Valve Plans For More Half-Life Beyond Episode 3 105
Ars Technica notes, via an interview at the StuffWeLike site, comments from Valve's Doug Lombardi indicating that the company has plans to continue the Half-Life series beyond Half-Life 2 Episode 3 . "While most sites are taking this as a confirmation of Half-Life 3, the quote is not a definitive on anything other than the continuation of the series. And, of course, there hasn't ever been so much as a rumor hinting at Half-Life's demise. As what is arguably the biggest franchise on the PC platform, there is no reason for Valve to stop producing the crowbar-swingin' good times."
Half-Life 2 Ep 3 Gameplay (Score:3, Insightful)
Has anybody managed to get any information on what kind of game Ep3 will be? I've read about the HL2 episodes as being testbeds for different kinds of play technology; Ep1 was Alyx's development, having an effective side-kick. Ep2 was cinematic physics and large outdoor areas. I'm really, really hoping that Ep3 will be an unbounded game world, such as the GTA games (only with headcrabs instead of gangs). All of the Half-Life games so far have been, in general, train rides. You go from point A via route A with almost no variation. The combat areas may have some openness to them, but the world as a whole does not. Has anybody out there heard anything?
Re:Queue half-life jokes (Score:1, Insightful)
Valve will give up on HL franchise.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Half-Life 2 Ep 3 Gameplay (Score:3, Insightful)
TF2 maps!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I know Valve can do no wrong but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why are you only getting up in arms about copy protection now, when companies have being doing this since the Commodore Amiga?
Re:Queue half-life jokes (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. I'm still sore about Valve dropping the black box. I was excited about Team Fortress and Portal. But then they canceled the black box, so I would have to pay an added premium for the orange box for content I already have. After I heard that I swore it off. And with swearing.
Fuck you, Valve.
Re:Half-Life 2 Ep 3 Gameplay (Score:2, Insightful)
I could concede that in between plot points, there is probably room for more sandbox variety in HL, but when it comes to advances in plot or storyline, I'm willing to forgive the linearity.
As for your specific remarks about the HL2 story and Alyx in particular, you're entitled to your opinion, but I for one found it to be remarkably captivating. In fact, Alyx is one of the best formed characters in recent gaming history, in my opinion. One reviewer (I forget which one) cited a specific situation that I think really captures Alyx's character. He was driving through the wilderness when he happened to look over at Alyx in the passenger seat. She looked back at him, smiled and winked.
What will be in Episode 3? We know some of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, on what we know about Episode 3: First of all, Portal takes place in the Half Life universe in the laboratories of Aperture Science. This had to be for an obvious reason since it essentially is a storyline shoe-horn in to a puzzle game. They didn't need to do it, but they did it anyway. Episode 2 spills the info that Aperture Science has a vessel called the Borealis [youtube.com]. It "vanished" (i.e. teleportation) but has now been found. Obviously Gordon will have to go there and find the ship and obtain the gadgets and gizmos. This means Gordon will have to travel to the arctic, so Episode 3 will most likely feature snowy areas. And then there is this Gabe Newell quote [g4tv.com] on Portal (After you launch the player, play the video called "X-Play Review: Portal". Gabe's quote is a little over the halfway mark):
"The character that you play is a character who has importance in the overall half-life universe, and will eventually have a fairly significant relationship with other characters that we're already familiar with".
The way Portal works as an introductory game to educate the players on how to use the Portal gun to interact with the environment is a really clever method to set things up on how it will potentially be used in Episode 3. But I'm actually not so sure however whether Chell will give Gordon the gun, cause he doesn't have the surgically inserted heel springs to prevent injury from falling the large distances. Oh, and GLaDOS will probably be involved somehow...she's "still alive" you know.
Re:I know Valve can do no wrong but... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that's not what would happen. If Valve went bankrupt, the company assets would be sold off to another company. That new company might continue to operate Steam, or they might not, but one thing is certain - they would be very pissed if Valve had given away their universal unlock, since that would destroy much of the value of the Steam platform. Also, I doubt that the third-party games on Steam would be affected by the universal unlock. So don't put any faith in Valve doing the right thing as the ship sinks, because it won't happen.
I don't know where you got this idea. Surely activating online is the same as entering a CD key, only online? What if you lose the CD key and you want to install the game later? What if you want to go back in 20 years time only to realise you can't install the game because you don't have a code?
No, it's not the same. If the servers are down or you don't have an Internet connection, you can't do online activation. And you do have to reactivate online if your hardware or your OS changes, even if you install from a backup you have made. CD keys don't have these problems.
Never forget, Steam is iTunes for games. There's nasty DRM all over the place, but since it mostly works fine, many people don't mind. Just bear in mind that the games aren't really yours, even though you paid for them, because Valve can ban your account. This is the price of convenience. It is the same deal with DIVX, with iTunes, with Wii Shop/Xbox Live Arcade, and with Windows Media. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
In Steam's defense, I will say this - there are no limits to the number of downloads for a particular game. You really have bought a license to play, so you can shift your account between as many PCs as you want. This is a good thing: much better than DIVX, who didn't provide free replacement disks, much better than the console services which lock downloaded games to one device, and much better than iTunes, which limits the number of machines you can activate. What really amazes me about Steam is that the DRM it provides is not enough for some companies (cough, Take 2) and their games (cough, Bioshock), so they hack on their own incompatible extra solutions (cough, SecuROM). If we must have DRM, at least let it be standardised.
Re:Queue half-life jokes (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a 360 player, yeah you're stuck with the Orange Box. But since the only game included in the Orange Box that appeared on consoles previously is Half-Life 2, and a markedly inferior version at that, it shouldn't be so painful.
Anyway, I think you're looking at this the wrong way; the value of Ep2 + Portal + TF2 is at least that of a full game. They threw in HL2 and Ep1 for free. I suspect that's why they cancelled the Black Box; they would have been charging the same for it as the Orange Box, while delivering less.
Hans