10 year anniversary of Half-Life 2 · 8:09pm Nov 16th, 2014
It's fucking surreal. We've gotten nothing since the shitty cliffhanger at the end of Episode 2.
Valve has enough money to buy a country and they won't make a sequel to a highly-regarded game. Why?
Several reasons actually.
1. Hype: Half-Life 3 is pretty much an internet maymay at this point. Everyone expects something revolutionary. Nobody's going to get it. If they change too much, fans will complain about the "shift from what made it great" if they don't change enough, it's a stagnant rehash.
2. Competition: Half-Life has always been at it's heart a linear corridor shooter with average gunplay, simplistic platforming, above-average story and puzzles a comatose chimpanzee could solve.
In a market saturated with linear corridor shooters, many of which now have superficial elements about as deep as the platforming and puzzles of Half-Life, Valve would be hard pressed to actually make their product different. One could say that the linear, narrative style in HL2 was carried on by the likes of CoD, in fact.
3. Money: Meanwhile in Valve HQ, Gaben is swimming in money from Steam, and to a lesser extent, TF2, where you can buy any item instead of waiting for a randomized drop while you play as one of the three classes that continuously receive support, Soldier, Demoman and Demoknight.
When they can rake in loads of money with a minimum of effort, why develop anything? They haven't since Episode 2. Everything else has been an outside team co-opted by them. Portal, Left 4 Dead and DotA 2 were done by outside teams.
My younger brother is depressed as fuck right now because of all this. He said all he wants is a response from Valve. He said if Valve flat-out said "We're never making Half-Life 3", he'd at least have some form of closure.
If HL3 ever came out it, wouldn't be worth the weight.
