Half Life 2: Episode 3's story, released by former main writer of the series, Marc Laidlaw
Well, for any Half Life fans, this is it.
His original post had nicknames for characters, Like Mrs. X is G-Man, but there is a translated version I found.
Here it is for any Half Life fans on this site:
Half Life 2: Epsiode 3's story
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Comments
Welp. It's finally official.
Half Life 3 is dead. RIP the dream.
Skins are way more important than the game that millions have been waiting for nearly a decade. I honestly don't know whats going on in valve. They have the money, the resources and the fanbase's hype to make HL3. It's going to sell like crazy, maybe they are afraid of failing, skins are safer.
Valve killing their beloved series. (August 2017, colorized)
It's their management system, people are allowed to do whatever they want. I'm sure some tried, but there was never enough traction.
The boot should've come down long ago.
As a huge fan of Half Life series, I am highly devastated because this franchise left with a depressing death and a lot of questions that have been waiting for answers. It is a huge shame that all they have to do is making an another episode and the series will be done. And the fact that, they already did but cancelled it, it makes me even more frustrated and furious.
I.... I'm gonna cry.
Good to know that the reason for Valve's success has been relegated to irrelvancy for milking microtransaction garbage like dota and csgo. What a great company.
This last part is fucking heartbreaking. Marc isn't talking about Gordon, he's talking about himself in the company. Most of his coworkers are gone, noone has any idea what he and others were trying to do for the series and the landscape of the creative position he was in has completely changed. The breakpoint was in 2012 for me, after that I knew it basically had no chance of ever being released. I feel hollow but also relief.
It seems as though Valve has left video game development all together.
I like to think he is talking about both. Gordon and himself. Remember this isn't canon, just how he saw episode 3 would be. How Gordon ended up alone but lived up to his name, became a Freeman, no longer in the grips of the Gman. Though this is still heavily based on Mark.
I know it's shitty that the fans never got the sequel that they deserved, but I do understand the reason why a sequel isn't being made right now.
If you look at it in a business perspective, Valve is already racking in tons and tons of cash through Steam. Spending money and staff on developing a single-player, story based game that they can't really make money on past the initial sale would be kind of foolish. The amount of sales it would make is hard to determine because despite the "omg hl3 confirmed!!!" meme being so popular, Half Life isn't a massive name to general audiences, especially nowadays.
There's also the insurmountable amount of hype it would have to live up to. How the hell is a studio that's entire development teams are made up of essentially people modeling hats, Dota and CSGO skins and a card game supposed to make a game worthy of over a decade of hype and fans wishes?
As Valve, is it really worth it to pour money into making a new game (and probably new engine) that may not even make a lot of money and possible face the wrath and bitterness of disappointed fans if it doesn't live up to the impossible standards that have been set against it?
I'll repeat, it is really shitty that Half Life 3 won't happen. The fans deserve better, but there is a reason why it isn't out.
Hey, they do have one of those card games coming!
I'm crying on the inside. Poor Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead...
It's sad to see nothing will come of this, at the time i considered the Half Life series to be one of the best games i ever played and episode 2 ending on a major cliffhanger made we want episode 3 even more.
I know it's highly unlikely but if Valve licensed out the franchise i would be willing to back it via crowdfunding project if i needed to and i expect many others would too.
Only game support we're getting now Dota tournaments and CSGO skins.
How has it come to this?
It really does suck, at this point I kinda just figured Valve wasnt going to make games anymore and were just going to focus on CSGO and Dota 2 for games and the rest just being steam and VR, but after Artifact it was really upsetting seeing Valve just doesnt seem to care about games people actually want anymore, and now seeing that HL3 is pretty much 100% dead now it hurts even more.
Sucks for Half Life fans. It's so weird that they chose the worst ending for their most beloved title of all time. It's like Mass Effect 3.
It isn't much of a surprise because the writer of the Half Life 2, Left 4 Dead and Portal has left Valve a few months ago.