ATTENTION! This article does not contain malicious trolling, stupid divorces and dust for the eyes. This is a study and investigation, not an attempt to arrange a tsunami in the toilet.
The birth of the Half-Life legend took place in another era. On the market, the boom of the newfangled 3D accelerators began, the computer scientists enthusiastically compared the characteristics of Voodoo2 and Riva TNT, the revolution in graphics and technology took place almost every month.
It is not surprising that Half-Life, with his approach to the plot to submit, determined the development of the Julesfish genre for decades, became famous. It is amazing that he still remains so, although all his contemporaries – doom, quake, unreal Tournament and others – either lost their status, or completely went to rest. But the Half-Life 3 exit is waiting for no less than the second part had been waiting for almost ten years ago.
This expectation is traditionally accompanied by numerous scandals, endless transfers of the release date, information leaks, wild rumors and conspiracy theories, mass rallies (consisting of two people), mailings of mounting by mail and other entertaining incidents.
True, the wait was too long. For six years now, Valve has been tormented by his fans with uncertainty, and who knows how much more will do this. It is difficult to follow the events for six years, so we have prepared for you a detailed forensic investigation. We will carefully trace the entire long way of waiting for the game, and at the same time tell you where Half-Life 2: Episode 3, why Valve is in no hurry to announce the third part of the game series, and figure out many other interesting things.
Get your favorite mount from the shelf, feed your home headcrab and sit down more comfortably.
Half-portal 3
Rumors that Half-Life 3 will receive some puzzles from Portal, have serious reasons. The action of the two games always took place in the same universe, and now the plot lines should be crossed: in Episode 1, we will learn that in the ice of the Arctic, “Borea” was discovered, the research vessel of the company Aperture Science. The history of this ship becomes known in Episode 2 – experiments with portals were conducted there, however, the carelessness of crazy scientists from Aperture Science led to the fact that the entire ship, together with the parts of the dry dock, was teleported in an unknown direction.
Now the aliens of the alliance are hunting for this ship. It turns out that even they do not even have such teleportation technologies. The secrets of Borea can become a decisive argument in the war between the Alliance and the forces of the rebels: either people will be able to give decent resistance, or such an army of aliens will arrive through the opened interstellar portals that there may simply be no place for people.
2007: Orange mood
In 2007, he Half-Life 2: Episode 2. Valve managed to surprise, releasing five at once, including five, including a strange network game with spies and machine gunners, and an even more strange puzzle in which some portals had to be done (well, seriously, who could be interested?But, no matter how Valve tried to distract the attention of fans, the most attentive noticed one oddity: after passing the game, they were not shown a trailer for the third part.
[Bullet]] In Portal 2, at a depth of about four kilometers there is a dry dock, near which you can find a lifebuoy from the Borea ship – it seems that this is the very place where it disappeared.
“We have not added a trailer for a number of reasons. First, we did not want to spoil the atmosphere of the ending. You can imagine: you looked at the credits, and then this video with a cut of a steep action from the third episode. A completely different mood would be. Secondly, we do not want to tie our hands. We have big plans for this game. If you compare the trailer of the second episode and what happened as a result is two big differences. This is really not normal – to make a game trailer, the development of which is in full swing. You simply cannot be sure what will happen in the end, ”explained the head of the Episode 2 developers team David Spider.
[[Bullet]] It turns out that Gabe does not like mounts, but he collects a huge collection of knives.
The secret of the stolen trailer was allowed, but the sediment remained. It became clear that the game was delayed. During the announcement, they promised to release the third episode shortly after the second, at the end of 2007, but back in May Dag Lombardi said that the project had just entered the stage of preparation for production. Well, wait for so to wait, Half-Life fans to this are familiar, especially since in December Lombardy sweeten the pill, saying that the third episode will not be the end of the series, urging everyone to keep their mounts ready. “Always ready!" – the players reported and went to turn the second episode for the second time.
2008: The beginning of the end
After six months of silence, the situation began to heated. The first harbinger of the upcoming insanity was the screenshots of a wonderful boat station, made with different settings of HDR effects, published on the Chinese forum. The pictures had the inscriptions “Half-Life 3 Tech-Demo” and “Siggraph” (annual conference on computer graphics).
The optimists were amazed at the quality of the drawing of the water surface – steep shader water was then considered almost a business card Half-Life 2. Skeptics indicated overly high detail of the picture, saying that this is an ordinary render. The skeptics won. Pictures turned out to be the work of an independent 3D designer and had nothing to do with Valve.
