Half-Life 3

You keep saying that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Iā€™ve often thought that Half-Life wouldā€™ve been more amazing had Gordon never used a gun.

And yeah, the Black Mesa facility was amazing.

Shit, Half-Life was just so good.

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Well, not sure, if we want to go with saying the plot and level design is part of gameplay then yeah those aspects of playing the game are cool. But lets say it this way: the specific game mechanics of Half-Life are not what draw me into Half-Life. The combat play isnā€™t why I jump in, though I appreciate what is presented: The crowbar is fun, the HEV suit is neat, hitting boxes to maybe find loot is a thing we do. Shooting aliens and other stuff is well done. The puzzle solving is even better, but, eh. Itā€™s a fun game, the mechanics are what Valve chose for the game Half Life, but arenā€™t what make it Half Life. Turn it into a squad based tactical shooter or a third person stealth game and you could still have the same plot, atmosphere, level design, etc. All of that is the appeal for me, regardless of how one actually plays the game itself to experience those things.

Iā€™d play the crap out of a BlackMesaTychoon type management simulator where weā€™re building up our own underground desert facility, hiring people, building defensive drones, expanding labs, adding power stations, upgrading our rocket launch pad, choosing to buy a crazy sea monster tank, and then dealing with the crazy hijinks that result from those pesky scientists breaking the tramcars or doing their crazy experiements that rip open spacetime and infest our beautiful base with aliens, or having to decide whether to fire Barney or upgrade him to Lambda sector security chief. And then if the sequel is a rebellion simulator where you have to setup various outposts and establish a network of resistance fighters and handle the logistics of fighting an alien superpower, that is the makings of a dope ass game.

Nevertheless thatā€™s not what we got and its not to say I like Half Life in spite of some kind of trash gameplay, far from it, the game aspects are, again, solid. Just not what make me come back.

Maybe a noteworthy aspect of level-design and game interaction that I did love about the series is that it always felt like you knew exactly how you got where you are from the start, and if only a few things hadnā€™t blown up you could just turn around and walk all the way back to the beginning. Even in HL2 when youā€™re way out by the coast blowing up things under the bridge or riding the dune buggy, you have a vague sense that if you needed to get back to the city you can just start going that way and youā€™d get there. Or in HL1 when youā€™ve finally hit the surface sometimes you might feel like ā€œI kinda wanna go back down to the offices and chill there until this blows over, watch some TV until they stop killing everyone.ā€ And youā€™d know how to get there and if only the game hadnā€™t fucked up the path after you went thru, you totally could have.

The games were good for that. And when games do that, itā€™s always a big plus.

As for HL2E3 and HL3:

I really wish they would have at least just made Episode 3 same as episode 1 and 2, just deliver the damn product as it is and donā€™t totally fuck up and you canā€™t loose.

Then if they want to wait 20-30 goddamn years for HL3 its no problem. IF it never comes, fine. But thereā€™s no reason I can see to not have just finished at least something for episode 3 with what they had at the time.

I disagree. Think of crane game, the dune buggy, the boat escape. Ravenholm with no ammo. The Citadel is Gravity Gun The Game. Driving around picking up bombs to gravity gun at the final boss. Looking around at stuff in the first-person cutscenes.

The levels are designed to explicitly take advantage of the mechanics.

All Half-Lives are full % off until Alyx comes out.

All I want from a Half Life 3 is the kinds of mechanics that made 1 and 2 so great.

I donā€™t give even a single fuck about the plot, story, characters, lore, or whatever. Half Life was great first and foremost for its gameplay.

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Itā€™s interesting you would say that because for most people, what made Half Life great, and one of the greatest PC games of all time, was how it married story with gameplay. The gameplay of Half Life was outstanding, but the way it told its narrative was revolutionary.

Completely agree, Half-Life 1 stood out for the cinematic in-engine storytelling they used even if the overarching plot itself was essentially something out of a Sy-Fy original movie. Black Mesa Inbound (the opening) or ā€œWeā€™ve got Hostilesā€ (when the military shows up to ā€œsaveā€ the day) were both pretty groundbreaking for the medium at the time.

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Iā€™m with Rym. For me, the ā€œstoryā€ of Half Life was totally secondary to the gameplay. Anything and everything that happened seemed, to me, to be along the lines of:

ā€œWe have a cool physics mechanicā€¦ what can happen in the story now so the use of this mechanic as a weapon makes sense?ā€

And so, for zero reasons that make narrative sense, youā€™re in a spooky night level, shooting saw blades through zombies. Which feels great! Itā€™s some of the most memorable gameplay ever!

I didnā€™t care about the story, and when I got to the end of Half Life 2, I had no interest in any of the mysteries, any of the character, or anything that might happen next.

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I guess thatā€™s why the Half Life series is such a classic. Different people can love it for different reasons. You and Rym love it for the gameplay while Deckard and I love it for how it integrates story in with the action.

To have either the gameplay or the story be subpar would alienate large portions of its playerbase.

OK but a very significant part of the ā€œmechanicsā€ revolved around seamless (or mostly seamless) integration of story and plot.

The lore and such is whatever, but much as Burning Wheel is notable for mechanically integrating roleplaying, Half-Life gained prominence because it eschewed cutscenes and made the story part of the action.

For me itā€™s less about the actual story being told, and rather that Half-Life used action as a compelling narrative vehicle in a way that no other games I know of have successfully replicated.

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I also appreciate how it integrates the story with the gameplay. But the story isnā€™t interesting to me at all, and I didnā€™t and donā€™t care about anything particular happening. Nor do I have any memory of why I found myself in different parts of the game, except characters saying ā€œyou need to go here to do thisā€, which is there most basic of basic story possible.

The story isnā€™t bad for a video game, but thereā€™s nothing about that is good or interesting in its own right.

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Sure, weak plot and all, but G-Man is at least cool.

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For me personally I have pretty low expectations around Half Life Alyx. Iā€™m sure that it will do well but I just donā€™t see Valve as the ground breaking developer they once were. All their recent releases were implementations of someone elseā€™s format (Dota 2, their Auto-chess battler, artifact) and thinking about the stuff they released between HL2 and nowish all the big releases were external teams developing an idea that then got aqui-hired by Valve (Portal, Left 4 Dead).

I kind of just want an excuse to get a VR setup.

Itā€™s totally a push to sell Steam VR hardware. Not that it wonā€™t be a good game (it will probably even be great) but Valve doesnā€™t make games for the beauty of the art anymore

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Right I expect a competently made product and suitable game mechanics to really make use of the valve VR controllers with the individual digit controls. From a marketing standpoint I think it will be huge for VR, but from a games as a medium standpoint I have doubts.

This is pretty much where I am. Valve is a game publisher, not a designer. Theyā€™ll need to prove that they still have it in them in order to get me excited for anything they make. And thereā€™s definitely a huge chance for them to fuck it up.

If we can all pretty much agree that Half Life is basically a mediocre story integrated in revolutionary ways into the gameplay itself, then it makes sense that Valve would use VR for the next Half Life game.

The logical next step in integrating story and narrative with gameplay is VR. If Valve can revolutionize the way we experience and play VR games the say way they revolutionized the way we play FPS games, then Half Life Alyx could be amazing.

The question is really IF they can do it.

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