matter are preferable to them. If people wish to see Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 as being separate story-arcs than I see very little reason to discredit them because it is ultimately irrelevant in the context of the games.

As to your third question. I am sorry, Brad, but I cannot talk about Episode Three, I am afraid. Nor do I wish to cause any confusion among the fans. We tend to confine explaining these things within the actual games as opposed to emails. In the end, they have to speak for themselves. Rest assured, however, that Episode Three is bringing to a close a great many aspects of the story that has been lingering on for the past - oh, I don’t know – decade or so. I sincerely hope that it will be worth it for you. Until then, hang on tight. I hope I have been able to calm some of your overly stimulated craniums. In the meantime, this is where I get off.[/SIZE]

Best wishes. Marc Laidlaw.

King_Kaddo · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

good man

YARO · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

Hope it doesn’t turn out like the Lost Finale…

noonem · November 24, 2018, 9:48pm

I am indeed also quite so terribly saddened by the fact which is that Valve has not chosen to show us admirers any information about this video computer entertainment game Half-Life Two: Episode Three. I shall now kill myself in protest.

geekofalltrades · November 24, 2018, 9:49pm

We don’t “deserve” news. Repeat after me: Valve doesn’t owe me shit.

King_Kaddo · November 24, 2018, 9:49pm

Valve owes us a giant front page on Steam with a big Black Mesa download link.

Grey_Acumen · November 24, 2018, 9:49pm

Yeah, i can’t help but look at this petition and go “3 years, so what? didn’t you wait 6 years for HL2?”

I mean, you’ve had episode 1 and episode 2, all they had to do was move the story forward. they didn’t need to resolve anything. We’ve just hit the peak event of the story, from here, everything needs to start wrapping up, but we have:

Borealis has been found, portal needs referenced, Eli is dead, Mossman is likely in danger, Alyx is pissed, Gman is still mysterious, Breen still might be alive in some form (as an advisor?), Advisors are getting actively dangerous, combine need defeated, helicopter needs flown, Lamaar is in space, Freeman still has all his weapons (the episodes never start you off with everything, so how do they get rid of it all?), and then on top of that Valve needs to decide exactly how to end the series while still leaving it open for future development, as it would be completely suicidal to permanently close what is effectively their biggest franchise ever.

to put simply, Valve has a shitload of things to address while writing the story for this mod, possibly even more than what ever came up during HL2, and yet they have to wrap it all up in something that should actually be about half the size of HL2? Valve is probably ALREADY wishing that they hadn’t put out those teaser images with the advisors and the borealis, because the story may need to go in an entirely different direction that what they had when they released it. Of course they don’t want to say more, and I don’t really want to hear anymore until they’re actually getting ready to release it.

Someonerandm · November 24, 2018, 9:49pm

I do suspect that Episode 3 may be quite a bit longer than the other episodes. And by quite a bit I mean a whole lot.