[[Bullet]] Art 2008: A man with a mount against an alliance adviser.
Sright did not last long, since soon official pictures from Valve appeared-several concept arts, in one of which Freeman in some place, similar to the citadel, stood face to face with an adviser. Recall that advisers, barrel -shaped levitizing creatures, presumably, are the dominant race of the Alliance and control the course of the entire invasion. They appeared in the episodes of Half-Life 2, but Freeman never happened to fight them.
At the sight of the arts, the bored fans revived and imagined that the Episode 3 would be brought to E3 2008, but Valve immediately besieged everyone, saying that this would not happen. In the future, this will become a good tradition: every year with enviable regularity, players will begin to dissolve rumors that Half-Life will appear on E3, and the developers will refute them.
[[Bullet]] Another art of the same set: Caravan advisers. We don’t know if it can be robbed or not, but they will definitely receive a mount on the head.
Concept Arts have become the last information on Half-Life 2: Episode 3. They and a couple of interviews in October, where Dag Lombardi promised to show the first screenshots at the end of the year and tell new details about Episode 3, and even complained that he would be released no earlier than the end of 2009, since the studio is strongly busy with work on Left 4 Dead And Team Fortress 2.
Alas, he could not keep this promise, 2008 was drawing to an end. Then the fans did not know that this year would be the last when Valve openly spoke about the game, shared the details and plans for the future. None of the players could even think that the years of the development of developers are waiting for them.
Laboratory rat
This is Dag Ratman, the same crazy who painted on the walls and claimed that the cake is a lie. His adventures can be read in the comic book "Laboratory rat", which, incidentally, has been translated into Russian. They say that if you take the radio in Portal 2 and come with him in one of the shelves of Ratman, you can hear the echo of his crazy cries.
Half-Life fans claim that these screams have a deep meaning that reveals the details of the plot of the new game. Allegedly, if you listen, you can catch the phrases “he disappeared”, “it is stolen”, “the ship is stolen”. This means that “Borey” disappeared for a reason – he was kidnapped, and, according to some, competitors of Aperture Science, our good old friends from the Black Mesa complex, were involved in the case. True, in order to hear all this and draw such conclusions, one must truly have an alternative consciousness.
2009: Denial
In the spring, traditional rumors appear that Valve will bring to E3 Half-Life. Rather, not even rumors, but speculations: Valve is recorded as a member of the exhibition, about the game for almost a year has been heard for almost a year-in general, it's time to surprise with something new. In particular, such a prediction is made by IGN, one of the largest foreign game sites. Indeed, Valve announced the continuation of the cult game, only it turned out to be .. Left 4 Dead 2 , Not a word was said about Half-Life!
From such a clearly neglect of some fans of Half-Life, it was noticeable to bake in the area of the fifth point. On the Steam forum there was a petition with the requirements to stop darkening and issue information on the game. True, the discussion went sluggishly and gained only 350 pages – only the most impatients spoke, while the rest continued to believe the developers and calmly waited for their favorite game.
[[Bullet]] Search for traces of Half-Life in Alien Swarm Client.
In August, an interview appeared in which Gabe Newell talked with deaf people – everyone knows how seriously Valve relates to this problem, adapting the games so that people with bad hearing can play them. Gabe spoke about a certain deaf character, a familiar Alix, thanks to which she taught her robot-canopy to the tongue of gestures, and also added that they are going to include the use of gestures in some new game. Perhaps it was about Half-Life.
A few days later, the SteamCast podcast journalists decided to ask Gaib a question on the forehead: why there is no news about Half-Life 2: Episode 3, they say, this Slots Dreamer Casino is a new policy of the company-to keep fans in ignorance until the very end? In response, Gabe gave out an extremely vague tirade about the fact that they are trying to experiment, but some experiments are successful, and some are not very, mentioned the “development rhythms” … But they are silent not because they are hiding something, but simply because There is nothing to talk about so far. And when there will be something to say – the players will be the first to know about it.
The summer is over, autumn 2009 came, and then winter. It became clear that neither at the end of 2009, nor at the beginning of 2010, we will see the game. The Half-Life project seemed to disappear, disappeared, leaving behind only perplexing fans ..
