The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Black]

Shills aren't going to be pleased.

 

[Drax]

Fucking finally. There are games where all "screenshots" are just cutscenes from the game, disgusting.

 

[MRY]

Countdown until we hear how unfair this is to indie developers, etc., etc. :D

 

[Thane Solus]

Now if you could do that with trailers... Since triple A "developers" and marketing, rarely show gameplay until is too late and their dick is in your ass))

 

[Black]

After HL2 I don't know why anyone would wait for HL3.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamesn.com/half-life-3/half-life-3-release-date-story-gameplay-art

Whatever happened to Half-Life 3? The complete saga so far

Half-Life 3 is the greatest mystery in PC gaming. More intriguing than the actual magic that makes your GPU work, and more elusive than a good movie tie-in game, Valve’s third game in the seminal shooter series has been missing in action for nine years now. With every passing year that Valve conspicuously fail to mention it, the mystery deepens.

We’re convinced it’s out there, though. At least in some form or another. If you’ve been keeping your ears close to the ground, you’ll have discovered enough tidbits to keep the candle of hope burning. It’s not a bright light, admittedly, but there’s certainly a flame flickering in the darkness. As series fanatics we’re keen to keep that flame alive, so here’s everything we know about Half-Life 3.

Half-Life 3: the story so far
What is Half-Life 3? That sounds a stupid question, but over the years there have been two answers to that question. It’s either a collection of three short, episodic games - two of which have already been released - or it’s a full-length sequel to both Half-Life 2 and its expansions.

2006 - 2010 - Half-Life 3 or Episode Three?

Back in 2006, as Half-Life 2: Episode One released, Valve boss Gabe Newell referred to Episodes 1-3 as being Half-Life 3. “Probably a better name for it would have been Half Life 3: Episode One,” he admitted during an interview with Eurogamer. He went on to explain that after the six year wait for Half-Life 2, Valve didn’t want players to go through another similar experience. Instead, the next game in the saga was to span three smaller episodes that would be released with far higher frequency.

“This is what we're trying instead of the large monolithic release. Let's take what we would ordinarily do and break it up into three pieces and see,” Newell said.

And the format worked, almost. Half-Life 2: Episode One suffered a delay, but released just two years after Half-Life 2’s 2004 debut. Episode Two promptly arrived the following year in 2007. And now, nine years later, we’re still waiting for Episode Three. It certainly puts the six year wait for Half-Life 2 into perspective.

Over those nine years the general opinion on Episode Three has changed. If Valve have been working on a Half-Life game all this time, it's logical to presume that Episode Three is no more, and a full-size Half-Life 3 game is now what to expect. Valve couldn’t possibly release a four-hour episode to an audience that’s spent almost a decade in waiting, could they?

To make the guessing game still more difficult, Valve have become increasingly quiet. The dialogue coming out of the company is entirely focussed on their existing multiplayer games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and the words ‘Half-Life’ seem as if they’ve been banned from the lips of Valve employees for over half a decade. The video above shows Newell’s change in approach to discussing Half-Life 3, with his 2007 enthusiasm having apparently completely evaporated three years later in 2010.

2012 - Half-Life 3 concept art

Not that the radio silence has kept the world devoid of any Half-Life 3 evidence at all. 2012 saw the leak of a series of concept art images reportedly drawn for Half-Life 2: Episode Three. Among them were various drawings of Alyx Vance, men wearing cold weather gear, and a return to Xen. The art was acquired by the fan website ValveTime, who claimed the images were from a 2008 project. If they are indeed real concept sketches created by Valve, they suggest that work was certainly underway on Episode Three. Concept art is generally part of the pre-production process however, so it’s not an indication that the third episode ever even reached a greybox build. Is that work continuing today? It seems no one outside of Valve’s inner sanctum knows the answer.

2012 - 2015 - Half-Life 2: Episode Four - Return to Ravenholm

While the concept art leak helps keep the candle of hope burning, the story of Return to Ravenholm offers an opposite viewpoint. Between 2006 and 2008 Arkane - the studio behind Dishonored - were developing Half-Life 2: Episode Four. Entitled ‘Return to Ravenholm’, it was to put the player in control of a new character and revisit the zombie-infested titular town during a period before Episode Two’s conclusion.

Valve pulled the plug on it, though. A report from ValveTime explains that the company felt the episode couldn’t introduce anything new due to the setting constraints, but is this cancellation part of a larger picture? Have all Half-Life projects been abandoned?

