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Message
Gameinformer article: Half Life 3 is as dead as dead gets
Posted on 1/11/17 at 7:45 pm
Posted on 1/11/17 at 7:45 pm
LINK
You can read the first bit where Reiner tried to get this story off the ground but got stonewalled by every valve/ex-valve employee he reached out to. He finally heard from an anonymous source from the company but Reiner was never able to get someone to collaborate. He hinted at his interview and got a lot of demand to print it, this is it with the caveat "with a grain of salt".
**********************************
Everyone wants Gordon Freeman’s story to continue. People want the series to reach the number three, either as an episode or a full-fledged sequel. How real are those chances?
There is no such thing as Half-Life 3. Valve has never announced a Half-Life 3. The closest they’ve come is after Half-Life 2, they said there would be three episodes. We only got two of those. That is arguably an unfulfilled promise. Anything else that we might think about as a full game or sequel has never been promised. I only mention that because it’s sometimes frustrating when people sort of assume or have wishful thinking about the future. Because they want to speak about the future, the fantasy starts to become real in their minds, even though they have a completely different form on the developer side.
But Valve did want to make it at some point, yes? At least finish Half-Life 2?
The first time I had any discussions that there may be a Half-Life 3 was actually during Half-Life 2’s development, which is natural for developers. You’re in the middle of something, but you’re already thinking about what comes next. Sometimes we think about it in the context of, "What do we want to set up?" or, "What do we preclude?" It’s in that context that you can probably imagine that different people within Valve have different imaginations that can lead to a future Half-Life game. That’s definitely the earliest roots I know of, and that was probably 2002 or 2003.
Take me through those talks. What was on the table at the time?
One of the things that’s interesting about how Valve works is it’s not out of the question for any given person to just try stuff, whether that is conversations or actually spending their time creating something. That could range from someone writing a treatment or crafting concept art to tinkering around with code. Any given person who does that stuff can kind of internalize why they are doing it, and sometimes there are people doing similar things and those things come together.
Over the years, you’ve probably had many dozens of people within the studio as early as probably 2005 working on things that they would imagine from themselves as Half-Life 3 or Half-Life: Episode 3. If you talk to people there, you’re going to get mutually exclusive information about the project from them, and for each of those people, it is correct, but will be different for the next person you talk to. Those two individuals may have been working with the same project in mind, but never linked up internally to connect the pieces before it was scrapped or they moved on to a different project.
The amount of creative freedom Valve creators have is fascinating, but how does anything ever get done without people working as a whole?
I know at various times there have been different groups of people that have started things that they hoped and imagined would be Half-Life 3. I know over the years some of those things have had different degrees of awareness and involvement, whether it’s the inclusion of senior or principle members of Valve, including Gabe Newell. There are also efforts that other people may not have known were going on. All of them are actual, valid things that are happening inside of the walls of Valve. To pick one thing and say, this was absolutely Half-Life 3, or this is Half-Life 3, that’s hard to do given the nature of how Valve works. How that project comes to be or ever manifests is kind of strange.
I remember three distinctly different imaginations of what Half-Life 2 could be, developed sufficiently to where there were storyboards, plotlines, script outlines, concept arts, and each approach was radically different than the others. I think it’s their process to kind of explore to see where things go. I remember having conversations with people at Valve about Half-Life’s story, and where it was going and where it could go beyond Half-Life 2. At that point, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Half-Life 2 would be a story-driven experience along the lines of Half-Life 1, and that there would be another Half-Life game beyond that of the same general construction.
So they actually came close to making it happen?
Imagine you are a game developer, and you manage to get a job at Valve. You go through the interview process and talk to a whole lot of people and nobody vetoes you. You manage to join up. Let’s pretend it’s 2010. You join the studio. You remember the people you interviewed with and some people you may have spent more time with or less. You have a person you kind of talk with from your hiring process, and then you are just kind of there one day, and you have to figure out how you are going to fit in. What are you going to do? You talk with some of the people you talked to before during the interview process. What are they working on? They are undoubtedly involved with something, so maybe you help them with their thing; whether that’s the Steam platform, or Dota, or the speculative stuff going on.