2010: Anger
The first half of 2010 about Half-Life was not heard anything significant, although Newell periodically fed the press small news so that the gaming community would not finish completely from information hunger. So, for example, he stated that the series should return to his roots: the first part was rather terrible, but the second one was left from the horror – an ordinary fantastic shooter. However, the name Half-Life 2: Episode 3 was no longer mentioned, it was about the series as a whole.
In July, craftsmen gutted the editor of the released Valve game Alien Swarm and found in one of the files to the Episode 3 and the Half-Life universe-the name Aperture Nest, Ep3 Blob Brain and others. Recall that Aperture Science is the name of the Portal corporation, which should take a significant place in the plot of the new Half-Life. In the first and second episodes, the Borea ship belonging to the company is found, and technology on board should become an object of struggle between rebels and alliance.
[[Bullet]] Screenshots who tried to pass off the Half-Life 3 demo. Fans in those days were young, naive, believed in fairy tales … Now they are all old, experienced, although they believe in fairy tales as before.
It is difficult for ordinary players to attract attention. But if you are the son of Peter himself Moligne himself, it changes the matter. In September, a video appeared on the Web, where the eight-year-old Lucas Molinjo in the company of his famous dad asks Uncle Gabe to tell, finally, about Half-Life 3, while Molinjo himself got into his performance with replicas like “Buy Fable 3 , not Half-Life 3 ".
Given the creativity of Peter, it is difficult to say whether it was a joke or viral advertising of home production. In any case, an eight-year-old child is still a little too early to be an ardent fan of Half-Life-even if he is the son of a religious game developer.
However, ordinary players can also force to listen to themselves if they act together. At the end of the year, another attempt was made to reach Valve: a group of enthusiasts sent a petition to them by e -mail with a thousand signatures. No answer was received.
Freeman's birth
Many are interested in how a flimsy botanist with glasses could interrupt the whole infantry division of the alliance? But at the very beginning, no Gordon Freemen existed. The main character of the early version of the script was Ivan Cosmobiker, a harsh peasant with a crazy gaze, a hairstyle such as a “site” and a hefty brown beard. If this came to the release, the alliance’s forces would surrender after half an hour of the game, and all the headcrabs would have to be treated for a professional psychologist for a year.
Having decided that the prototype turned out too terrible, the developers decided to ennoble it, but the canonical image of Freemen with square glasses and neatly trimmed Espanyolka was formed only to the release of the second part of the game. To create a model’s model, the appearance of four developers were taken, and then in two stages they combined them in one image: first they connected the photos of two people, then two more, and then two received photos again combined each other. The resulting picture was used to create the final freemen. In particular, it can be seen on the cover of the first edition of Half-Life 2.
2011: bargaining
“We both said a lot of things that you still regret. But now we must forget about our disagreements. For the sake of science … You are a monster ". 2011 was a sign Portal 2 , But, while the whole world was selflessly running through the Aperture Science dungeons with a portal gun in the ready, fans of Half-Life gutted the game editor in search of new evidence. For the sake of science. And they found them. In the Portal 2 code, the mentions of the Alliance advisers, as well as helicopters, shields and other things, indicating that Half-Life was not a myth, but a really existing game. Otherwise many by that time have already begun to seriously doubt it.
[[Bullet]] The next work of the fans: the old-fested Gordon Freeman is still waiting for him to be called for new exploits. Wake up and sing, Mr. Freeman, wake up and sing ..
After that, the annual drama followed: rumors about the announcement of Half-Life 3 on E3 2011 and the official statement that Valve will not come to the exhibition at all. However, this time the players reacted to the situation with humor, composing a bunch of different jokes on this subject. The well-known gurus of Freddiew computer special effects with his team, which shot a joking overview of E3 2011, was most clearly noted: among other things, he said that the Half-Life 2: Episode 3 show showed at the exhibition, but there was only a do not care about everyone, so there was only a few Human.
It is worth noting that by that time not only players, but also developers joined the topic of Half-Life: Studio Volition Added in Saints Row 3 Easter egg – in the list of missing ships hanging on the wall, the ill -fated "Borey" was mentioned.
In mid-June 2011, the funeral of Half-Life 2: Episode 3 occurred. This name was already mentioned less and less-instead, people began to call the new Half-Life 3 game, realizing that after such a break to release the third episode of the second part is already pointless. And so on the Steam forums a message of the user Ryuuk, who found the resume of the former Valve programmer Mike Dusso. If you believe him, the third episode can really not wait – he was canceled back in 2007.
