14 ms·

Epistle 3

470 points by verroq 9y ago

verroq 9y ago
Github mirror: https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3 https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  While the source article is overwhelmed with requests; why was the story released this way?
  - gregjw 9y ago
    Likely disgruntled with not getting his story told.
  - wrinkl3 9y ago
    Apparently his NDA has just expired.
    - pvg 9y ago
      Valve's ownership of its IP surely didn't expire so this still seems pretty odd.
      - scrollaway 9y ago
        The writer is claiming it's fanfic, and all the names have been changed. I also suspect that if no game is going to be released, Valve will not bother with legal action; they look bad as it is already.
        grogenaut 9y ago
        Valve's current market idea to not really make games doesn't mean that they don't want to take action on the ip 5, 10, 20, 50, 70 years from now and per their rights they are in their rights to wait that long. Content creators don't owe you a thing unless they already took your money for it.
        canime 9y ago
        An argument for content creators not owing you anything seems to mirror that content creators aren't owed any respect for their creations either. I mean we have IP laws to encourage content creaters to create by ensuring they can capitalise on their creations or perhaps to allow them to preserve the artistic merit of these creations. In that spirit there's probably a good argument to be made that it's in the public interest to add to clearly incomplete bodies of work that appear to be abandoned. Whether that's practical or does more harm to the public good is the question.
        grogenaut 9y ago
        Sure but what's a valid window? At 5 years Martin would have lost game of thrones. Also they owe you for the thing they made already. If you forced them to complete works on your timeline then you're indenturing them.
  - gear54rus 9y ago
    Well why shouldn't it be released? As we now know it's unlikely to be delivered in a form of a game so it can be given its due another way. .. Ha-ha, 2 downvotes and no explanation. Is this about so-called 'copy right' bullshit?
- geofft 9y ago
  Not quite a mirror: the names have been changed to match actual Half-Life characters instead of the genderswapped versions in the original.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    The link is a forbidden error, for me. Edit: Fixed now, and the title changed.
madspindel 9y ago
Half-Life 3 confirmed dead? :(
- brainary 9y ago
  Well "Half Life 2: Episode 3" (what this post is really about) seems to be.
tomlong 9y ago
Other places[1] are referring to this as 'Half-Life 2: Episode 3 Plot', not HL3 [1] http://www.shacknews.com/article/101110/half-life-episode-3-plot-leaked-by-former-valve-writer http://www.shacknews.com/article/101110/half-life-episode-3-...
- justsayinyaknow 9y ago
  With no official confirmation of either title, "HL3" has come to refer to whatever is next in the series. I've seen tons of comments across different sites that continue to "correct" this but I really don't think it is a distinction that needs to be made.
  - Rafert 9y ago
    > events following those described in my previous letter (referred to herewith as Epistle 2). If 'Epistle 3' does not mean 'Episode 3', then 'Gertie Fremont' does not refer to 'Gordon Freeman'. That's what the author called it, whatever the internet at large thinks at any point in time is less relevant IMO.
    - justsayinyaknow 9y ago
      You're right, must have missed that part. Regardless, whether it's HL3 or HL2:E3 I think it's safe to say it's not happening. I'd be surprised if Valve really is sitting on this project for the next big tech breakthrough they achieve. Hard to say.
  - naiyt 9y ago
    The distinction is absolutely significant. It's all about expectations. The originally promised "HL2:Episode 3" didn't need to be some huge revolutionary product, just a satisfying conclusion to HL2 and its episodes, while setting up the scene for the next game. As soon as people start saying "HL3" they expect some grandiose, ground breaking product. The story laid out here by Marc is much closer to what you would expect from Episode 3 rather than HL3.
JSONwebtoken 9y ago
Yeah, it never would have lived up to the hype. Explained nothing.
- Lewton 9y ago
  > it never would have lived up to the hype. If this had been released as episode 3 a couple of years after episode 2? Sure it could
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- justsayinyaknow 9y ago
  Has any entry in the Half Life series really explained anything? We get little glimpses into certain events, some from different perspectives (like the Black Mesa incident). We never get the whole picture and what we, as the player, know is told to us by other characters or shown through events we experience.