It’s almost like a university up there. At some point you think to yourself, "Okay, I’m inside Valve, I can start asking questions like, "What’s going on with Half-Life?" The person you are talking to is probably going to say, “I’m not really worried about that right now. I need to get another game out. You should talk to this person or that person or that person.” Time goes by and maybe you eventually start a developer relationship with someone who can give you access to some of those people. You talk to them and learn people may be tinkering with some things, but most of the stuff is already dead or going nowhere. Maybe the group is five or eight people. And there are other people five doors down that may be cynical that that is going on at all. You can find every flavor of sensibility along the spectrum in that studio about the game’s development.
When they were making episodes for Half-Life 2 that was probably the best and strongest effort that ever happened toward another Half-Life project.
You can read the first bit where Reiner tried to get this story off the ground but got stonewalled by every valve/ex-valve employee he reached out to. He finally heard from an anonymous source from the company but Reiner was never able to get someone to collaborate. He hinted at his interview and got a lot of demand to print it, this is it with the caveat "with a grain of salt".
**********************************
Everyone wants Gordon Freeman’s story to continue. People want the series to reach the number three, either as an episode or a full-fledged sequel. How real are those chances?
There is no such thing as Half-Life 3. Valve has never announced a Half-Life 3. The closest they’ve come is after Half-Life 2, they said there would be three episodes. We only got two of those. That is arguably an unfulfilled promise. Anything else that we might think about as a full game or sequel has never been promised. I only mention that because it’s sometimes frustrating when people sort of assume or have wishful thinking about the future. Because they want to speak about the future, the fantasy starts to become real in their minds, even though they have a completely different form on the developer side.
But Valve did want to make it at some point, yes? At least finish Half-Life 2?
The first time I had any discussions that there may be a Half-Life 3 was actually during Half-Life 2’s development, which is natural for developers. You’re in the middle of something, but you’re already thinking about what comes next. Sometimes we think about it in the context of, "What do we want to set up?" or, "What do we preclude?" It’s in that context that you can probably imagine that different people within Valve have different imaginations that can lead to a future Half-Life game. That’s definitely the earliest roots I know of, and that was probably 2002 or 2003.
Take me through those talks. What was on the table at the time?
One of the things that’s interesting about how Valve works is it’s not out of the question for any given person to just try stuff, whether that is conversations or actually spending their time creating something. That could range from someone writing a treatment or crafting concept art to tinkering around with code. Any given person who does that stuff can kind of internalize why they are doing it, and sometimes there are people doing similar things and those things come together.
Over the years, you’ve probably had many dozens of people within the studio as early as probably 2005 working on things that they would imagine from themselves as Half-Life 3 or Half-Life: Episode 3. If you talk to people there, you’re going to get mutually exclusive information about the project from them, and for each of those people, it is correct, but will be different for the next person you talk to. Those two individuals may have been working with the same project in mind, but never linked up internally to connect the pieces before it was scrapped or they moved on to a different project.
The amount of creative freedom Valve creators have is fascinating, but how does anything ever get done without people working as a whole?
I know at various times there have been different groups of people that have started things that they hoped and imagined would be Half-Life 3. I know over the years some of those things have had different degrees of awareness and involvement, whether it’s the inclusion of senior or principle members of Valve, including Gabe Newell. There are also efforts that other people may not have known were going on. All of them are actual, valid things that are happening inside of the walls of Valve. To pick one thing and say, this was absolutely Half-Life 3, or this is Half-Life 3, that’s hard to do given the nature of how Valve works. How that project comes to be or ever manifests is kind of strange.