“It follows from the Dusso resume that the work on Episode 3 stopped when, at the end of 2007, after the release of Episode 2, Valve decided to abandon the game distribution model in the form of separate episodes. Dusso was a technical adviser and participated in creating an abolished game under the Half-Life brand, which was a third-party studio on. In the period from 2008 to 2010, Dusso worked on the world and the Half-Life 3 script system, which he also mentions in his resume, ”the message read.
Lombardi denied this information, although he admitted that Dusso really was their employee. It is clear that the message on the forum is difficult to compete with reliability with an official refutation, but there is a fact: there was a canceled game from a third -party studio (Episode 4), and the abolition of the development of the third episode was also true – this will be officially confirmed a couple of months later. Episode 3 died, long live Half-Life 3!
[[Bullet]] Canadian fans are located on the Valve lawn with all amenities: folding chairs, free feeding, even a living geibe showed ..
Well, in August there was a tragedy: a crowd of distraught fans took the Valve office with an attack, dragged the employees out and hung them on the nearest background … Okay, okay. There was nothing like that. Just two geeks from Canada arrived in the USA, to the town of Belwei, and deployed banners with the inscriptions “Canada for the release of Half-Life 3” and “did Half-Life 3 abandoned to die?" – the last poster beats the name Left 4 Dead.
One of the employees was seriously frightened and called the police, but this did not help. The policeman was also a fan of Half-Life, so not only did not arrest the demonstrators, but even expressed a desire to join the rally. Our man!
There was nothing to do, I had to go to negotiations. Gabe Newell himself came to protesting players, called the action “Very sweet”, invited everyone to an excursion to the office and even let him play in Dota 2. Both dissidents remained on the lawn for two days, and the employees fed them with pizza and watered them with soda. But they didn't say a word about Half-Life 3.
In response, the game community in the person of the nameless Vietnamese tester stole the beta-client Dota 2, putting it into free access. And what would you think? It also found traces of Half-Life! In the folder with the name EP3, intriguing files were found, the name of which spoke about the ice gun and some strange weaponer of different modifications-concrete, metal and even liquid. However, the scriptwriter Valve, the Falve said that this find does not mean anything at the same time confirming that Episode 3 no longer exists and that the new game is called Half-Life 3.
Everyone tried to achieve official information about the game, from ordinary users to journalists of the largest publications. We, in "Gambling" more than once tried to talk developers. Once it did not cause us unreasonably that Valve would be interested in “draining” a little information to the largest Russian publication. But someone at the very top of the company pulled the leash, and no secrets were discovered to us.
The most original way to find out the news can be considered a letter of a simple player sent by Geib Newll himself, since his address is well known. The letter was written in the form of Hike, the Japanese quatrains (the translation is not perfectly accurate, only the general meaning was transferred to maintain imagery):
Do you like haikus?
I Like to Write Them Sometimes ..
Episode 3 Soon?
I like Haiku
Sometimes write in the evenings ..
Is the new "Half-Life" soon?
According to the author, he received a response from Gabe himself, and also in the form of poems:
Haikus are neato,
They Havy a Rigid Structure.
Episode 3 ships in ..
Hike sound cool,
Strict form they have.
Episode 3 somewhere there ..
However, other Valve employees are inclined to trolling the gaming community, and the first among them can be considered the above scriptwriter of the Falizhek couple, who quite often gives an interview in which, of course, they regularly try to display information about Half-Life. During one of these conversations, he admitted that G-Man is really Gordon Freeman, only from the future, and at the same time great-grandfather Alix Vance. When asked whether this is a joke, even extremely honestly and frankly stated: “Of course, a joke. Or maybe not ".
Jokes jokes, but the situation around the game was more and more, and the developers did not take any measures to cool it. And at the end of 2011, everything exploded. In December, a rumor appeared on the Web that Valve was noticed at one of the events in a T-shirt with the Half-Life 3 logo. A photograph was attached to the hearing – it was true that the developer from Valve really wore it, it was definitely not possible to install it. All this could be taken as a joke, but a week later on the Official Xbox Magazine website there was news: one of the American actors who wished to stay unknown, admitted that he was involved in the voice acting of the new Half-Life.
[[Bullet]] frame from comic video about E3 2011. Thousands of people try Kinect, Battlefield 3 and New Mario, and four geeks stand in line to the booth, where they show the Half-Life 2: Episode 3 demo.