  - wbillingsley 9y ago
    Yes, in that HL1 & 2 played on such well known tropes that it only needed to show you the scene and you knew the story. The opening was laden with every disaster movie signal (up to and including "Nothing will go wrong" said in emphatic tones). The lift doors in Office Complex open to archetypal zombie horror. The scientist getting gunned down by the military cover up in We've Got Hostiles hits any number of movie tropes while clearly signalling the next bit is Rambo-style action... It's fairly similar to the first Star Wars movie, in that because it is hitting the tropes quickly and clearly, and jumping from setting to setting, it can tell the story very efficiently.
    - justsayinyaknow 9y ago
      My point was there are no arbitrary narrative components like computer terminals where you read a dead guy's email that explicitly explains the set up in text format. Or whatever, that seems to be a really common (lazy) way to tell a story. I would argue that what you said is all about show vs tell. Which is a good thing for visual media.
97803459807 9y ago
My website's down for now. I guess fanfic is popular, even a genderswapped snapshot of a dream I had many years ago. https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/900960760481726464 https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/900960760481726464
stupidcar 9y ago
Not much of a story really, it seems like they had no intention of actually answering any of the mysteries around the G-Man and Alyx, but it sounds like it would have been a fun game.
- camus2 9y ago
  The G-man is a Deus Ex Machina, it's always a lazy plot device.
  - Pica_soO 9y ago
    Yeah, dragons and eagles, and now a guy in a suit.
  - alanh 9y ago
    perhaps, but he transcended that. his visible and unreachable appearances at other times, combined with his bizarre diction, made his character capture the imaginations of many.
- Nition 9y ago
  This plot may have been originally intended more as Half-Life 2: Episode 3 than Half-Life 3.
klondike_ 9y ago
Version with the code words replaced: https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/6vwelo/i_edited_marc_laidlaws_conclusion_to_hl2ep3_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/6vwelo/i_edited_m...
hasenj 9y ago
I'm not sure if I'm an idiot or if it's because English is not my native language or what, but I find it really difficult to follow this narration style. Can someone give a short summary of what happened? TD;CU (too dumb, can't understand).
- davman 9y ago
  They go to Antarctica to find the Borealis (the ship built by Aperture Science from Portal). The Borealis is phasing in and out of reality. Rescue Dr Mossman from the Combine, she has details to make the Borealis phase in for enough time to get Freeman+Alyx+Mossman on board, chased by Combine. While on board, discover Borealis is moving through Time as well as Space. Mossman wants Borealis recovered for the Resistance, Alyx wants it destroyed. They fight, Alyx kills Mossman. Borealis reconfigured to fly through Space to Combine planet to try to destroy it with explosion, as they arrive G-man takes Alyx off the ship, Vortigaunts take Freeman. Combine world too massive, powered by a Dyson sphere, Borealis explosion does nothing. Freeman back on Earth sometime in the future, won't take part in any more conflict with Combine.
  - p49k 9y ago
    I haven't played the game, so I'm a bit confused: what parts of the story are slyly referring to Valve itself rather than the HL3 story? How do you get "welp, looks like HL3 is cancelled" based on this story?
    - SmallDeadGuy 9y ago
      The last paragraph is almost definitely about Valve: "And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final episode." No more HL2:Episode N coming, the development team is too different.
hacker_9 9y ago
The story actually sounds really fun to play, and fits the Half-Life universe perfectly. Funny that this script has reached the top of Reddit, HN and Twitter within hours of posting, and even crashed the authors site. Even to a blind man it's obvious the demand for the game is there, so it's amazing that Valve continues to ignore it and the fans, but I guess without a cash flow problem they really don't see the point in spending time developing it. A shame. Edit, GitHub Mirror: https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3/blob/master/Epistle3_Corrected.md https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3/blob/maste...
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  It's probably got to the point now that whatever they did would be negatively received because it cannot live up to the hype of the past N years. And since they're basically free-printing money out the wazoo via Steam and DOTA etc. why even bother with the hassle?
  - ge96 9y ago