I remember three distinctly different imaginations of what Half-Life 2 could be, developed sufficiently to where there were storyboards, plotlines, script outlines, concept arts, and each approach was radically different than the others. I think it’s their process to kind of explore to see where things go. I remember having conversations with people at Valve about Half-Life’s story, and where it was going and where it could go beyond Half-Life 2. At that point, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Half-Life 2 would be a story-driven experience along the lines of Half-Life 1, and that there would be another Half-Life game beyond that of the same general construction.
So they actually came close to making it happen?
Imagine you are a game developer, and you manage to get a job at Valve. You go through the interview process and talk to a whole lot of people and nobody vetoes you. You manage to join up. Let’s pretend it’s 2010. You join the studio. You remember the people you interviewed with and some people you may have spent more time with or less. You have a person you kind of talk with from your hiring process, and then you are just kind of there one day, and you have to figure out how you are going to fit in. What are you going to do? You talk with some of the people you talked to before during the interview process. What are they working on? They are undoubtedly involved with something, so maybe you help them with their thing; whether that’s the Steam platform, or Dota, or the speculative stuff going on.
It’s almost like a university up there. At some point you think to yourself, "Okay, I’m inside Valve, I can start asking questions like, "What’s going on with Half-Life?" The person you are talking to is probably going to say, “I’m not really worried about that right now. I need to get another game out. You should talk to this person or that person or that person.” Time goes by and maybe you eventually start a developer relationship with someone who can give you access to some of those people. You talk to them and learn people may be tinkering with some things, but most of the stuff is already dead or going nowhere. Maybe the group is five or eight people. And there are other people five doors down that may be cynical that that is going on at all. You can find every flavor of sensibility along the spectrum in that studio about the game’s development.
When they were making episodes for Half-Life 2 that was probably the best and strongest effort that ever happened toward another Half-Life project.
3
Posted on 1/11/17 at 7:45 pm to sicboy
That was when they had a team dedicated to making episodic content, right?
Even that is giving too much credit. You have people that were working on Half-Life, people that finished Half-Life: Episode 2, that already imagined where they wanted to go next – they were cooking, and wanted to keep the wheel spinning. You also have a body of influencers and decision makers. When I say decision makers, Gabe is probably the king of that group. When he proclaims where the wind blows, it just blows that way. If you fight it for too long, you are going to find yourself either out or executed or just exiled. It’s really a weird climate for them.
Undoubtedly what happened is a lot of things were changing for Valve. Orange Box launched and did its thing. People who care about Team Fortress were doing their thing. You had people trying to get something going with Counter-Strike again. You got people that are playing other games, and that led to Dota 2. You have the Steam platform itself. Left for Dead. Portal 2. The hardware teams. You have a whole bunch of pet and big projects going on. All of that is getting more gravity than this third episode of Half-Life. There’s something with that third episode that isn’t sitting right with Gabe and other people at Valve. Ultimately it just starves to death. The people that tried to give it life find themselves better off working on other projects.
What you have left is nothing going on with Half-Life.
How close do you think Half-Life 3 or Episode 3 has come to release?
I’ve heard that some teams have had two to three people working on it, and they eventually ran into a wall, and some teams may have gotten up to 30 or 40 people before it was scrapped.
Do you know the direction some of these teams were going in?
Yeah. Some people – I don’t want to name names – were excited about their projects. They’ve had some different thoughts about what it should be. Some are all over the place, from one end of the spectrum being what you would expect – a single-player narrative-focused game – to completely different entertainment ideas that are as wild as they are weird. They were thinking about using the Half-Life characters as a brand for entirely different purposes. Some were bizarre, like turning Half-Life into an RTS, or a live-action, choice-driven game. These things have been contemplated by people, but were never being considered by the whole of Valve as “Yeah, that was the plan.” The nature of Valve is there aren’t plans like that. That’s not how Valve operates. Ideas come from the passion and drive of the individuals within the company’s walls.
Does Valve owe it to fans to finish what they started? At least wrap up Half-Life 2?
