What would Half-Life 3 even be like?

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Griffolion

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Aug 18, 2009
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shrekfan246 said:
Seriously?

If it ever gets made (which would be insane at this point), it's probably going to be a steaming pile of crap.

And by that I mean, it's probably going to be a perfectly fine game but the reputation it's gotten on the internet over the last seven years means that it would literally be impossible for Valve to satisfy the people who are seriously still waiting for this game.
Yeah, this. Expectations and anticipation are far to high for it to ever be received well. Honestly, Valve should just not release it. Otherwise it will just ruin the franchise by simple virtue of its existence.

Sorry, correction, the fanbase will ruin the franchise because of how it could never have lived up to their plain unrealistic expectations built up for 8 years from a frenzy of forum speculations and wild rumours.
 

00slash00

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shrekfan246 said:
I'd rather they not try than have another Mass Effect 3 on our hands.

Except it would be a hundred times worse.

Because it's Valve and Half-Life, which is just about the most sacred thing in all of gaming right now, for whatever reason.

I do not believe there's any way Valve could make another game in the Half-Life franchise that fans would actually like. Other people may not agree with me, but at this point in time, I don't see how they could do it. That's not to say I wouldn't be pleasantly surprised if they did pull it off, but I'm a cynical bastard when it comes to this stuff.

Also, I wouldn't call it being defeatist, per se. I have no vested interest in the Half-Life franchise, Valve can do whatever they want with it. I just don't want to have to spend half a year avoiding every gaming-centric forum on the internet because they released a game that wasn't perfect. So it's more being selfish on my part.
another mass effect 3 would be great, considering that was my favorite game in the series

i think you are exaggerating just a tad. half life 2 episode 1 was pretty generic. i mean it wasnt bad but the whole game just kinda felt like a shorter and less interesting half life 2, and that didnt make gamers lose their shit. most of the expansions to the original half life werent particularly special either, but pc gamers (the ones who are old enough to have experienced half life when it first came out) still defend the first game to the death. most pc gamers really love half life but that doesnt mean they would rip episode 3 apart if anything is wrong with it.
 

shrekfan246

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May 26, 2011
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00slash00 said:
another mass effect 3 would be great, considering that was my favorite game in the series
I meant with the internet backlash.

i think you are exaggerating just a tad. half life 2 episode 1 was pretty generic. i mean it wasnt bad but the whole game just kinda felt like a shorter and less interesting half life 2, and that didnt make gamers lose their shit. most of the expansions to the original half life werent particularly special either, but pc gamers (the ones who are old enough to have experienced half life when it first came out) still defend the first game to the death. most pc gamers really love half life but that doesnt mean they would rip episode 3 apart if anything is wrong with it.
I don't think you've seen the way people treat Valve and Half-Life around here.

As I said, I have no vested interest in the franchise. Personally, I couldn't finish Half-Life or Half-Life 2 before I got bored. But you get tons of people on these forums who say that Half-Life 2 is the greatest first-person shooter ever to be created, and that the series is characterized by how it revolutionizes the shooter genre, and so Half-Life 3 is going to be the same way (because honestly, Episode 2 came out in 2007. They're not making an Episode 3).

And the Episodes haven't gotten a huge backlash because Valve has spent the last seven years bumbling around neither confirming nor denying the existence of another game in the franchise.
 

XMark

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Jan 25, 2010
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To guess what Half-life 3 is we should look at what the previous half-life games did which made them revolutionary, and which areas they have left to improve.

They pioneered the whole concept of presenting linear scripted sequences around the player without removing their controls or switching the camera away. Revolutionary at the time, but now FPS games pretty much do that by default, and the recent wave of modern military shooters has even made this style of presentation a bit of a cliché and not necessarily a good thing anymore. They're likely to stick with this scripted sequence approach, but the next step of improvements would be for those sequences to adapt more naturally to the player's actions during the script.

The Half-life games also presented their entire narrative in uninterrupted real-time (unless you count loading delays and one moment in the first game where Freeman is knocked out). The next logical step up for them would be to eliminate the loading delays. Or at least hide them well enough that they're not noticeable. Dead Space 2 proves this to be a feasible approach.

Half-life 1 had the scripted sequences, but basically just cloned a bunch of generic scientists and security guards without giving any of them any kind of unique personality or even names, and a small handful of voice actors. Half-life 2 increased the variety of "extra" characters (though they do get a bit repetitive once you've recognized all the faces) and they made several major unique characters and put extra care into their facial animation and acting. But the acting was always a little bit wooden, and aside from Alyx at the end of Episode 2, nobody really goes into any kind of extreme emotions. The logical next step of improvement, then, would be for them to step the acting quality up, and with more accurate facial and motion capture.

There's also AI, which has always been better than average in the Half-Life games but not stellar. There's tons of room for improvement. They seem to like modeling different behaviour types for different aliens, so we'll probably see some more original types of aliens, and better flanking and flushing out tactics by the human(oid) soldier enemies.

And there's physics. HL2's early implementation of Havok was the best physics engine for a long time, but Havok itself and other physics engines have made major improvements since then. Things like the Euphoria engine blending between real-time physics and pre-rendered character animations. Also, we'll probably see DMM (digital molecular matter) physics in use in the next game.

Now the story... I'm not entirely convinced that they actually know where they're going with the story. They're quite likely just making it up as they go, so we'll just have to wait and see if they bring it to conclusion or just choose to leave everything as ambiguous as ever. With how much he's been built up, I feel that any explanation of exactly who the G-Man is, and what his purposes is, will be be a disappointment. They're probably better off leaving us in the dark on most of the story :)
 

ShinyCharizard

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Well I assume it would end up being a competent and fun shooter with a good story. It won't live up to the expectations that fans have placed on it though.
 

aXFireXHeartXa

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I think it's going to be an absolutely fantastic game. I loved Half Life, and enjoyed Half Life 2 and the episodes even more. They've always had this perfect harmony between great gameplay and great story - I can only hope this stands true in the next one.
 

Aeryn Seoung

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Aug 21, 2009
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Despite everything everyone else has said... I believe that if Half-life 3 does come out, it will be a solid game. Which is all that you can realistically (And logically) hope for.

Fanboys who are still waiting for any sort of news on the release are -bound- to overhype it and make it sound like it's the best thing since sliced bread, and of course it's going to have an impact since they're so drastically on the the side of the scale that spews goodness rainbows and puppies - so others will get to complain (as per usual, mind you) that it's over-hyped, and therefore it's a bad game because of if. It's happened countless times before, and it's bound to happen with HL3.

But expecting it to be a straight-out bad game? Oh no. Not me. I personally felt that Portal couldn't have a sequel - and if they did it would be a poorly done one and would do it's predecessor no justice. How fucking was was I - and the other people who had said the same thing? Saying that Valve is incapable of producing a good game and/or sequel is a tad silly - from experience we should know better.