Valve Plans For More Half-Life Beyond Episode 3

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."

linux client please

[pak9rabid]

I really wish Valve would put out a Linux client so us Linux-only users can play HL2 + sequels without the performance rape associated with using Wine (no hate on the Wine project...it kicks ass at what it does). Ah well, I guess we'll have to wait for Microsoft to shoot themselves in the foot for a few more years before that will ever become a possibility.

Re:Valve will give up on HL franchise....

[gEvil (beta)]

Activision is gonna buy Valve?!? : o That's what you just said!

Re:Half-Life 2 Ep 3 Gameplay

[MrHanky]

The characters of GTA: Vice City and San Andreas were much, much better than the ones in Half-Life 2, perhaps in part because of the superior voice acting, but also because they had larger than life personalities. What exactly is there to Alyx? She's a boilerplate "fun" girl who likes action and dangerous things, but she doesn't express any personal ideas (well, she came up with the word 'zombine'), and she certainly doesn't properly function as a dramatic character. For that you need some sort of conflict, like with those traitorous scumbags Big Smoke and Ryder. Apart from the one with the Combines, all conflicts in HL2 are shallow and superficial, but that one suffers from being too big and too obvious to really generate interest. It's not like you ever consider going over to the Combines as a serious option, is it?

And what exactly is so great about the story? It consists mainly of going from one place to the next while shooting stuff and sometimes even solving small problems. Sometimes you get cooler toys. Hey, even a James Bond movie can do better than that.

No, what HL2 has going for it is that it's an immensely well made action game. Like a rollercoaster, it runs on rails, but like a well-made rollercoaster, it has well thought out pacing, the right intervals between challenging moments, and so on. A rollercoaster isn't supposed to tell a story, and neither is HL2. There is, perhaps, a story in there somewhere, but it's not one of the positive aspects of the game.

Re:Half-Life 2 Ep 3 Gameplay

[Chyeld]

Valve has a love for games on rails. They do everything they can possible to ensure that you see what they want you to see, when they want you to see it, without being aware of the rails. Listen to the dev commentary in Ep 2 and Portal and it becomes immediately obvious that the perfect game experience in Valve's mind would be to give the illusion of GTA while ensuring you never actually stray from the path.

This is not a horrible thing. The reason most people are down on games that are on rails is that most developers suck at story telling and cinematic experiences while simultaneously thinking they rock at the same. Therefore most games on rails feel more like a Disney ride than an epic adventure. Both in the fact that you are consitantly reminded that you are on rails and that the various "props" are obviously only expected to be seen from the "ride-side" of the game. Valve actually puts the effort in to cover up the rails, to polish the props and to make it look as if the fact that you just happen to be going down the path is because YOU choose to go that way, not because every other way was closed.

Take for instance, the 'other' episodic game that was released around the time of Episode 1. SiN Episodes: Emergence.

In SiN, you were shown this huge city, many of the locations in game were huge, the modern day equivalents of the Tower of Babel. And yet, there was always a fence, a door, or a window between you and the rest of the world. There were very strict paths you were forced to take, and even though you would often be assulted by people coming from the inaccessible areas, you never were given the chance to get to them yourself. It was very obvious that your goals were "get A to pass B so you can push C and open D".

This is exactly the same scenario that the Half-Life games provide, but with them it is far, far easier to forget that you are being herded along a path. Take dodging the Antlion guard in the mines/hive. Most people, the first time around, probably almost shat themselves when they finially fell down that final shaft with the guard seemingly just a millisecond behind them. However if you play the game through again, you realize that this spot was actually scripted to come off exactly that way. You might be able to mess around and actually die there, but you will never get so far ahead of the guard that they won't be a millisecond behind you at the final shaft.

Valve specializes in cinematic magic. A sandbox free-will game is their anti-thesis.

Re:linux client please

[LingNoi]

Since Gabe is ex-Microsoft I think your answer would be "when hell freezes over". Of course they'd never publicly say that.

It's a shame really because I too would like a Linux client on my Ubuntu machine.. Carmack's engines are always cross-platform, the UT engines are cross platform but source is Windows only and that's probably never going to change at Valve. I am guessing it doesn't even show up on their radar.

I can't remember or not, did the orange box come out for the PS3? And doesn't the PS3 run openGL? If anyone knows the answer to that then why can't they put a little work into getting a client that works on *insert fav distro*?

I think it's good to also have some perspective here. Linux isn't popular and it's only in the last few years that the majority of the public are taking it seriously for desktops. Even so I bet it would be quick for them to get a native client up and running in no time. It's just they see no value in doing so.