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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

So they had no idea where to go next and were tired. That's reasonable. Seems to be what happens to most long running pop culture entertainment products, but creators usually have mortgages to pay and can't alternatively devote their energies to building out something more lucrative like Steam.

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They also built up the myth both internally and externally that nothing they developed for the game was good enough, when people were already satisfied with the current mechanics. They wore themselves out saying it could be anything and accepting nothing. A monster of their own creation that is easily killed with a little humility. It is their desire to be unreasonable that led them there.

Not reasonable at all IMO.

Yeah, the ice gun and blob baddie would have blown my mind even if they were 5 years late or whatever. I'd still love to play with them.

It seems like the real problem was burnout among the rank-and-file, not Gabe Newell's perfectionism. The staff seems to have had more fun with a goofy new IP like Left 4 Dead, versus a serious plot like HL2 where any perceived narrative misstep would be severely criticized.

If they shoved the episode through and lost a lot of staff, then that would be a Phyrric victory. Contrary to some opinions here, Valve did not owe a single thing to HL fans, and they had no obligation to finish the story.

They don’t have that obligation to finish the story, but Half-Life 2 Episode 2 immediately retcons the ending of Half-Life 2 to give you more play in the world. Half-Life: Alyx, the entire game is a retcon of the ending of Episode 2. So to sit and claim there was nothing narratively interesting to work with and not a good direction to go in, is ridiculous because they always had a an escape hatch with the retcon.

A company that has failed with sales of Portal 2 but has plenty of operating capital to continue on, Half-Life 2 Episode 3/Half-Life 3 at the very least was a promise they made and walked back. Yes they did owe something to the fans over the last 20 years.

They were the ones who set out to outdo the previous episode and let the idea blossom into never good enough, not the fans.

Depends how you look at it. Admitting you are in over your head, that you cannot do justice to an ideal and choosing to step aside (despite market demand being secured), could be seen as an act of humility, as an act of respect and reverence.

An ideal they had full control of shrinking and growing, they grew it then said “it’s impossible” without trimming their own expectations.

I think Half Life: Alyx really is their "Half Life 3" - there's no game I've played that comes close to anything like it. It's fairly clear in hindsight they opted for a prequel to disassociate with the baggage HL3 carries, in all aspects.

I don't think it's reasonable. When you release part of an episodic story, you are making an implicit promise to your audience that you will finish the story! Even more so if you end on a cliffhanger.

This applies just as much to George R. R. Martin, btw.

I think a lot of video game companies get into this trap. I can't speak for others but for me, I don’t care about technical innovation, just give me more Skyrim, Witcher, Fallout, Half Life, Baldur’s Gate, Elden Ring story. It’s not rocket science. Put all the money you wanted to give to tech guys that want to revamp the engine every year into hiring amazing writers and art direction people.

I don't know: then you just end up with the videogame equivalent of the MCU which, at my most charitable, I would describe as uneven reaching mid at best. However, if we look at the median of how I feel about MCU, I'm just bored to tears with it. It's utter bilge. You just end up with this meaningless churning out of endless content for content's sake that goes nowhere and signifies nothing. Destiny 2 is actually a great example of this in the world of videogames.

> then you just end up with the videogame equivalent of the MCU

We've been there for a long time - just off the top of my head: Call of Duty, Halo, Assassin's Creed, World of Warcraft (doubly so now with Classic), Fortnite

Some people really just want to go back to the old and comfortable.

True. But is that market really that big? Once you've fallen behind a few releases you just don't care for the latest, and the not-latest lack any of that novelty appeal that video games tend to rely on quite a bit.

Video-games fundamentally don't work like that. Stories are told through gameplay, which is an interactive medium expressed through engine, assets and direction. The best video-game storytellers are the tech guys. Most of the franchises you've listed have fairly rudimentary writing by the standards of any other medium, but it's elevated because it is so fun to play. Even something as story-centric as Baldur's Gate, Disco Elysium or Pathologic rests on a ton of technical innovation.