At the Video Game Awards 2011 awards ceremony, the Single of Portal 2 received the title “Character of the Year”. In honor of this, he made a congratulatory speech in which some saw hidden references to Half-Life 3. The logic was simple: at the beginning of the speech on the screen, the phrase in the Russian language “Lantanum Sputnik Sputnik” was noticeable on the screen. Lantanum (or rather, Lantan) – metal related to the third group of elements. Its atomic weight is 57, while July 5 and 7 – the date of the beginning and end of the exhibition E3 2012, and if they are folded, it will turn out 12, which indicates the year of its implementation. At the same time, at the very end, when Witley tries to convey his coordinates, he manages to convey the first three numbers: “one, one, one,”. 1+1+1 = 3. Suffering to apophenies and lovers of conspiracy theories immediately raised a crack and howl-it is obvious that it was the announcement of Half-Life 3! But how else?!
The degree of madness continued to grow. A few days later, right at Christmas, the site opens on the network www.Black-Aperture.Com With the Half-Life 3 logo. One of the leading podcast Steamcast writes on the Steam forum that a kind of anonymous source told him that Gabe gave the go-ahead to publish traditional riddles and tips about the upcoming announcement of Half-Life 3. The Steam service finds a poster, where one of the Steam Musks, Mr. Bodkin, goes in Santa Claus's sleigh (with the face of Gabe), and a chain with a Half-Life logo hangs on his neck. Players, joyfully jumping on chairs, anticipated the fast end of a long languid expectation ..
[[Bullet]] The son of Peter Molinya turns to Valve so that they cease to be developers of all sorts of Portal and Dota there and become those who are supposed to be the developers of Half-Life.
But on December 28, 2011, seeing the growing hysteria, Valve still decided to give an official statement. “You were all just troll. And we have nothing to do with. Whitley speech at the VGA 2011 awards was dedicated only to Portal 2 – and nothing more. Gabe did not give any instructions for the publication of any information. So all this is lies. I say this to avoid misunderstandings. Just some representatives of the game community decided to touch fans. Of course, we are pleased to see how passionate people are connected with the Half-Life series, but it’s very unpleasant for me when they are mocking people in a similar way, ”said the fans already familiar to the fans. The year 2011 ended on this life -affirming note. The year 2012 began.
2012: Depression
Instead of signing a traditional petition, the players decided to start a year in a more original way, sending a dozen mounts to Valve's office. Without any comments. Valve did not answer either. Therefore, later fans nevertheless published a new petition and gathered a small flash mob in the form of a simultaneous play in Half-Life 2 in protest. Although more than fifty thousand people registered in a group dedicated to the action, only ten thousand appeared for the game rally.
But that was enough. Gabe personally tried to reassure the players, saying that they were kept in ignorance not at all from evil, but exclusively for their own good. “Yes, we are aware that all this silence is very annoying our fans. And it is very upset about us. But we try to work as quickly as we can, and choose games that we believe, are most in demand by our audience, ”he said.
[[Bullet]] T -shirt with a game logo. Part of a successful trolling campaign for fans that unfolded at the end of 2011.
Newell noted that the studio does not want to repeat the previous mistakes made in the development of Half-Life 2-the developers remembered too well those riots that players arranged due to endless transfers of the release date, so now nothing will force them to announce the game too early: “ We try to be careful not to reassure people ahead of time. We want everything this time to “bake” properly before we serve it on the table ”.
The community was again depressed and almost did not respond to small pokes such as the Garry’s Mod creator photos of T-shirt with the HL3 logo or rumors that the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive allegedly found Easterks on Half-Life. In such a gloomy atmosphere, it was only possible to joke to defuse the situation. So, for example, one of the users of the popular Internet community Reddit discovered in his breakfast a ring of fried onions, resembling the famous “Lambdu”. The game blog Kotaku published the news “The Ring of Luke confirmed the development of Half-Life 3. Valve has not yet received official comments ".
In honor of the day of all the fools on the network, a photograph allegedly taken on the Best Buy retail network was launched: the large poster notified the beginning of the acceptance of pre -orders Episode 3, but no one was commanded. An annual announcement that the game will not be brought to E3 also passed without a special excitement. But when Half-Life 3 appeared on the list of games that will show on Gamescom 2012, this became a real information bomb-however, not for long, since Dag Lombardi quickly explained that this is only a mistake in the documents.