    I still remember the underwater fish sound, eh uh eh uh eh uh eh uh frantically trying to find a way out of the water
- bhrgunatha 9y ago
  Not sure if you've seen this or not but it sounds really plausible to me. Why valve will never release Half Life 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50lSIaSR3zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50lSIaSR3zc
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- klondike_ 9y ago
  First of all, Valve has lost some interest in single player games [1] Valve is also likely waiting for their new game engine, Source 2, to be completed because Source 1 is hideously outdated by today's standards. And finally, they're going to have to come up with something truly great to live up to nearly 10 years of hype [1]https://kotaku.com/5795355/valve-probably-done-with-single-player-games https://kotaku.com/5795355/valve-probably-done-with-single-p...
Pica_soO 9y ago
Im waiting for the fans to pick up the pieces and make it real.
- wrinkl3 9y ago
  While someone inevitably will try, I don't see it being good. The hallmark of the Half-Life series was not its plot, but an almost compulsive obsession with the gameplay quality. Few professional studios could rival Valve in that, let alone a fan project.
  - roblabla 9y ago
    I mean, I don't know if you've seen Black Mesa (the game), but they've done an incredible job at making an HL1 reboot, with some levels drastically expanded, a lot of things tweaked, and it's amazing how well it works. Valve doesn't have a monopoly in gameplay quality - they're just very consistent about it.
    - ssully 9y ago
      Black Mesa is great, but it also took over 8 years of development for first release and it still isn't done (last I checked the Xen chapters aren't in). So that's 13 years of development and counting. They also had the entirety of HL1 to build the game from. Obviously they created a ton of unique assets and reworked stuff, but they had an entire game to work from. Trying to make a full 'mod' of Episode 3 is nothing like Black Mesa and would be an incredible amount of work. With that said, I would love to see someone try.
    - justin66 9y ago
      I found Black Mesa to be crappy, to be honest. I don't know how anyone could imply that they were on Valve's level there, except in terms of leveraging much newer engine technology. I played the first public version and maybe it has improved...
grwthckrmstr 9y ago
Half Life 3 confirmed!
thearn4 9y ago
It's a good and short read, and I accept it as closure for what I always thought was a very well written series.
olivierva 9y ago
I think a new Half Life game would be the perfect opportunity for Valve to showcase their virtual reality kit. So far there are no blockbuster VR games and the Half Life franchise (Portal included) has a history of being very innovative (e.g. HL2 using a physics engine for the narrative, HL1&2: story told through level design). There is a lot of potential to use immersive virtual reality to enhance the story telling.
- 83457 9y ago
  They said years ago that HL3 would not be a VR focused game but I suspect that has changed by this point. There are still issues with normal locomotion in VR and nausea so I suspect either there will be some new idea in that realm or HL3 will take on Portal technology to explain teleportation based movement.
vectorEQ 9y ago
a lot of complaints about valve. u know what people also complain about a lot... companies milking their intelectual property.... i think half-life so far has left a great legacy. if they ever decide to continue it , it would be sweet. i'd hope it would be in the same fashion, shooter for pc, not VR bullshit. but hey... still enjoying half life 1 and 2+ so fuck all the whiners. be thankful for what you have got, not a needy little baby crying for more!. maybe if u guys behave thankful people like gabe/marc and others involved with what we love would listen.
wbillingsley 9y ago
Trying to imagine playing this, it sounds like they were struggling to get it "right", and it may have kept feeling like a poor cousin of other games. In comparison to HL1 & 2, the plot seems a bit slow-starting, ends on an actual anti-climax instead of a cruelly-interrupted climax, and the game mechanics (snow/stealth, map phasing, time bubbles) seem to suffer from other recent games having done variations on these very well. Add the inherent disappointment of not having the portal gun that everyone's expecting to be in there somewhere, and it could feel like it was bound to disappoint. HL1 & HL2 did a very good job of switching genres and game mechanics from level to level, while still keeping everything clear and centred on a simple familiar mystery plot. The levels were able to establish their genres very fast -- usually from the first scene you saw as the doors opened or you rounded a corner. Everything was clear, and in both cases the motivating story was