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Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

(www.half-life.com)
573 points Philpax | 3 comments | 15 Nov 24 22:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.603s | source
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karim79 ◴[16 Nov 24 00:46 UTC] No.42153089[source]▶
I can never understand why they haven't made a HL3. Given that they could literally make approximately 3.88 bajillion dollars from it in 24 hours.

I suppose this is the very definition of developer integrity.

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danpalmer ◴[16 Nov 24 00:54 UTC] No.42153146[source]▶
For a while their stated reason was that they felt they couldn’t live up to the hype and the gaming community was too toxic and would have crucified them for it. True or not, I can see why they’d think that.

However it’s also worth noting that they were spending that time on other projects making them likely even more money. HL3 isn’t going to have live service or esports applications that make money like their other games do. It probably won’t be a big earner compared to those other games.

Valve are also a privately held company and the rumour is the top people there are crazy rich, and even those further down the ladder earn a lot more than they would elsewhere. They don’t need HL3.

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kllrnohj ◴[16 Nov 24 01:20 UTC] No.42153313[source]▶
I believe they also said they don't want to do more of the same, they only want to work on something new. Hence why the only new Half-Life anything in 20 years is Alyx - it did something genuinely new.

We all want HL3, but other than the story it would probably be fairly stagnant in terms of gameplay - nothing new has really happened in the genre.

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riffruff24 ◴[16 Nov 24 02:27 UTC] No.42153605[source]▶
I wished they hire the Arkane team that got laid off. Put them to work on a new single player ip and let Victor Antonov add some of his design into it.

They dont have to do anything new, just make it good enough, like Titanfall 2.

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danpalmer ◴[16 Nov 24 05:03 UTC] No.42154437[source]▶
But that would go against

> I believe they also said they don't want to do more of the same

I've heard this too, with Half Life they want each game to be groundbreaking. Arkane have done great games, but they're not all groundbreaking, and arguably none of them are to the level that HL1/2 were.

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1. riffruff24 ◴[16 Nov 24 09:10 UTC] No.42155413[source]▶
That's why they should hire someone else to do the leg work (That's what they used to do anyway). There isn't exactly a lot of unique things in Portal 2 compared to the original but the sheer polish and testing Valve applied to their games (when they want to) is still unmatched.
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2. kllrnohj ◴[16 Nov 24 10:55 UTC] No.42155772[source]▶
Portal 2 added co-op as the big gameplay change vs. 1.

But Gabe has said Half-Life specifically is what they consider their ground breaking series now. So there won't be a 3 until they can push a boundary again like the first 2 did.

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3. danpalmer ◴[17 Nov 24 01:00 UTC] No.42161037[source]▶
From all the leaks, it sounds like the big change for HL3 is currently advanced materials – destruction, traction, behaviour, conductivity, etc. This would make sense as it plays into the material work in Portal 2 and the deformation work in HL2:EP2-3, as well as the physics puzzles in HL3. Additionally it sounds like gravity may be a core feature of the game.

This is all speculation based on code leaks, and it's possible this is all true and they still don't release anything because the project stalls. Supposedly the game has moved into the later stages of development, but I'm not fully convinced by that part of the leaks.