[[Bullet]] beauty, athlete and Komsomol member Alix Wans in the ranks of the Red Army. I serve the Soviet Union!
Half-Life began to joke and Valve herself. In the summer, the Kickstarter project appeared on the battle simulator on the swords Clang. In the presentation video, Newel himself starred; In one of the frames, he stands by the forge and smokes a mount, and to the question “Well, how is it ready?"Answers" such things you can't do so right away!"
In the summer, the largest leakage of materials in the game occurs, a whole pile of concept arts. However, when studying the issue, it turned out that the leak is not only large, but also pretty belated: all the drawings were created at least four years ago. Nevertheless, look at Alix Vance in the Soviet head-heading and a model of winter clothing from Valve designers. Among the drawings, the art of the crashed Soviet Mi-8 helicopter was also seen. It would be possible to make far -reaching conclusions on the basis of these materials, but by that time Valve had already weaned the players to guess into the future – it will not be conducive.
Closer to the fall, they began to talk about the development of a new engine, Source 2, and in November, at a meeting with fans, Gabe Newell actually confirmed this information, saying that they have been working on a completely new engine for a long time and simply waited for a suitable game to use it.
[[Bullet]] Steam poster with a friendly oral service mascot-Mr. Bodkin, Santa Gib and others.
The French game site, referring to an anonymous source, publishes the first details of Half-Life 3. According to anonymous, after several years of chaotic development, the studio decided to completely change the concept and now makes the game with the open world, quests and NPC, as well as Portal elements – it is probably just a combination of two game universes, tied to the Borea ship, where the test technology test took place.
Then it was just a hearing, but now that games with the open world have become almost the main trend of E3 2013 and all the games of the new generation in general, it sounds much more reasonable. The French also reported that waiting for the game was worth no earlier than 2014.
The end of 2012 ended symbolically: in an interview, Peter Molinjo said that his son was no longer waiting for Half-Life 3 and dropped out of the ranks of Valve fans: “He surrendered. Surrendered! I found a new lesson for myself. Valve lost it, and completely. Now he was carried away by Minecraft ". Well, he is not the first, he is not the last.
Truth is somewhere nearby
The artist and 3D modeller Ivan Bakula painted an amazing art: a fan in the image of Fox Malder is sitting against a wall, hung information about Half-Life 3. Those who carefully read this article from beginning to end will be able to identify many hints on their own. Here is a picture with a lift panel from PC Gamer, and a charad from Surgeon Simulator 2013, and the screenshots of “Borea”, and a T -shirt with a logo, crazy calculations with the search for the number “3”, and a petition of players, and even a fried toast with the image of Gordon Frimen. All in one place.
2013: Acceptance
And so we have gone to this day. This summer, the next wave of rumors and crazy guesses that prompted us to write this article just passed. It all started with the fact that the screenshots of the Jira project tracker have leaked into the network – a special program that serves Valve employees to organize the development and testing of games.
The tracker has a 791 project, and in the screenshots it can be distinguished that some of them have very interesting names: Half-Life 3, Left 4 Dead 3, Steambox, Source 2. True, Half-Life 3 interests us has only one group consisting of 42 developers, which, frankly, is not a good sign-the same Left 4 Dead 3 has several groups at once and is much more suitable for the role of the game that is active in active development.
Then the PC Gamer magazine published a joke art on its pages, depicting the elevator panel in Valve's office: the thirteenth floor button was entitled “Half-Life 3 Development Group, but this name was crossed out by a marker, and a piece of paper developers” was glued nearby nearby.
[[Bullet]] The very ring of onions that confirmed the development of Half-Life 3. A parody of religious fanatics who can see the image of Jesus on a fried toast. Scientists call this phenomenon "Apofenia".
Few would have accepted this seriously, but as luck would have it at this moment, Half-Life 2 updated appeared on Steam. Fresh patch after so many years! Yes, so healthy! “This is zh-g-h-h, it's not easy!" – decided the fans and raised the noise. Of course, in vain, since the patch added to the game the support of the Korean language with a full bag of voice acting. The fans were offended and began to spam the “twitter” of the journalist with various offensive messages, including the accusations that he was worse than Hitler, even more than that, Ward Dodda is worse! Who does not know, this is the head of the developer team The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. So understand, whether they really scold, or just “joked” in response.
Buried from the fact that the innocent picture caused such a resonance, PC Gamer journalist hastened to explain that he did not want to offend anyone, that this was really just a joke. He went to Valve's office only to collect information about Dota 2, and did not find out anything about the new Half-Life.