very simple, and the "plot" was setting. You've got to get help; you've got to get to Lambda Complex, We've got to get you through the portal to shoot what's on the other side... This HL3 plot seems to have got a bit "Lost" (sorry, tv series reference) as people's motivations are uncertain and there's exposition, and an attempt to partially unfold the mystery while always adding new ones... and still trying to make those bug-pod things work as a villain that didn't work in Ep1 or Ep2. Still, the bones of a good game are there. From my amateur eyes, it just looks like it needed to stop trying to resist/subvert the viewer's expectations, and just hit a few of the notes the player's been waiting for so they can have a note of satisfaction on the way to the new mystery.
- hacker_9 9y ago
  No game mechanics are mentioned in the story, so why wouldn't there be a portal gun? Extrapolating, if one is in a time travelling ship, the portal gun could actually generate portals between different time dimensions, and I can already think of a ton of gameplay ideas that could use this concept.
  - Balgair 9y ago
    Using the portal gun to not only jump through space, but time as well? Ummm, YES! The 'structure' of the puzzles you could use that with would need to be very tightly controlled (enemy position vectors, amount you can travel backwards in time, maybe some sort of energy mechanic you have to pick up as you go along, etc). But still, WOW! Jumping back to the start of a level at the very end and you must manipulate time to accomplish the level, there is a LOT of possibility to talk about there. I have no idea what jumping forward in time would look like except if you went back, say 5 minutes, and then you could only go forward again up to that 5 min mark. However, you can't use this in a PvP manner very well, only co-op. Maybe you could have the players ALL jump back in time except the user of the time device who got to essentially teleport around. However, the cheesing of that mechanic would be frustrating in the extreme.
x775 9y ago
"Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Except no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle." This feels a lot like Marc talking about Valve, no?
- nassyweazy 9y ago
  That's exactly my feeling too.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Here lies Anarcho-Syndikalism, a concept that was proven to work under less favorable conditions, but stagnated in self-strangulation due to unreasonable risk avoidance. One wonders how much that piece of paper at valve is really worth.
- dejawu 9y ago
  If the paragraph you quoted is indeed Marc talking about Valve, then I feel that the sentence, > "I expect you know... the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it." points to the hope that people will take this story and create fan games with it. Having seen the tremendous quality and effort put into the Black Mesa [0] remake, I have great faith that the inevitable fan-made Episode 3 will live up to expectations. [0] https://www.blackmesasource.com/ https://www.blackmesasource.com/
trampi 9y ago
"This was the case until eighteen months ago, when I experienced a critical change in my circumstances, and was redeposited on these shores" Marc Laidlaw left Valve in January 2016. The end of the post is also probably about Valve, as others have already figured out. I wonder what else there might be to discover.
throw2016 9y ago
This would have been a treat for those who had finished episode 2 and were waiting anxiously for the next step in the saga. Sometimes its simply not possible to do things and fans understand but Valve just shuttered the series and turned their back on fans. It's like Game of Thrones suddenly deciding to close down for no obvious reason and with no explanation to fans. This reeks more than a little of the arrogance of success and it's in some ways a betrayal of all the gamers who appreciated Half life for what it was and propelled Valve to its initial success.
klondike_ 9y ago
It's interesting how much this differs from the storyline of the infamous leaked HL2 Beta [1], which was based on a rough version of what became HL2, Episode 1, and Episode 2. [1]http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half-Life_2_original_storyline#Arctic_regions http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half-Life_2_original_storyli...
mememaestro 9y ago
I don't get it why Half-Life is so popular I mean the story is mediocre at the best and the gameplay isn't the one of the brightest out there
AceJohnny2 9y ago
Most of the obfuscated references have been elucidated, but I'm not finding anything for who "Dearest Playa" is. Does anyone know?
- Crespyl 9y ago
  "Dear Player"
whingingfanboy 9y ago
The real HL3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRUjjuUl7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRUjjuUl7U

