Half-Life 2: Episode 3

[toblix]

"The next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between Half-Life 2 to Episode One, and Episode One to Episode Two," Lombardi told Kikizo when asked about Episode Three.

Maybe by then they'll have fixed their fucking horrible VAC unban policy, which is so amazingly terrible that I'm amazed that anyone in their right mind would spend as much as a cent on Steam.

[elmuerte]

woohoo... I'm in my right mind

[Wrestlevania]

You're off that fucking soapbox finally then, toblix?

[Jake]

Doug Lombardi didn't lie in 2008. 

 

http://www.marclaidlaw.com/epistle-3/

 

https://pastebin.com/q9DMFa7c

[Roderick]

That sneering trickster, the G-Man.

[agorman]

I was so surprised to read that this morning.

At this point, this is was so much more than I ever expected to get in terms of what Half-Life 3 would be, and was surprised how cathartic I found reading it. 

[Professor Video Games]

Cool that he put that out there but now I just feel sad...

[marginalgloss]

That's a really interesting little artefact. Much as I'd love another Half-Life, I've never really spent much time thinking about a serious sequel to the DLC episodes – to be honest, those games were never really about the explicit plot for me – but it's interesting to think about what could have been. 
 

Spoiler

Some of it is oddly familiar. I feel like we saw glimpses of the time-hopping stuff in Portal 2. Even the Dyson Sphere near the end reminds me of some of the massive test chambers in that game. And oddly enough, some of it reminds me of Bioshock Infinite. When in doubt, start hopping dimensions, I guess?

 
I can pretty much guarantee that somebody is going to write something speculating that all of this is an extended metaphor for the experience of trying to make Half-Life 3 at Valve. I'm not a fan of biographical readings, but certainly that last paragraph seems tinged with a genuine sadness. 
 
Oh, and my favourite line: 
 

Spoiler

'Out of Alyx ’s sight, I might have done something to hasten the grub’s demise before we proceeded.'

 

[eot]

Reads like it would've been a challenging script to make justice. I don't blame them for not finishing it, but I think they owe their fans more transparency. I'm mostly glad people will shut up about it now.

[mikemariano]

13 minutes ago, eot said:

Reads like it would've been a challenging script to make justice.

 

I think the letter is a really good possibility space for Half-Life 2: Episode 3 — ice battles! Using Source's optical illusions to create a Dyson Sphere!

 

But trying to make it Half-Life 3? It isn't a big enough story for that.

[eot]

I agree with that, but back when they talked about the game it was always Ep.3. The whole Half-Life 3 thing was manufactured by the community, because it would be ridiculous to just release an episode after so long.

[Jake]

I think there is zero chance this was intended to be Half Life 3. When I see people saying that I think they must just forget that Half Life 2 Episode 3 was something that was intended to exist. Not only would the story as outlined here be too small for a full length Half Life game, but his blog refers to it as "epistle 3" (which is clearly just a word swap for Episode 3, the same as many other name swaps throughout his post), and we know that Half Life 2 Episode 3 was in at least preproduction for a while, and included a bunch of the elements he mentions. Also the way that writeup ends, implies pretty strongly that if they had produced and shipped this version of Episode 3, it was setting up Alyx to be the protagonist of a hypothetical Half Life 3 (she's the one who leaves with the G Man at the end, not Gordon).

 

This is a super interesting document in part because it surely shows just one person's version of what Half Life 2 Episode 3 might have been, at one point in production. It's just one iteration of one possible (or probable?) direction the final product could have taken. Valve always seemed to adapt and shift their stories and setpieces around as they stayed in production, so it's unlikely we would have seen the game as described here, had they shipped Episode 3. Also this is a document presumably written by Laidlaw almost a decade after production was at its most fervent, so this is his version  of the story, from probably his preferred time in production before things went fallow, with almost a decade of time to sit and percolate in his mind before he put pen to paper. I'm not saying that to discount it or something -- it was a fantastic and surprisingly cathartic read -- but more to point out that it is not actually "half life 3's story" or "half life episode 3's story" or anything as specific and tangible as that.

[feelthedarkness]

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.

 

Kind of heartbreaking. 

 

Boy I'd love to a series of multimedia somethings on games that might have been. All the versions of Diablo 3 before the thing that shipped, Half Life, BioShock Infinite. Videos of the parts that worked, interviews about the things they wanted but didn't. 