It was not so easy to cool after a long break of passion after a long break. Developers Surgeon Simulator 2013 They released an addition in which players could delve into the inside of the machine gunner from Team Fortress 2. Among other tools in the game, a strange box was discovered with a pattern glued to it, on which the rebus flaunted.
[[Bullet]] Traditional photo monitoring: Half-Life 3 advertising poster on E3 2013. In fact, Kingdom Hearts with Gufi and Mickey Mouse hung in this place.
One player claims that the date was encrypted in the rebus, on September 26, 2013, which, of course, was immediately connected with the date of the possible announcement of Half-Life 3 … and, of course, completely in vain. Chapter Bossa Studios Enrique Olipers said that, firstly, the riddle was unraveled incorrectly, and secondly, it is associated with the following addition and has nothing to do with the games from Valve.
After such rumors, it will not be surprising if the players do not even believe even a real announcement. So, for example, a site with the sonorous name No Shit Shurlock decided to increase popularity by publishing a statement allegedly made by the designer of Valve studio John Gafrey, an honorary veteran who participated in the development of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 (he was responsible for the creation of levels). The site claimed that they corresponded with Gafri by e-mail and he confirmed the development of Half-Life 3, promising that the trailer and demo will release for the future E3.
He also said that the game will continue the plot of Episode 2, will contain many familiar characters, will be released on PC, as well as consoles of the current and new generation. No evidence of the conversation was presented, so you can be practically confident – this is one hundred percent lies, from the first to the last word.
[[Bullet]] Bluted Mi-8 against the background of a snowy landscape. Our players joyfully rub their hands: if the arts are real, then the action of Half-Life 3 can take place in the vastness of the USSR.
Well, we’re diverging? As if not! Half-Life 3 lived, alive and will live. News about him are popular that most games envy. Now the journalists digged the name Valve among the participants of Gamescom (when you read these lines, the exhibition will just end); Most likely, they will show Dota 2, but is it worth it to be surprised that in the news about this about Dota 2 it is not said, but “Half-Life 3” is repeated through the line. And there, you look, and autumn will pass, and the traditional winter exacerbation will come. Everything is as usual.
Continuation should not
And now we will try to answer one question: what happened to Half-Life 2: Episode 3. After all, the game was clearly under development, so why did everyone cancel? To understand the reasons for such an act, we must remember why Valve has become successful. It's not about games and not even the Steam service, the main key to the success of the company is the ability to go ahead of the entire gaming industry. Half-Life, in fact, became the first plot shooter in the world, the ancestor of all modern Call of Duty. Steam opened the digital era in the gaming industry. After the release of Half-Life 2, the studio decided on a new experiment-the release of the game in the form of episodes.
Today about gaming series is talked at every corner. Recently, under the “more than one line,” we wrote that in the conditions of increasing budgets, multi -part games can become a salvation, reducing the risks of publishers and allowing you to quickly make changes based on players' reviews. The scheme of episodes has proven its viability, the series The Walking Dead was the game of the year ..
[[Bullet]] joke from PC Gamer – Valve's office elevator. "Academy for the production of hats", "Control center of the money pipeline", "Room with a bunch of knives" ..
But by the time when the development of Episode 1 began, there was none of this. The future king of game series, Telltale Games, will release its first multi -part quest SAM & Max Save the World only in the fall of 2006, a few months after the release of Episode 1. Therefore, Valve, as always, had to go into the unknown, doing what seemed right to her.
The plans were grandiose. Even before the release of Episode 1, Newel confirmed that they intend to release not only the third, but also the fourth episode of Half-Life 2. After the release of Episode 1, the team working on it was supposed to switch to Episode 3, and Episode 4 planned to be given to a third -party studio. The developers wanted to release new episodes as often as possible, ideally-with an interval of 6-8 months.
According to Geib, such a scheme could serve as the beginning of the Renaissance of the PC-IGR. But even Valve has failures. Perhaps the company was too much ahead of time – the rest of the industry, being talked to the wall, all with growing budgets and exorbitant development periods, only now I began to seriously think about taking the series on service. Valve does not disclose data on digital sales, but their information about the sales of disks can serve as an approximate assessment of the success of episodes: Half-Life 2 was dispersed by a circulation of 6.5 million copies, the disc with Episode 1 bought only 1.4 million players, and The Orange Super Cobrus Box with five games – 3 million.