Epistle 3

470 points by verroq 9y ago

verroq 9y ago

Github mirror: https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3 https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Freak_NL 9y ago
While the source article is overwhelmed with requests; why was the story released this way?
- gregjw 9y ago
  Likely disgruntled with not getting his story told.
- wrinkl3 9y ago
  Apparently his NDA has just expired.
  - pvg 9y ago
    Valve's ownership of its IP surely didn't expire so this still seems pretty odd.
    - scrollaway 9y ago
      The writer is claiming it's fanfic, and all the names have been changed. I also suspect that if no game is going to be released, Valve will not bother with legal action; they look bad as it is already.
      - grogenaut 9y ago
        Valve's current market idea to not really make games doesn't mean that they don't want to take action on the ip 5, 10, 20, 50, 70 years from now and per their rights they are in their rights to wait that long. Content creators don't owe you a thing unless they already took your money for it.
        canime 9y ago
        An argument for content creators not owing you anything seems to mirror that content creators aren't owed any respect for their creations either. I mean we have IP laws to encourage content creaters to create by ensuring they can capitalise on their creations or perhaps to allow them to preserve the artistic merit of these creations. In that spirit there's probably a good argument to be made that it's in the public interest to add to clearly incomplete bodies of work that appear to be abandoned. Whether that's practical or does more harm to the public good is the question.
        grogenaut 9y ago
        Sure but what's a valid window? At 5 years Martin would have lost game of thrones. Also they owe you for the thing they made already. If you forced them to complete works on your timeline then you're indenturing them.
- gear54rus 9y ago
  Well why shouldn't it be released? As we now know it's unlikely to be delivered in a form of a game so it can be given its due another way. .. Ha-ha, 2 downvotes and no explanation. Is this about so-called 'copy right' bullshit?
geofft 9y ago
Not quite a mirror: the names have been changed to match actual Half-Life characters instead of the genderswapped versions in the original.
- KGIII 9y ago
  The link is a forbidden error, for me. Edit: Fixed now, and the title changed.

madspindel 9y ago

Half-Life 3 confirmed dead? :(

brainary 9y ago
Well "Half Life 2: Episode 3" (what this post is really about) seems to be.

tomlong 9y ago

Other places[1] are referring to this as 'Half-Life 2: Episode 3 Plot', not HL3 [1] http://www.shacknews.com/article/101110/half-life-episode-3-plot-leaked-by-former-valve-writer http://www.shacknews.com/article/101110/half-life-episode-3-...

justsayinyaknow 9y ago
With no official confirmation of either title, "HL3" has come to refer to whatever is next in the series. I've seen tons of comments across different sites that continue to "correct" this but I really don't think it is a distinction that needs to be made.
- Rafert 9y ago
  > events following those described in my previous letter (referred to herewith as Epistle 2). If 'Epistle 3' does not mean 'Episode 3', then 'Gertie Fremont' does not refer to 'Gordon Freeman'. That's what the author called it, whatever the internet at large thinks at any point in time is less relevant IMO.
  - justsayinyaknow 9y ago
    You're right, must have missed that part. Regardless, whether it's HL3 or HL2:E3 I think it's safe to say it's not happening. I'd be surprised if Valve really is sitting on this project for the next big tech breakthrough they achieve. Hard to say.
- naiyt 9y ago
  The distinction is absolutely significant. It's all about expectations. The originally promised "HL2:Episode 3" didn't need to be some huge revolutionary product, just a satisfying conclusion to HL2 and its episodes, while setting up the scene for the next game. As soon as people start saying "HL3" they expect some grandiose, ground breaking product. The story laid out here by Marc is much closer to what you would expect from Episode 3 rather than HL3.

JSONwebtoken 9y ago

Yeah, it never would have lived up to the hype. Explained nothing.

