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Surely Half Life 3 is in Duke Nukem Forever territory now. If it ever gets developed people have such high expectation it will not be received well.
Didn't help that Duke nukem forever was a steaming pile of doodoo
See, what you do is you don't make HL3, you make HL 4, and make vague references to the events that might have happened between 2 & 4.
You then let the YouTube conspiracy/lore people fill in the blanks, and randomly like one out of every 100 videos or so.
You sell the hell out of a game & take over social media all at once.
Why give the game a number? Just call it after the new protaganist, while creating another game that lays a lot of groundwork for a whole new generation of gaming. (It's just VR gaming this time.)
HL Alyx was really groundbreaking for its time in the VR world. Few other games combined the user experience, VR immersion, and grapichs into a good game. Just like how HL2 was groundbreaking in the physics department.
Fuck Jeff though
No possible version of half-life 3 will satisfy the hype that has festered over decades. It’s best not to make half life 3 ever.
I've been convinced of this for a while too. Plus, HL1 and 2 were both groundbreaking in one way or another - there was simply nothing like it before each of those titles. For HL3 to come around, it will need to reshape gaming again, and I don't see that happening. Without another groundbreaking gameplay mechanic, it'll just be just another Call Of Shooty in a saturated market, and it will disappoint long time fans.
HL Alyx got to be the defining 3D shooter if that counts
Yes, but that's also the reason why it was called Alyx and not 3: VR was nothing new at the time. While it is arguably a great game (Or so I've been told. Never played it myself), it didn't introduce something brand new.
It's not for you, Chet, bring back Laidlaw!
So he doesn't want to work on anyone else's intellectual property because he can't remember things? And is scared those who do love and remember lore will be mad at him?
A writer who can't take in account the setting and past events, the "lore", in which write some story is a pretty lousy writer IMHO. We're not talking about behemoth storylines like Star Wars or Warhammer 40K here, cmon.
HL 2 released over 20 years ago. In that time there have been multiple spinoff games, comics, fan theories, convention panels, and interviews that have added to the ‘lore’ of the series.
Consolidating all of that work from different authors, and requiring it to please fans who have grown up playing the original games and internalised its story is not an easy task. You can’t tell me that there wouldn’t be some ‘1/10 unplayable’ controversy because the writers forgot that Gordon wipes back to front and that’s integral to the 2003 arg web-blog backed fanon that his stank balls are what will defeat the Combine.
I do not blame the guy for not wanting to put himself through the trial-by-neckbeard.
Trial-by-neckbeard is a good one.
Agreed! Stank ball gate could have the potential to sink Valve
Left 4 Dead has so little in the way of lore that it really shouldn't be a problem.
I mean it's a barbones scenario, and you could read through all the random one liners in an hour.
Quick look at the maps and you're caught up.
So he's saying it's set in the alternate universe then...
Makes sense, it's a lose-lose. No matter which way you go with the story (or the gameplay, for that matter), it's gonna piss a lot of people off because it doesn't meet their ridiculous expectations.
Some sequels just aren't meant to be. Better off remaining vaporware than ending up some disappointing, soulless cash grab.
Half-Life 2 takes place in practically a different universe, it was so different from the first game's setting. Seems like doing something like that would generally work, but there's no way it's going to be regarded as good for a very long time, just from the weight of expectation.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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