Looking at these numbers, it is easy to understand why Valve turned the development. The idea with episodes did not work on the move, and they were not ready for the creation of a full -fledged third part: neither suitable conditions, nor interesting ideas. But the studio had a lot of more promising classes, in Valve they actively began to master online and the sphere of free games, planned to make a noise on consoles with Portal 2 release, developed the LEFT 4 Dead sequel 4. Therefore, all the work on Half-Life without regret was pushed into a long box.
In 2011, Gabe in an interview with Develop-Online officially confirmed that Valve said goodbye to the idea of releasing games in the form of episodes. Their main idea was to reduce the development cycle, but it did not work out: too much time was still going to the release of one series. Therefore, the company focused on online games that can be updated almost constantly – the same Team Fortress 2 received hundreds of updates.
“Honestly, some Korean developers simply laugh at us, how much time we have to work on additions. They believe that ideally it is necessary to release them every day. I think in their words there is a big reason. Every day we must ask our customers: what can we do for them today? This is our strategy for the future, ”says Gabe.
[[Bullet]] Another art, over which many puzzled.
Nevertheless, it is too early to panic. Valve never said that she did not see the point in large one -time projects or that all her games will now be online. “We all want to lay out eggs in different baskets. Now we are under pressure from circumstances that force us to more and more reduce the development cycle. But we can change the situation. Of course, we need a good reason to want to change something, but we can. Personally, I do not want to get into trouble due to the fact that I threw all my strength to one thing, ”says Newell.
Yes, everyone remembers how, in the spring of 2011, Jeff Kailey journalist with Gametrailer TV said that Portal 2 could be the last game with an isolated singleplayer. However, Gabe Newwell himself later explained that the company was not going to leave the playing market with a single campaign: “We are not throwing a singlePleer at all. In fact, we think about a bunch of ideas on how to improve it, so that it suits a modern player, which is part of a social web. Each player uses chat, each player has registration on social networks. If you imagine that none of this exists, then you will have problems. We are talking about the "singlePleere plus", and not about the fact that there is no singlePleere at all ".
So the Half-Life 3 can get an open world, it can well be supported by a cooperative and different social things like Battlelog from Battlefield 3 or Streaming directly from the game, can even have multiplayer (holy, holy!), however, fans should not be too worried – no one will definitely make Korean mmo out of it. Maybe. In the case of Valve, it is generally dangerous to guess something in advance: who knows that he will embrace them in mind?
Valve continues to be silent, fans continue to wait. Some of them have already graduated from schools, universities, managed to marry and send children to first grade, and some even died. Six years – long time. And yet the game awaits that it is logical, because it will come out, which means that the longer we wait, the closer the release becomes.
As we found out, Valve had a reason for the cancellation of Half-Life 2: Episode 3, but now there are no less good reasons to release a full-fledged third part. The studios need to be mastered by the schedule of a new generation, but what game can be the best candidate for the debut Source 2? Also, Half-Life 3 would be very useful to promote Steambox: to promise an exclusive DLC, and that’s all, they will tear it off with hands and feet. And finally, it's time to appease the fans, otherwise who knows when their enthusiasm will end.
It is clear that Valve should now be very scary to release this game. Over the years of waiting, the game community turned the Half-Life brand into a legend, so now everyone is waiting for at least a revolution, and in all areas at once-in a gameplay, graphics, plot. The release of a regular game, even if very good, will probably be perceived as a failure. But what to do, let it be scary, albeit risky, but you still need to release. And not that fans, instead of sending mounts by mail, they themselves can appear with mounts to the office ..
Half-Life 2: Episode 4
The Secret Half-Life 2: Episode 4, which was developed by a third-party studio, was disclosed in early 2012. Screenwriter and Gam -designer Valve Mark Laidlow said that they ordered the creation of the fourth episode Arkane Studios , Famous now Dishonored. The working name of the project was “Return to Ravenchlm”, which well characterizes both the content and the scene of the game, which was supposed to be a branch from the main storyline. Valve wanted to develop some plot moments of the original Half-Life 2 in more detail, and at the same time create a game in the spirit of the first part-gloomy, terrible, with a bunch of zombies and headcracs. The development was from 2006 to 2007 (according to some reports – until 2008), but in the end everyone turned off. Only art, screenshots and a video with animations of the zombie and the playing head of the head of the headcrabe remained.