Lewton 9y ago
> it never would have lived up to the hype. If this had been released as episode 3 a couple of years after episode 2? Sure it could
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
justsayinyaknow 9y ago
Has any entry in the Half Life series really explained anything? We get little glimpses into certain events, some from different perspectives (like the Black Mesa incident). We never get the whole picture and what we, as the player, know is told to us by other characters or shown through events we experience.
- wbillingsley 9y ago
  Yes, in that HL1 & 2 played on such well known tropes that it only needed to show you the scene and you knew the story. The opening was laden with every disaster movie signal (up to and including "Nothing will go wrong" said in emphatic tones). The lift doors in Office Complex open to archetypal zombie horror. The scientist getting gunned down by the military cover up in We've Got Hostiles hits any number of movie tropes while clearly signalling the next bit is Rambo-style action... It's fairly similar to the first Star Wars movie, in that because it is hitting the tropes quickly and clearly, and jumping from setting to setting, it can tell the story very efficiently.
  - justsayinyaknow 9y ago
    My point was there are no arbitrary narrative components like computer terminals where you read a dead guy's email that explicitly explains the set up in text format. Or whatever, that seems to be a really common (lazy) way to tell a story. I would argue that what you said is all about show vs tell. Which is a good thing for visual media.

97803459807 9y ago

My website's down for now. I guess fanfic is popular, even a genderswapped snapshot of a dream I had many years ago. https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/900960760481726464 https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/900960760481726464

stupidcar 9y ago

Not much of a story really, it seems like they had no intention of actually answering any of the mysteries around the G-Man and Alyx, but it sounds like it would have been a fun game.

camus2 9y ago
The G-man is a Deus Ex Machina, it's always a lazy plot device.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Yeah, dragons and eagles, and now a guy in a suit.
- alanh 9y ago
  perhaps, but he transcended that. his visible and unreachable appearances at other times, combined with his bizarre diction, made his character capture the imaginations of many.
Nition 9y ago
This plot may have been originally intended more as Half-Life 2: Episode 3 than Half-Life 3.

klondike_ 9y ago

Version with the code words replaced: https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/6vwelo/i_edited_marc_laidlaws_conclusion_to_hl2ep3_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/6vwelo/i_edited_m...

hasenj 9y ago

I'm not sure if I'm an idiot or if it's because English is not my native language or what, but I find it really difficult to follow this narration style. Can someone give a short summary of what happened? TD;CU (too dumb, can't understand).

davman 9y ago
They go to Antarctica to find the Borealis (the ship built by Aperture Science from Portal). The Borealis is phasing in and out of reality. Rescue Dr Mossman from the Combine, she has details to make the Borealis phase in for enough time to get Freeman+Alyx+Mossman on board, chased by Combine. While on board, discover Borealis is moving through Time as well as Space. Mossman wants Borealis recovered for the Resistance, Alyx wants it destroyed. They fight, Alyx kills Mossman. Borealis reconfigured to fly through Space to Combine planet to try to destroy it with explosion, as they arrive G-man takes Alyx off the ship, Vortigaunts take Freeman. Combine world too massive, powered by a Dyson sphere, Borealis explosion does nothing. Freeman back on Earth sometime in the future, won't take part in any more conflict with Combine.
- p49k 9y ago
  I haven't played the game, so I'm a bit confused: what parts of the story are slyly referring to Valve itself rather than the HL3 story? How do you get "welp, looks like HL3 is cancelled" based on this story?
  - SmallDeadGuy 9y ago
    The last paragraph is almost definitely about Valve: "And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final episode." No more HL2:Episode N coming, the development team is too different.

hacker_9 9y ago

The story actually sounds really fun to play, and fits the Half-Life universe perfectly. Funny that this script has reached the top of Reddit, HN and Twitter within hours of posting, and even crashed the authors site. Even to a blind man it's obvious the demand for the game is there, so it's amazing that Valve continues to ignore it and the fans, but I guess without a cash flow problem they really don't see the point in spending time developing it. A shame. Edit, GitHub Mirror: https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3/blob/master/Epistle3_Corrected.md https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3/blob/maste...