 

So really at this point if there is ever another HL, it's going to be "New Half Life" for the Vive, right? 

[WARP DOGS]

1 hour ago, feelthedarkness said:

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.

 

Kind of heartbreaking. 

Not sure if this is a common interpretation or not, but definitely feels like he's addressing Valve personally with this

[eot]

6 hours ago, WARP DOGS said:

Not sure if this is a common interpretation or not, but definitely feels like he's addressing Valve personally with this

I think so too, it's not very subtle.

[sclpls]

It is a bummer that a bunch of HL fans seem to have responded to this by negative review bombing other Valve games. :-(

[mikemariano]

25 minutes ago, sclpls said:

It is a bummer that a bunch of HL fans seem to have responded to this by negative review bombing other Valve games. :-(

 

The flurry of negative reviews for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 all seem pretty honest in their frustration. In some aspects, recommending the Episodes now is like recommending Spacebase DF-9, another game publicly abandoned by its company post-release.

 

The one negative review added recently to Ricochet is petty, though.

[Atlantic]

On the other hand, some people have taken the mantle upon themselves to make Episode 3/HL3:

 

https://itch.io/jam/epistle-3-jam

[eot]

1 hour ago, mikemariano said:

 

The flurry of negative reviews for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 all seem pretty honest in their frustration. In some aspects, recommending the Episodes now is like recommending Spacebase DF-9, another game publicly abandoned by its company post-release.

 

The one negative review added recently to Ricochet is petty, though.

I'm surprised they're charging for that. I own it but I definitely never bought it.

[TychoCelchuuu]

2 hours ago, mikemariano said:

 

The flurry of negative reviews for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 all seem pretty honest in their frustration. In some aspects, recommending the Episodes now is like recommending Spacebase DF-9, another game publicly abandoned by its company post-release.

 

The one negative review added recently to Ricochet is petty, though.

I mean, Ep 2 is a bit different, in that it's a complete, enjoyable experience all on its own, albeit somewhat of a tease in terms of narrative, whereas DF-9 is missing a lot of stuff that one might've hoped for in the game. Nobody was holding out for more stuff in Ep 2 that is never going to come.

[miffy495]

Except, like, an ending.

[Jake]

4 hours ago, mikemariano said:

 

The flurry of negative reviews for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 all seem pretty honest in their frustration. In some aspects, recommending the Episodes now is like recommending Spacebase DF-9, another game publicly abandoned by its company post-release.

 

The one negative review added recently to Ricochet is petty, though.

 

I disagree with all the things you said haha  (full disclosure of course, I worked on Spacebase). Half Life 2 episode 2 is probably the best piece of Half Life 2 content that Valve made. It ends on a cliffhanger but also: it's an amazing game moment to moment and as a complete chapter of a story. I'll never stop recommending it. I also think it's mega cheesy to act like now is different than a couple weeks ago, when it's been almost a decade since the last one came out. "All-but abandoned" and "abandoned" were basically the same thing with this game, for the last five years at least if not longer. 

[eot]

11 hours ago, Jake said:

 

Half Life 2 episode 2 is probably the best piece of Half Life 2 content that Valve made. It ends on a cliffhanger but also: it's an amazing game moment to moment and as a complete chapter of a story. I'll never stop recommending it. I also think it's mega cheesy to act like now is different than a couple weeks ago, when it's been almost a decade since the last one came out. "All-but abandoned" and "abandoned" were basically the same thing with this game, for the last five years at least if not longer. 

Definitely the best HL2 content. I think I'd rank all of them:

 

1. Half-Life

2. Half-Life 2: Episode 2

3. Half-Life: Opposing Force

4. Half-Life 2

5. Half-Life: Uplink

6. Half-Life 2: Episode 1

7. Half-Life: Blue Shift

8. Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

 

I haven't played Half-Life: Decay!

[Cordeos]

1 hour ago, eot said:

Definitely the best HL2 content. I think I'd rank all of them:

 

1. Half-Life

2. Half-Life 2: Episode 2

3. Half-Life: Opposing Force

4. Half-Life 2

5. Half-Life: Uplink

6. Half-Life 2: Episode 1

7. Half-Life: Blue Shift

8. Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

 

I haven't played Half-Life: Decay!

What about Codename: Gordon?

[Jake]

1 hour ago, Cordeos said:

What about Codename: Gordon?

RIP