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Comment by darkpuma | Hacker News Reader

Because HL3 would suck. First person shooters today are very different than what first person shooters were when HL2 was released. It's Quake vs Overwatch. So Valve is between a rock and a hard place; do they make HL3 in the modern style and alienate all their original fans? Or do they make HL3 in the dated style and risk a flop because the market for that dated style has only gotten smaller over the past decade and new players aren't interested in it? That's why HL3 would suck. No matter which path they take, and no matter how expertly they make it, it will almost certainly be something that leaves a TON of people dissatisfied.

So it's better for Valve to not make it. They'd rather HL3 be an urban legend than a disappointment. That's better for their image as experts in their craft.

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I don't think of the style as dated. If you think of Portal 2 as a continuation of the style on a tangent, it's just heading in it's own unique direction. Portal 2 still feels far ahead of today's AAA games in various aspects.

Comparing the HH style directly to other FPS just doesn't seem right.

First off, Portal 2 was eight years ago. That's a long time and mainstream consumer expectations for what a video game should offer have changed a lot over those eight years.

Secondly, I know plenty fans of HL/HL2 who found the tone/direction of Portal 2 distressing because it was too self-aware or whatever. I don't really agree with that, but it's a point of view that's been circulating around for years. I think a lot of fans have come to terms with HL3 never being released. Continuing to not release HL3 has little apparent risk. Less risk than releasing it and making something a bunch of people will either hate or ignore. So I don't think they will.

> They'd rather HL3 be an urban legend than a disappointment. That's better for their image as experts in their craft

Sorry but I doubt they're even thinking about it that hard, at this point this post nails it [0], Valve just doesn't care about making any sort of experience that isn't maximum profit for minimum effort and isn't based around a in game item economy.

It certainly isn't out of worry that they'll disappoint their fans with a dated gametype. They look at Portal 2, a beloved game as a huge waste of their time. They're not a company that makes money from art, gameplay and storytelling anymore they make money from virtual items.

But don't be sad, plenty of companies still care about telling single player stories in videogames: Nintendo, Guerrilla, Rockstar, Kojima Prod, Naughty Dog, Sony Japan Studio etc

The concept isn't as dead as Valve believes it is.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20099167

> Rockstar

> still care about telling single player stories in videogames

Yeah, no. They released GTA V simply to use it as a platform for their microtransactions. They knew releasing an online-only game would not work.

This is why COD still has a half-assed campaign mode attached to it.

This is why Fallout 76 failed miserably.

Ok I don’t play gta:o or rdr2:o but I bought both games full price.

I’m sorry but to pretend for even a second that both those titles didn’t include expertly crafted 50-100 hour single player worlds and stories is being extremely disingenuous.

Rockstar shipped twice what people are asking from valve, yes they tacked on online but they still shipped the single player experience many in this comment section are claiming they’d happily pay valve AAA prices for.

The difference is rockstar manages to do both and just because you dislike one doesn’t mean they didn’t ship the other.

I don't quite see why a HL3 would necessarily be bad. Doom 2016 managed to be good despite shooters having changed a lot since Doom 1, 2.

Doom 2016 was a nice tribute I suppose, but compare it to the massive success of Doom 1&2. It's not the same sort of cultural phenomenon. What I will give it though is it nailed the attitude. Doom 1&2 had a certain raw metal attitude, and Doom 2016 captured that well. I've never seen the HL series expressing attitude like Doom did.

What Valve really wants to avoid is a Doom 3 moment. When an old franchise is given a modern tuneup and the result is something nobody really thinks does the IP justice.

I think one could argue that the original Doom had more in common with Fortnite than with its newer iteration. A Doom level wasn't that big, and it was for the most part a quick little stand-alone experience, almost arcadey; you could hop in, frag some demons, and play the same levels over and over. There was no story, no RPG elements, I don't even recall whether your health and ammo and weapons carried over between levels.

As for size and complexity, there were original Doom levels that surpass the 2016 levels in every quantifiable measure. Larger maps, huge mazes, etc. All thanks to the WAD system that allowed Doom to have such long legs thanks to community driven content. With the new graphics system of 2016, community generated content was just never going to be a real thing with 2016. That is where 2016 and the original differ the most. As for unwanted RPG elements, 2016 at least has a mode that ignores that and dumps you into any level you want. To your point though, the RPG elements did alienate some fans of the original games, which goes back to my original point.

2016 was moderately successful. It got a lot of praise just for being stylistically Doom in every way that Doom 3 wasn't. But I don't think that Doom 2016 counts as strong evidence that HL3 could be made in a way that satisfies fans of the original games without alienating younger/modern gamers.

You're not describing the Doom I played at all.

Execute the old style well, perhaps with some modernizations where appropriate, and your game is lauded for being unique.

Execution is paramount. Valve certainly had the talent to pull it off at one point, I wonder if they still do...

> Or do they make HL3 in the dated style and risk a flop because the market for that dated style has only gotten smaller over the past decade and new players aren't interested in it?

I get your point that they can't win either way, but I wish there were more developers that would stick to older style games, when the goldeneye/timesplitters style of shooters went out of fashion the FPS market left me behind completely, similarly when platformers became 3D there weren't a lot of options for people that preferred the 2D style.

Have you looked at the indie scene? Lots of 2D platformers there for example: cave story, shovel knight, limbo, thomas was alone, cuphead, rogue legacy, dead cells, and spelunky to name a few.

That's just not true. I really hate the newer FPS style, with the clunky hitboxes and weird movement. I miss the accuracy and smoothness of the HL series, to me HL2 shines because of the gaming experience.

And also they ended it on a cliffhanger in episode 2 instead of concluding the arc at least.

And lastly after Portal came out I was so happy because it all made sense, I was sure Portal will somehow cross paths with HL so in HL3 you'd have a portal gun in your arsenal. So much potential wasted.

they can still do both, modern squad action multiplayer and traditional story driven single player can coexist, call of duty and battlefield made a point of doing that year after year. the rest is a marketing problem, being able to reach both audiences with the correct message

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