Okay, here are my overall thoughts on Half Life 3:
As far as a supposed ARG, I think people are a bit off their nut with this. Seriously, talk about an over-analysis. I didn't see anything indicating or suggesting an announcement of a Half Life game.
I'M KIDDING. True, I am a PC gamer, but that would be way too cruel to the console crowd. However, I have to disagree with that. Waiting for the next-gen consoles truly would be suicide for the franchise. While Valve hasn't yet announced HL3, as far as I know, there is no new consoles by Microsoft or Sony even remotely on the horizon. I'm sure they'll appear, but making a new console (or any new electronic device for that matter), is a major deal requiring a massive industrial effort of both hardware and software engineering, as well as rigorous testing. Wanting a developer to postpone their game in order wait for hardware that doesn't exist yet, would be like telling them to shoot themselves in the foot. PC gamers would be absolutely livid if Valve, a company that largely caters to the PC market, were doing this for any game, let alone Half Life. Delaying their dev cycle for speculative hardware to arrive doesn't seem like something Valve would even consider.
To all the people saying it won't happening, it's irrelevant, ect.:
Well, unless Valve's new slogan is "We hate money." Half Life 3 will definitely happen. It has a very large fanbase, with HL2 being one of the most critically acclaimed games in existence. It got a meta-score of 96. Metacritic can have issues, so I'm going off of the critics scores, not the users, who can troll or be fanboy-ish. 81 positive reviews, 0 mixed, 0 negative. That's quite a feat. Valve created a unique narrative with an interesting world, and focused on a handful of characters that the player would grow to care about. This is why it's frustrated to Half Life fans. To put it into context of other games, it's as if BioWare decided that Mass Effect 3 was not worth it or, if after the end of Halo 2, Bungie decided to call it quits. That would probably irk quite a few people. The best example could probably be Star Wars. What if, after The Empire Strikes Back ended, and all that shit went down with Han being snatched, Luke finding out that Vader was his father, setting up for some finale, Lucas just decided "Eh, fuck it." and never made Return of the Jedi. Well, that's sort of how Half Life fans feel. We loved the story and characters, and want to see it play out.
What I think happened:
To make it quick obviously it was the failure of episodic games. This much was admitted by Newell. He also officially said that Episode 3 would be the end of the Half Life 2 story arc. But after the events of Ep. 2, they probably realized there was no way in hell they could cram that much plot into the length of an episode without it being shitty. Being shitty is not something that Valve is very good at, which is also why things take so damn long with them. This combined with the runaway success of Portal, made it easier to do Portal 2 as their next major game than to risk poorly executing the end of Half Life. Logically, at the point they're at now, making HL3 their next major release would made complete sense. I'll wait for a public statement before popping the confetti, though.
As far as a supposed ARG, I think people are a bit off their nut with this. Seriously, talk about an over-analysis. I didn't see anything indicating or suggesting an announcement of a Half Life game.
I don't see anything with the lights, but I suppose the fact that the stockings have Half Life characters names on them may suggest that Valve hasn't forgotten about the franchise. Of course, the best thing is what appears to be a Gabe Newell plushie under the tree.SirBryghtside said:
You're right, it should be a PC exclusive.nackertash said:
I'M KIDDING. True, I am a PC gamer, but that would be way too cruel to the console crowd. However, I have to disagree with that. Waiting for the next-gen consoles truly would be suicide for the franchise. While Valve hasn't yet announced HL3, as far as I know, there is no new consoles by Microsoft or Sony even remotely on the horizon. I'm sure they'll appear, but making a new console (or any new electronic device for that matter), is a major deal requiring a massive industrial effort of both hardware and software engineering, as well as rigorous testing. Wanting a developer to postpone their game in order wait for hardware that doesn't exist yet, would be like telling them to shoot themselves in the foot. PC gamers would be absolutely livid if Valve, a company that largely caters to the PC market, were doing this for any game, let alone Half Life. Delaying their dev cycle for speculative hardware to arrive doesn't seem like something Valve would even consider.
To all the people saying it won't happening, it's irrelevant, ect.:
Well, unless Valve's new slogan is "We hate money." Half Life 3 will definitely happen. It has a very large fanbase, with HL2 being one of the most critically acclaimed games in existence. It got a meta-score of 96. Metacritic can have issues, so I'm going off of the critics scores, not the users, who can troll or be fanboy-ish. 81 positive reviews, 0 mixed, 0 negative. That's quite a feat. Valve created a unique narrative with an interesting world, and focused on a handful of characters that the player would grow to care about. This is why it's frustrated to Half Life fans. To put it into context of other games, it's as if BioWare decided that Mass Effect 3 was not worth it or, if after the end of Halo 2, Bungie decided to call it quits. That would probably irk quite a few people. The best example could probably be Star Wars. What if, after The Empire Strikes Back ended, and all that shit went down with Han being snatched, Luke finding out that Vader was his father, setting up for some finale, Lucas just decided "Eh, fuck it." and never made Return of the Jedi. Well, that's sort of how Half Life fans feel. We loved the story and characters, and want to see it play out.
What I think happened:
To make it quick obviously it was the failure of episodic games. This much was admitted by Newell. He also officially said that Episode 3 would be the end of the Half Life 2 story arc. But after the events of Ep. 2, they probably realized there was no way in hell they could cram that much plot into the length of an episode without it being shitty. Being shitty is not something that Valve is very good at, which is also why things take so damn long with them. This combined with the runaway success of Portal, made it easier to do Portal 2 as their next major game than to risk poorly executing the end of Half Life. Logically, at the point they're at now, making HL3 their next major release would made complete sense. I'll wait for a public statement before popping the confetti, though.
