In a brand new two-hour documentary from Valve, present and former members of the corporate discuss brazenly in regards to the creation of Half-Life 2 in addition to lastly spilling the beans on what occurred to Episode 3, and even exhibiting gameplay of early prototypes of the canceled sport.
On November 15, Valve launched a big replace for Half-Life 2 to rejoice the sport’s 20-year anniversary. The replace contains new commentary, quality-of-life options, Steam Workshop assist, and extra. Nevertheless, maybe essentially the most thrilling factor to come back out of this huge Half-Life 2 celebration is a brand new two-hour documentary from Valve detailing the event of the well-known first-person shooter and its follow-up episodes. And sure, they speak about Half-Life 2 Episode 3, the sport that by no means got here to be regardless of tens of millions of gamers begging Valve to make it.
Right here’s the documentary when you haven’t watched it but:
On the finish of the doc, after speaking about Episodes 1 and 2, quite a few individuals who labored on Half-Life 2 and its episodes then started speaking about Episode 3. Valve was apparently engaged on an ice gun that might let gamers create icy buildings, pathways, and barricades throughout fight. Valve was additionally engaged on a blob-like monster that might cut up into a number of components and undergo vents and chain-link fences. Nevertheless, this was all very early stuff, with HL2 engineer David Speyrer suggesting they had been solely about six months into improvement earlier than plans modified.
“Even into Episode 3, I nonetheless don’t know what that might have been if we’d constructed it as a result of it hadn’t been constructed,” stated sequence author Marc Laidlaw.
“That was the the sensation of pleasure. Of one thing I can’t even think about goes to occur with this staff. I used to be not imposing a top-down, ‘That is what we should do to inform our essential story,’ you recognize? It’s like, ‘Oh, we’ve got new options, how will we use [them]? What sort of story can we do with these now?’”
In line with Speyrer, Episode 3 was set within the Arctic—one thing that beforehand launched idea artwork had confirmed—and he defined that the episode would concentrate on the lacking Borealis ship referenced in each the Portal and Half-Life franchises.
Episode 3 was stopped after six months of improvement
After six months of improvement, Speyrer says that Episode 3 was nonetheless a “assortment of playable ranges in no explicit order” and a few story beats. He theorized that after one other six months, they might have reached a “important mass of mechanics” and at that time they might begin actually placing the sport collectively for launch in a few yr or two, relying on “how bold” the staff received.
In fact, that didn’t occur. Within the documentary, Half-Life 2 devs clarify that that they had began to expire of issues to do with the instruments and options that they had developed. At one level, they reference Arkane’s canceled Ravenholm episode, and the way the staff was struggling to do new and enjoyable stuff with the Half-Life 2 toolbox and engine.
“Arkane was constructing the Ravenholm sport and even they had been having bother doing cool new stuff with this toolset, and if these guys can’t determine a bunch of cool stuff to do with this, I feel we’re working out of gasoline,” stated Laidlaw.
So everybody at Valve centered on ending up Left 4 Useless and put Half-Life Episode 3 on the again burner. After which, they felt like that they had waited too lengthy to come back again and end it.
“Left 4 Useless got here out nice,” stated Speyrer. “Nevertheless it took lengthy sufficient—and that is the tragic and virtually comical factor about it—was it took lengthy sufficient that then, by the point we thought-about going again to Episode 3, the argument was made like, ‘Nicely, we missed it. It’s too late now, you recognize,’ and ‘We actually must make a brand new engine to proceed the Half-Life sequence’ and all that.”
Now, Valve seems like that was a mistake, with Speyrer including: “In hindsight [it was] mistaken. You recognize, we may have positively gone again and spent 2 years to make Episode 3.”
Towards the top of the documentary, Valve boss Gabe Newell says that Half-Life Alyx’s ending was a considerably “self-critical realization” that they wanted to maneuver ahead with the story.
“I feel that Half-Life represents a software we’ve got and guarantees made to prospects to capitalize on innovation and alternatives to construct sport experiences that haven’t been [seen] beforehand, and I feel that there aren’t any scarcity of these alternatives dealing with us as an business proper now,” is the ultimate message within the doc from Newell.
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