I don’t think there will be any more. But at any given moment, they make decisions as they come. If some people within Valve make something that they collectively feel is exciting, then it will happen. That’s going to be hard for that to happen now. Every time a Half-Life project gets some gravity and then collapses, it becomes harder for the next one to start up. Because the business changes so much, and there are so many other things to do, it just gets harder and harder. It’s one of those things they’ll always have to accept. People are going to harass them for more Half-Life. The idea of delivering a third episode of Half-Life 2, that’s dead. There’s no universe where that will happen. I think there is a universe where a standalone thing could come together to fill in that hole, but that’s tough.
There are some business connections that could help it, like it being released exclusively on Steam OS. That’s a big thing. People would be like, “Well, I now need to get a Steam Machine.” There would be value in that. Is it enough? If Valve seriously contemplates that, you’d think they would look at bigger things first, like a Steam-native Counter-Strike or Dota 3. Half-Life is big for us who played it, but the game has never really mattered to console customers. The brand really doesn’t have the penetration it deserves.
If they can’t get it done at Valve, why not hand it off to an external developer?
If you are trying to take care of fans, giving it to a third-party developer probably isn’t the best way to do that. It wouldn’t have the soul of what it should be. Even a lot of the people within Valve are different now, so that credibility isn’t there necessarily. What they don’t want to do, in a George Lucas type of situation, is deliver something like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. There may be no avoiding that. It’s so tempting. So f---ing tempting. The reality, though, expectations are everywhere. Where is the bar? If you don’t reach that, people will be disappointed. That will be the legacy.
All we know is we love what we had before, but everyone has a different idea of what Half-Life 3 should be. The best thing they could do is give up on Half-Life 3, avoid it entirely, and do Half-Life experiences instead. Experiences that connect, but aren’t the flagship sequel.
But that doesn’t sate the hunger. Valve will continue to be harassed for a sequel.
That’s why they won’t talk about it anymore. Every time they talk about it, the hunger comes back. That’s why they ignore it. The pain subsides with time.
Even that is giving too much credit. You have people that were working on Half-Life, people that finished Half-Life: Episode 2, that already imagined where they wanted to go next – they were cooking, and wanted to keep the wheel spinning. You also have a body of influencers and decision makers. When I say decision makers, Gabe is probably the king of that group. When he proclaims where the wind blows, it just blows that way. If you fight it for too long, you are going to find yourself either out or executed or just exiled. It’s really a weird climate for them.
Undoubtedly what happened is a lot of things were changing for Valve. Orange Box launched and did its thing. People who care about Team Fortress were doing their thing. You had people trying to get something going with Counter-Strike again. You got people that are playing other games, and that led to Dota 2. You have the Steam platform itself. Left for Dead. Portal 2. The hardware teams. You have a whole bunch of pet and big projects going on. All of that is getting more gravity than this third episode of Half-Life. There’s something with that third episode that isn’t sitting right with Gabe and other people at Valve. Ultimately it just starves to death. The people that tried to give it life find themselves better off working on other projects.
What you have left is nothing going on with Half-Life.
How close do you think Half-Life 3 or Episode 3 has come to release?
I’ve heard that some teams have had two to three people working on it, and they eventually ran into a wall, and some teams may have gotten up to 30 or 40 people before it was scrapped.
Do you know the direction some of these teams were going in?
Yeah. Some people – I don’t want to name names – were excited about their projects. They’ve had some different thoughts about what it should be. Some are all over the place, from one end of the spectrum being what you would expect – a single-player narrative-focused game – to completely different entertainment ideas that are as wild as they are weird. They were thinking about using the Half-Life characters as a brand for entirely different purposes. Some were bizarre, like turning Half-Life into an RTS, or a live-action, choice-driven game. These things have been contemplated by people, but were never being considered by the whole of Valve as “Yeah, that was the plan.” The nature of Valve is there aren’t plans like that. That’s not how Valve operates. Ideas come from the passion and drive of the individuals within the company’s walls.
