Six Projects Valve Could Undertake to Avoid Making Half Life 3

Six 'great' projects to undertake to never bother with Half Life 3.

[jony_dols]

Valve's procrastinating is starting to piss me off.

I'm a fan of the Left 4 Dead's & Portal 2,
but I would have preferred if they had diverted all their resources into creating Half Life 3.

One of the greatest series of all time needs as much time & love as possible.

[Theo1130]

Why is everyone so keen on annualization Half-life, part of what is great about Valve and what they do is that they take the time to deliver a great experience, it seems most people want the annualization of Half-life, that and all they want valve to do is make more half-life, which would lead to burnout for the developers.

[da_2pacalypse]

annual? dude it's been 6 years since the last episode was released lol

[NCAzrael]

I don't think it has anything to do with wanting them to do Half-Life annually. It's more like we're all left hanging with the end of Episode 2 and we want to know what happens next. The whole reason Valve did episodic content was so they could do quicker releases. Obviously that didn't work out, so instead of getting the three episodes that Valve set out to do, we got two and an incomplete story.

You act as if all they've done recently is Half-Life and that they should focus on something else, while the truth is they've done a follow-up to Team Fortress Classic, introduced two new franchises AND released sequels to both, they've almost completed a sequel to a game they didn't create, and are beta testing the latest version of Counter-Strike. There is hardly an over-abundance of Half-Life going on in Valve's office at the moment.

It's been over 4 years since Episode 2 was released. What do you feel is an acceptable time between games?

[Theo1130]

@NCAzrael

When ever the developer is ready, they are privately owned. Many devs don't get that kind of leeway craft the game they want now a days, so we should celebrate that at least Valve have the ability to craft the game they want, how ever long it takes.

[NCAzrael]

@Theo1130

And I'm not denying that fact. I appreciate the fact that Valve has remained an independent developer and are able to produce awesome games on their schedule. But I still stand by my opinion that we should have had something by now. You talk about annualization, meaning a game a year, which I think is fair to say nobody is demanding.

Half-Life 2 was released in '04. It was a full length game with an ending that felt like an ending. Episode One was released in '06, followed by Episode Two the next year. Episode Two ended with a cliffhanger, setting expectation for Episode Three. I'm sure you already know all of this, which means you also know that we never received Episode Three, even though Valve had announced that their plan was for a three episode story arc.

People are anxious for a new Half-Life because we're still eager to finish what should have been Half-Life 3. I hate to pull the consumer card, but as a person who has purchased every Valve PC release, I kind of expected a finished product, which I never got. I loved Left 4 Dead and the sequel, and the Portal games easily fall within my top 5 favorite game franchises, but I still want a wrap up to the game I started playing back in '06.

[jdktech2010]

They're not procrastinating...they're just on valve time which ironically is almost as slow as Blizzard time.....

[da_2pacalypse]

to be honest, maybe it's a good thing that they're waiting... I mean, they want to make a new engine probably... and think about all the FPS fatigue in the industry.... Just look at how serious sam and Duke did this year... Valve needs to be careful!

[Pikajew]

I would add Meet the Pyro video.

Valve loves to make people wait

[blackhammer]

The greater the distance between the previous Half-Life game and the next Half-Life game, the worse the worry gets. Will the new one even live up to our expectations?

Until there is news, I try my best not to give a fuck, but it's hard, because there are quite a few fucks to give.

Maybe they are taking the series into a whole new direction. What if it changed the gameplay into something like STALKER or Bioshock? I mean, it would be slightly less linear. I actually wouldn't mind them doing that. As long as Gordon kept his mouth shut and the story is still awesome.

Dammit, Valve.

[mep69]

Well imo i still think (even though they denied it) they are working on a new game engine (Source 2.0) and they are dedicating Half-life 3 to it.

But hay, we'll see what happens.