zimpenfish 9y ago
It's probably got to the point now that whatever they did would be negatively received because it cannot live up to the hype of the past N years. And since they're basically free-printing money out the wazoo via Steam and DOTA etc. why even bother with the hassle?
- ge96 9y ago
  I still remember the underwater fish sound, eh uh eh uh eh uh eh uh frantically trying to find a way out of the water
bhrgunatha 9y ago
Not sure if you've seen this or not but it sounds really plausible to me. Why valve will never release Half Life 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50lSIaSR3zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50lSIaSR3zc
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
klondike_ 9y ago
First of all, Valve has lost some interest in single player games [1] Valve is also likely waiting for their new game engine, Source 2, to be completed because Source 1 is hideously outdated by today's standards. And finally, they're going to have to come up with something truly great to live up to nearly 10 years of hype [1]https://kotaku.com/5795355/valve-probably-done-with-single-player-games https://kotaku.com/5795355/valve-probably-done-with-single-p...

Pica_soO 9y ago

Im waiting for the fans to pick up the pieces and make it real.

wrinkl3 9y ago
While someone inevitably will try, I don't see it being good. The hallmark of the Half-Life series was not its plot, but an almost compulsive obsession with the gameplay quality. Few professional studios could rival Valve in that, let alone a fan project.
- roblabla 9y ago
  I mean, I don't know if you've seen Black Mesa (the game), but they've done an incredible job at making an HL1 reboot, with some levels drastically expanded, a lot of things tweaked, and it's amazing how well it works. Valve doesn't have a monopoly in gameplay quality - they're just very consistent about it.
  - ssully 9y ago
    Black Mesa is great, but it also took over 8 years of development for first release and it still isn't done (last I checked the Xen chapters aren't in). So that's 13 years of development and counting. They also had the entirety of HL1 to build the game from. Obviously they created a ton of unique assets and reworked stuff, but they had an entire game to work from. Trying to make a full 'mod' of Episode 3 is nothing like Black Mesa and would be an incredible amount of work. With that said, I would love to see someone try.
  - justin66 9y ago
    I found Black Mesa to be crappy, to be honest. I don't know how anyone could imply that they were on Valve's level there, except in terms of leveraging much newer engine technology. I played the first public version and maybe it has improved...

grwthckrmstr 9y ago

Half Life 3 confirmed!

thearn4 9y ago

It's a good and short read, and I accept it as closure for what I always thought was a very well written series.

olivierva 9y ago

I think a new Half Life game would be the perfect opportunity for Valve to showcase their virtual reality kit. So far there are no blockbuster VR games and the Half Life franchise (Portal included) has a history of being very innovative (e.g. HL2 using a physics engine for the narrative, HL1&2: story told through level design). There is a lot of potential to use immersive virtual reality to enhance the story telling.

83457 9y ago
They said years ago that HL3 would not be a VR focused game but I suspect that has changed by this point. There are still issues with normal locomotion in VR and nausea so I suspect either there will be some new idea in that realm or HL3 will take on Portal technology to explain teleportation based movement.

vectorEQ 9y ago

a lot of complaints about valve. u know what people also complain about a lot... companies milking their intelectual property.... i think half-life so far has left a great legacy. if they ever decide to continue it , it would be sweet. i'd hope it would be in the same fashion, shooter for pc, not VR bullshit. but hey... still enjoying half life 1 and 2+ so fuck all the whiners. be thankful for what you have got, not a needy little baby crying for more!. maybe if u guys behave thankful people like gabe/marc and others involved with what we love would listen.