Does Valve owe it to fans to finish what they started? At least wrap up Half-Life 2?
I don’t think there will be any more. But at any given moment, they make decisions as they come. If some people within Valve make something that they collectively feel is exciting, then it will happen. That’s going to be hard for that to happen now. Every time a Half-Life project gets some gravity and then collapses, it becomes harder for the next one to start up. Because the business changes so much, and there are so many other things to do, it just gets harder and harder. It’s one of those things they’ll always have to accept. People are going to harass them for more Half-Life. The idea of delivering a third episode of Half-Life 2, that’s dead. There’s no universe where that will happen. I think there is a universe where a standalone thing could come together to fill in that hole, but that’s tough.
There are some business connections that could help it, like it being released exclusively on Steam OS. That’s a big thing. People would be like, “Well, I now need to get a Steam Machine.” There would be value in that. Is it enough? If Valve seriously contemplates that, you’d think they would look at bigger things first, like a Steam-native Counter-Strike or Dota 3. Half-Life is big for us who played it, but the game has never really mattered to console customers. The brand really doesn’t have the penetration it deserves.
If they can’t get it done at Valve, why not hand it off to an external developer?
If you are trying to take care of fans, giving it to a third-party developer probably isn’t the best way to do that. It wouldn’t have the soul of what it should be. Even a lot of the people within Valve are different now, so that credibility isn’t there necessarily. What they don’t want to do, in a George Lucas type of situation, is deliver something like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. There may be no avoiding that. It’s so tempting. So f---ing tempting. The reality, though, expectations are everywhere. Where is the bar? If you don’t reach that, people will be disappointed. That will be the legacy.
All we know is we love what we had before, but everyone has a different idea of what Half-Life 3 should be. The best thing they could do is give up on Half-Life 3, avoid it entirely, and do Half-Life experiences instead. Experiences that connect, but aren’t the flagship sequel.
But that doesn’t sate the hunger. Valve will continue to be harassed for a sequel.
That’s why they won’t talk about it anymore. Every time they talk about it, the hunger comes back. That’s why they ignore it. The pain subsides with time.
This post was edited on 1/11/17 at 7:52 pm
Posted on 1/11/17 at 8:24 pm to sicboy
didn't read the article, but...
quote:
Gameinformer article: Half Life 3 is as dead as dead gets
quote:
got stonewalled by every valve/ex-valve employee he reached out to. He finally heard from an anonymous source from the company but Reiner was never able to get someone to collaborate.
Posted on 1/11/17 at 8:25 pm to sicboy
Here let me make a cash cow and make millions.....eh no thanks.
Posted on 1/11/17 at 8:42 pm to hawgfaninc
Like Reiner said, he trusts his source, but ordinarily you want to verify info with other people first.
Posted on 1/11/17 at 9:03 pm to sicboy
mindblowing to me that they cant put something together after all of this time. it will never live up the hype when it does eventually come out
Posted on 1/11/17 at 9:07 pm to Carson123987
quote:
it will never live up the hype when it does eventually come out
That was kind of the point why he feels they won't make it.
Posted on 1/11/17 at 9:59 pm to sicboy
Soooo gameplay trailer at E3 2017?
Posted on 1/11/17 at 10:09 pm to Carson123987
The ratio of work to profit is probably unfavorable when old games like CSGO and tf2 can still rake it in.
Posted on 1/11/17 at 11:41 pm to Freauxzen
I'd rather have Portal 3 over Half-Life 3.
Posted on 1/12/17 at 2:28 am to tonic
quote:
I'd rather have Portal 3 over Half-Life 3.
HL ended perfectly. The sense of hopelessness from the beginning to the very end is always there, no matter the progression made.
So I would much rather another Portal game which might be better than HL2. Hard to say because they are as good as it gets.
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