In a new two-hour documentary from Valve, current and former members of the company speak candidly about the creation of Half-life 2 as well as finally revealing the truth about what happened episode 3, and even showing gameplay of early prototypes of the discontinued game.
On November 15th, Valve released a major update for Half-life 2 to celebrate the game’s 20th anniversary. The update includes new commentary, quality of life features, Steam Workshop support, and more. However, perhaps the most exciting thing to come out of this big deal Half-life 2 Celebration is a new two-hour documentary from Valve that details the development of the famous first-person shooter and its follow-up episodes. And yes, they talk about it Half Life 2 Episode 3the game that never came to fruition despite millions of players begging Valve to make it.
Here’s the documentation if you haven’t seen it yet:
At the end of the document after it has been discussed Consequence
“Even in it Episode 3“I still don’t know what that would have been if we had built it, because it wasn’t built,” said series writer Marc Laidlaw.
“That was the feeling of excitement. I can’t even imagine that anything will happen to this team. I didn’t want to say from the top down, “This is what we need to do to tell our very important story,” you know? It’s like, “Oh, we have new features, how do we use them?” [them]? What kind of story can we make with this now?’”
According to Speyer Episode 3 is set in the Arctic – something previously released concept art had confirmed – and he explained that the episode would focus on the missing Borealis ship, which is referenced in both episodes portal
Episode 3 was discontinued after six months of development
After six months of development, Speyrer says this Episode 3 was still a “collection of playable levels in no particular order” and some story beats. He surmised that after another six months they would have reached a “critical mass of mechanics”, at which point they could begin actually preparing the game for release in about a year or two, depending on “how ambitious” the team is .
Of course that didn’t happen. In the documentation Half-life 2 Developers say they are starting to run out of options with the tools and features they are developing. At one point they reference Arkane’s canceled Ravenholm episode and how the team struggled to do new and fun things with it Half-life 2 Toolbox and engine.
“Arkane made the Ravenholm game and even they had trouble doing cool new things with that toolset, and if these guys can’t find some cool things to do with it, I think we’ll run out of gas. said Laidlaw.
So everyone at Valve focused on getting it done left 4 Dead and set Half Life Episode 3 on the back burner. And then they felt like they had waited too long to come back and finish it.
“left 4 Dead “It turned out great,” said Speyrer. “But it took long enough – and that’s the tragic and almost comical thing about it – that it took long enough that when we thought about going back to Episode 3, we made the argument, ‘Well, we missed it.’ .’ . “It’s too late now, you know” and “We really need to build a new engine to keep going.” Half-life “Series” and so on.”
Now Valve thinks this was a mistake and Speyrer adds: “In hindsight [it was] incorrect. You know, we definitely could have gone back and spent two years making it Episode 3.”
Towards the end of the documentary, Valve boss Gabe Newell says this Half-life AlyxThe ending was a somewhat “self-critical realization” that they needed to move forward with the story.
“I think so Half-life represents a tool we have at our disposal and promises our customers to benefit from innovations and opportunities to create unprecedented gaming experiences [seen] “I believe we as an industry have no shortage of opportunities at this time,” Newell’s document concludes.
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