wbillingsley 9y ago

Trying to imagine playing this, it sounds like they were struggling to get it "right", and it may have kept feeling like a poor cousin of other games. In comparison to HL1 & 2, the plot seems a bit slow-starting, ends on an actual anti-climax instead of a cruelly-interrupted climax, and the game mechanics (snow/stealth, map phasing, time bubbles) seem to suffer from other recent games having done variations on these very well. Add the inherent disappointment of not having the portal gun that everyone's expecting to be in there somewhere, and it could feel like it was bound to disappoint. HL1 & HL2 did a very good job of switching genres and game mechanics from level to level, while still keeping everything clear and centred on a simple familiar mystery plot. The levels were able to establish their genres very fast -- usually from the first scene you saw as the doors opened or you rounded a corner. Everything was clear, and in both cases the motivating story was very simple, and the "plot" was setting. You've got to get help; you've got to get to Lambda Complex, We've got to get you through the portal to shoot what's on the other side... This HL3 plot seems to have got a bit "Lost" (sorry, tv series reference) as people's motivations are uncertain and there's exposition, and an attempt to partially unfold the mystery while always adding new ones... and still trying to make those bug-pod things work as a villain that didn't work in Ep1 or Ep2. Still, the bones of a good game are there. From my amateur eyes, it just looks like it needed to stop trying to resist/subvert the viewer's expectations, and just hit a few of the notes the player's been waiting for so they can have a note of satisfaction on the way to the new mystery.

hacker_9 9y ago
No game mechanics are mentioned in the story, so why wouldn't there be a portal gun? Extrapolating, if one is in a time travelling ship, the portal gun could actually generate portals between different time dimensions, and I can already think of a ton of gameplay ideas that could use this concept.
- Balgair 9y ago
  Using the portal gun to not only jump through space, but time as well? Ummm, YES! The 'structure' of the puzzles you could use that with would need to be very tightly controlled (enemy position vectors, amount you can travel backwards in time, maybe some sort of energy mechanic you have to pick up as you go along, etc). But still, WOW! Jumping back to the start of a level at the very end and you must manipulate time to accomplish the level, there is a LOT of possibility to talk about there. I have no idea what jumping forward in time would look like except if you went back, say 5 minutes, and then you could only go forward again up to that 5 min mark. However, you can't use this in a PvP manner very well, only co-op. Maybe you could have the players ALL jump back in time except the user of the time device who got to essentially teleport around. However, the cheesing of that mechanic would be frustrating in the extreme.

x775 9y ago

"Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Except no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle." This feels a lot like Marc talking about Valve, no?

nassyweazy 9y ago
That's exactly my feeling too.
Pica_soO 9y ago
Here lies Anarcho-Syndikalism, a concept that was proven to work under less favorable conditions, but stagnated in self-strangulation due to unreasonable risk avoidance. One wonders how much that piece of paper at valve is really worth.
dejawu 9y ago
If the paragraph you quoted is indeed Marc talking about Valve, then I feel that the sentence, > "I expect you know... the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it." points to the hope that people will take this story and create fan games with it. Having seen the tremendous quality and effort put into the Black Mesa [0] remake, I have great faith that the inevitable fan-made Episode 3 will live up to expectations. [0] https://www.blackmesasource.com/ https://www.blackmesasource.com/

trampi 9y ago

"This was the case until eighteen months ago, when I experienced a critical change in my circumstances, and was redeposited on these shores" Marc Laidlaw left Valve in January 2016. The end of the post is also probably about Valve, as others have already figured out. I wonder what else there might be to discover.

throw2016 9y ago

This would have been a treat for those who had finished episode 2 and were waiting anxiously for the next step in the saga. Sometimes its simply not possible to do things and fans understand but Valve just shuttered the series and turned their back on fans. It's like Game of Thrones suddenly deciding to close down for no obvious reason and with no explanation to fans. This reeks more than a little of the arrogance of success and it's in some ways a betrayal of all the gamers who appreciated Half life for what it was and propelled Valve to its initial success.

klondike_ 9y ago

It's interesting how much this differs from the storyline of the infamous leaked HL2 Beta [1], which was based on a rough version of what became HL2, Episode 1, and Episode 2. [1]http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half-Life_2_original_storyline#Arctic_regions http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half-Life_2_original_storyli...

mememaestro 9y ago

I don't get it why Half-Life is so popular I mean the story is mediocre at the best and the gameplay isn't the one of the brightest out there

AceJohnny2 9y ago

Most of the obfuscated references have been elucidated, but I'm not finding anything for who "Dearest Playa" is. Does anyone know?

Crespyl 9y ago
"Dear Player"

whingingfanboy 9y ago

The real HL3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRUjjuUl7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRUjjuUl7U