Is Half-Life 3 even possible?
There’s an even more pressing question than that, though. Is Half-Life 3 even possible anymore? The Valve we know today is a very different company to the one who released Half-Life 2. In an interview with Develop in 2011, Newell said: “With episodes, I think we accelerated the model and shortened development cycles with it. If you look at Team Fortress 2, that’s what we now think is the best model for what we’ve been doing. Our updates and release model keeps on getting shorter and shorter.”

That’s an update system well suited to the likes of multiplayer games CS:GO and Dota 2. But what about narrative campaigns? It’s difficult to envision how an update patch-based approach could work.

And that’s the Half-Life 3 story so far. As each year goes by, a sequel to arguably the most iconic FPS in videogaming seems less and less likely. Yet, despite that, the appetite for a new Half-Life never seems to diminish, so its commercial prospects will always be strong.

Half-Life 3 release date

Until the words ‘Half-Life 3 confirmed’ stop being a meme, a release date for the game is nothing but a pipe dream.

You could have an educated guess, however. 2018 will mark the 20th anniversary of the original Half-Life’s release, and an ideal window to release a long-awaited sequel. But by that same logic, 2028 would be an equally suitable date. When better to celebrate three decades of Gordon Freeman than with a third game?

The other logical answer is ‘never’. In an interview with journalist and presenter Geoff Keighley, Gabe Newell said: “The only reason we'd go back and do like a super classic kind of product is if a whole bunch of people just internally at Valve said they wanted to do it and had a reasonable explanation for why [they did],"

"But you know if you want to do another Half-Life game and you want to ignore everything we've learned in shipping Portal 2 and in shipping all the updates on the multiplayer side, that seems like a bad choice. So we'll keep moving forward. But that doesn't necessarily always mean what people are worried that it might mean."

Half-Life 3 VR

Each Half-Life has seen something revolutionary introduced into gaming. The first title offered previously unseen levels of narrative immersion, while the sequel pioneered realistic physical object behaviour, empowering the player to use physics as a puzzle-solving device and a weapon. Following that pattern, it seems plausible that Half-Life 3 could be developed for VR.

Valve were heavily involved in the development of the HTC Vive, which is now pretty much the Steam VR headset in all but name. Such dedication to the platform suggests Valve have big ideas for VR. Could they involve Black Mesa?

Possibly. Back in 2015, HTC told the BBC that they were “co-operating with Half-Life”. Later the company went on to clarify that they meant Valve rather than Half-Life, but was that just covering up a slip of the tongue?

Half-Life 3 story

Episode Two ended on a cliffhanger for the ages. After destroying the Combine’s super portal, Gordon, Alyx, and Eli plan to seek out the Borealis: an Aperture Science research vessel that mysteriously disappeared. Before the trio can board a helicopter and embark on their search, a pair of Combine Advisors attack them and kill Eli. The screen fades to black as Alyx sobs into her father’s corpse.

Half-Life 3 would presumably continue Gordon and Alyx’s quest to find the Borealis. The footage of the ship seen in Episode Two was flecked with snowflakes, suggesting an arctic location. The leaked concept art backs this up, with images of a crashed helicopter on a frozen landscape, and drawings of various characters in cold weather gear.

With the Borealis being an Aperture Science ship, it would seem that Half-Life 3 would explore the connections between the Half-Life and Portal games. Easter eggs aplenty seem likely.

The art also contains a few paintings of alien-like imagery, suggesting the story may take Gordon back to Xen. Hopefully the final boss will be more exciting than a giant floating baby this time around.

Half-Life 3 gameplay

With no official information released by Valve, there’s no way we can comment on what Half-Life 3’s gameplay will be like. It would seem logical to expect a big new innovation on the scale of the Gravity Gun, and that’s backed up by Gabe Newell’s own comments. “There’s stuff [in Episode Three] that’s visually never been in games before, and there’s certainly a bunch of game elements on the order of Portal that have never been done before,” he said in an interview with Geoff Keighley in February 2008. He went on to hint that Valve had created something more innovative than the Portal Gun.

At this point, though, we’d hesitate to even say it will definitely be an FPS. Half-Life 3 could genuinely be anything.

The only real word on the internet regarding how the game will play comes from a Pastebin document, shared in January 2016. The anonymous user who posted the document suggests that they are part of the game’s development team, and reveals a few tidbits.

