Half-Life 2: Episode Three CONFIRMED (to be dead)

[Ricotez]

[youtube]urza2sbU68Q[/youtube]

Marc Laidlaw, former lead writer of the Half-Life series, posted his interpretation of what Episode Three should've been... and also hid a lot of meta commentary about Valve in the last paragraph of his "letter".

Episode Three may be dead, but it's nice to get a glimpse of what may have been.

Original blog post using feigned names is currently not accessible (probably too many people trying to read it), so here's a link to a Github with a version of the story that had all the feigned names replaced with the real ones: https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidla ... rrected.md

[bman]

GOD DAMMIT

[Super Aggro Crag]

Who do we blame for this? Dota 2 or team fortress 2?

[Aloraydrel]

Both

[captain sawrge]

Who do we blame for this? Dota 2 or team fortress 2?

steam as a whole

[Aloraydrel]

But mostly dota

[XSI]

Fuck dota, really

Also I didn't read, it's dead anyway
Someone post a summary

[Aloraydrel]

It's a fan fic ending. Nothing really new

[MrStonedOne]

That "fan" is the writer for the half life series, and it contains a hint about how shitty things have gotten at valve.

[Aloraydrel]

Well it's been pretty obvious anyone who isn't upkeeping steam is basically canned by now

[captain sawrge]

lol @ people thinking dota or artifact killed this and not the fact that steam itself already makes most of their money and that esprots are just the cherry on top

[lzimann]

don't forget cs:go also making a huge amount of money to valve

[Aloraydrel]

lol @ people thinking dota or artifact killed this and not the fact that steam itself already makes most of their money and that esprots are just the cherry on top

Stupid dotard

[DrPillzRedux]

So the entire story was

>kill Mossman
>allahu ackbar Combine Dyson Sphere with Borealis
>gman takes Alyx
>vortigaunts save Gordon before the explosion that does fuck all
>end of Gordon's story

It was shit.

Also, Valve makes millions of dollars by doing nothing thanks to idiots who need virtual items. Plus their 30% cut on every game sold.

[InsaneHyena]

Is this an actual story of Episode 3, or is it just a fable about it's development? Because I somehow think it's the latter.

[MrStonedOne]

Is this an actual story of Episode 3, or is it just a fable about it's development? Because I somehow think it's the latter.

whynotboth.png

[Ricotez]

As I said in the first post, it's Marc Laidlaw's interpretation of what the story should've been. We will never know if this is the story that we would've gotten if the game had ever managed to leave development hell.

Although looking at it, they may have been hiding references to Episode Three up front in Portal 2, that we would've never found out about otherwise. Like the Cave Johnson line about the test involving "trace amounts of time travel" (with a warning not to look your past/future self into the eyes), and the entire Perpetual Testing Initiative with involves test subjects jumping to other universes to run their test chambers.

[MrStonedOne]

Portal being an extension of the halflife universe has been hinted since portal 1.

[Deitus]

for those too lazy to read it all:

Gordon and Alyx head for Antarctica, resting place of the Borealis, the research ship mentioned at the end of Episode 2. They’re shot down as they approach, though, and find that surrounding the ship is an enormous Combine base, inside which the Borealis is continually flickering in and out of existence.

After an encounter with Dr. Breen—whose consciousness had been transplanted into an alien slug’s body, allowing him to survive the demise of his human body in Episode 2—Gordon, Alyx and Dr. Mossman (who you rescue from a Combine prison) manage to board the Borealis, and while there are pulled across both space and time, seeing things like the Seven Hour War, alien worlds the Combine were about to conquer and even the ship’s origins at Aperture.

Following a dispute over what to do with the ship (Mossman argues for keeping the ship, Alyx wants to honour her father’s wish to destroy it), Alyx shoots Mossman dead, and commits Gordon to a plan to drive the ship into the heart of the Combine’s “invasion nexus”.

Before it can strike, though, the G-Man arrives, speaks with Alyx and the pair depart, leaving Gordon alone to drive the ship on its suicide mission. Just as its about to hit its target, the Vortigaunts open a portal and save Gordon, dropping him on a shore where he isn’t certain of what year it is or how the war against the Combine has ended.

And...that’s where it wraps, Freeman writing “Except no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final episode.”

considering there's a fair amount of concept art (such as a helicopter crashing in an arctic landscape), along with the point that breen is found to be in a separate body (something he discussed with the combine near the end of the original half life 2), im pretty sure this is the closest we're ever going to get to a continuation of half life. also of note is that someone asked the man on twitter about g-man's relationship with alyx, and he said he didnt know and that "that is something valve might want to develop, flesh out, and explain someday."

above the disappointment i feel about half life all but being confirmed dead is that we could have seen the 7 hour war, a part of the half life mythos which i find incredibly interesting despite the extreme lack of information on it.

oh well, all this is just further proof that we live in the darkest timeline.

[Qbmax32]

well shit boys

[Ricotez]

Portal being an extension of the halflife universe has been hinted since portal 1.

Yeah I know, they're set in the same universe. I mean references specific to Episode Three that weren't supposed to make sense until the game came out.

[killerx09]

and it contains a hint about how shitty things have gotten at valve.

Wait, can you explain this bit? English isn't my first language, so I don't understand some of the more subtle parts.

[Deitus]

and it contains a hint about how shitty things have gotten at valve.

Wait, can you explain this bit? English isn't my first language, so I don't understand some of the more subtle parts.

[Lumbermancer]

People thought episode three would ever come out?

[nsos]

if it came out it wasnt going to be good

[nsos]

because of everyones expectations for it

[Ricotez]

I stopped believing it would ever come out once someone pointed out to me there is more time between now and Episode Two than there was between Half-Life 1 and 2.
The only reason why Valve never killed the hype is because it is part of that image of the good old pal Valve that the greedy devil corporation Valve has to maintain to get away with their horrible business practices. Hope is a terrible force when abused like that.

[Lumbermancer]

tricked

[Ricotez]

that story is from 2016

[Qbopper]

original: http://www.marclaidlaw.com/writing-half-life/

[Lumbermancer]

that story is from 2016

oh geez i was tricked

[Deitus]

necroing thread because i found this while browsing /v/ last night

https://boards.fireden.net/v/thread/391360861/

i know that
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"""""""""""""""""4chan leeks xD"""""""""""""""
but it seems to make a fair amount of sense and if nothing else makes a decent fanfic since we're never going to get the real thing anyway.

food for thought.