“The game is fabricated to be VERY reactive to player choice and decision making," the file reads.

"There are no forced cutscenes that break the pace of the game and put you to a stop. Instead you can still freely do as you please and fully interact with everything that goes on story wise and cinematically."

The last point seems fairly obvious, as the series has never made use of cutscenes. Combined with the slightly iffy sentence construction, it feels as if this is a hoax. If not though, we’re told to expect optional physics puzzles that are generated based on your decisions.

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam Dev Days conference videos are available on Steam and Youtube.

 

[LESS T_T]

Discovery Update 2.0 is online now: http://store.steampowered.com/about/newstore2016

 

[Jaesun]

I don't like the new layout....

 

[anvi]

I like new things. I just don't like that Firewatch is on there, that piece of shit doesn't deserve a dollar.

 

[Metro]

I don't like the new layout....

It's quite annoying. And I'm too lazy to modify it.

 

[Morality Games]

Is there anyone in the universe still eagerly waiting for HL3 at this point? Everyone I know just gave up on the waiting like years ago. They pushed it too far.

Perhaps. At least it feels right Half Life 3 should be the VR game that defines the tech and the design for the medium.

After HL2 I don't know why anyone would wait for HL3.

 

[pakoito]

What happened to Metro?

 

[Rahdulan]

There's way too much focus on what your friends and curators suggest. I'm amazed how buried new releases are now.

 

[Haba]

Steam is doing the same thing as every god damn social media is. Creating bubbles of groupthink, safe spaces where you only see what they think you want to see.

Looking forward to when grocery stores start operating on Steam logic. You buy ice cream once, and the next time you go to the store, the shelves rearrange themselves so that you have nothing but hundreds of different kinds of ice cream presented to you.

...yet you are happy you didn't do what Bob did and went to the store to buy a bottle of lube...

 

[anvi]

Some supermarkets already do worse. The best sales are from products that are displayed at eye level. So they auction off premium shelf space to the suppliers, so if you want your product to sell, you have to pay a fortune (in a bidding war) to have it on those eye level shelves. If you don't pay, you get put on the bottom shelf where nobody looks. And you have no leverage because the supermarket can just threaten to not stock your product at all, which will put you out of business and have little impact on supermarkets. They have suppliers in a head lock. At least one supermarket then declares the huge income from these 'bribes / blackmail' payments as part of their profits which artificially inflates their company's worth etc.

I am sure eventually shady shit like this will be just what happens everywhere. Although Steam don't have as big of an advantage as supermarkets do.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

What happened to Metro?

He fought the Trump, and, the Trump won.

 

[Metro]

I will make Codex Great again.

 

[LESS T_T]

Last week's top sellers. Looks like the optimization issues really damaged the post-release sales of Dishonored 2.

#1 - Dishonored 2 Pre-Order
#2 - Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI
#3 - Tyranny
#4 - Football Manager 2017
#5 - Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI
#6 - Dishonored 2
#7 - Call of Duty®: Infinite Warfare
#8 - Transport Fever
#9 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
#10 - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege

 

[pippin]

Huh, Obsidian really is AA 1/2 these days.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Last week's top sellers. Looks like the optimization issues really damaged the post-release sales of Dishonored 2.

#1 - Dishonored 2 Pre-Order
#2 - Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI
#3 - Tyranny
#4 - Football Manager 2017
#5 - Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI
#6 - Dishonored 2
#7 - Call of Duty®: Infinite Warfare
#8 - Transport Fever
#9 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
#10 - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege

Shithesda still got their preorders in, that's all they care about.

 

[Outlander]

What happened to Metro?

 

[LESS T_T]

Last week's top sellers:

#1 – Planet Coaster
#2 – Rise of the Tomb Raider™
#3 – Dishonored 2
#4 – Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI
#5 – Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® Siege
#6 – Watch_Dogs® 2
#7 – Planet Coaster: Thrillseeker Edition
#8 – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
#9 – Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI
#10 – Tyranny

 

[anvi]

But rpgcodex told me that WD2 didn't sell any copies?! Also why is Rise of the tomb raider on there? I thought that was about 4 years old. It has some super cheap sale?

 

[LESS T_T]

I thought that was about 4 years old. It has some super cheap sale?

It's out early this year on PC (it's not 2013 Tomb Raider) and 50% off this weekend: http://store.steampowered.com/app/391220/