That is one perspective, but not the only one, and it certainly isn't true that video games fundamentally work in the way you claim. Many people are perfectly happy to enjoy a story in a video game which isn't driven by the technical, interactive bits. The entire JRPG genre is like this, for example, as are visual novels. By your logic those genres shouldn't exist, and yet they not only exist but are very popular.

Visual novels are the genre where the writers reign supreme, yes, but that's very explicitly not the games that GP was listing. Skyrim, Fallout, Witcher and Elden Ring are very much not writing-driven experiences.

Circling back to the original topic, I would say that if the only way to finish HL2 was to release episode 3 as a visual novel, do it. Just finish the story!!!

A lot of game criticism gets confused about visual novels, like how people call them "dating sims" when an actual dating sim (Tokimeki Memorial) is a difficult game with tons of gameplay.

I think everything would be clearer if we all agreed a visual novel is a kind of ebook and not a video game.

I didn't say that every video game was a writing driven experience. GP, on the other hand, did say that video games are inherently driven by tech/gameplay which is provably not true (because VNs and JRPGs are counterexamples).

> Many people are perfectly happy to enjoy a story in a video game which isn't driven by the technical, interactive bits. The entire JRPG genre is like this, for example, as are visual novels.

This wasn’t always the case for JRPGs[0]. There was quite a long period where JRPGs were pushing technical limits. Especially around the time of Final Fantasy VII.

[0]: https://youtu.be/EhQamvbfDxc?si=rWRJmHeo_69OI99e&t=5145

There was a JRPG "tech winter" in the PS3-PS4 era because Japanese developers seemed to have a lot of difficulty developing for HD consoles, but I think there was a lot of innovation in handheld games that hasn't been acknowledged. (Though, uh, I can't think of an example.)

Even on consoles there was NieR, which has all the kinds of gameplay you could want.

Square-Enix is trying to bring this back, each Final Fantasy game has had a different combat system and largely been an action game for some time now. I think they largely failed at this, except for FFXIV and FF7 Remake/Rebirth which are great, but they definitely try.

The point is that there doesn't need to be more, or novel tech to tell a good story. If you copy paste the mechanics of baldurs gate but with a new location/story/characters, it would do great.

This. I mean, Skyrim wasn't perfect. But another 2 or 3 games with those mechanics but interesting new content would have done quite well.

Bethesda's weakness has always been writing and content, though. Lots of it, but the main plots are consistently terrible.

> Bethesda's weakness has always been writing and content,

And any decent form of in-game inventory management! Why is it sooooooo bad in bethesda games :(

As far as I can tell their weakness is QA because their games have so many bugs it replaces the actual game design, but at the same time it seems to be their strength because people think it's funny, which must make it hard to change.

Idk, I didn't play the HL games until years after they came out. What was the new tech? I just remember it being a pretty meh shooter on rails type game. The gravity gun was cool I guess.

Source engine, physics puzzles, NPC facial animations, companion AI, overall sound design, lots of UI primitives. Modern video games owe a lot to HL.

I took a game design course in college and the professor was very stuck on HL2, to the point he told us it was perfect because it was so interactive, and that any game with a cutscene in it was a failure because those aren't interactive.

Since then, it doesn't seem to me that the industry has taken this advice.

I kind of agree with the professor though.

I wouldn't go quite as far as he did—I think there are many different ways for video games to tell stories. But the way that Half Life and especially Portal does it is extremely effective—and I haven't seen any other games pull it off or even really attempt it!

I would argue even Half Life: Alyx doesn't really follow the Half Life storytelling formula, because the main character isn't mute. When the character can speak of his/her own accord, they aren't really you, they're a different person.

The HL physics demo was mind blowing to the entire gaming community when it was first shown and caused some insane hype.

There was absolutely nothing like it before it. It's like claiming no one cared when Halo 2 and 3 was released.

I'm not saying no one cared, I just didn't play it when it was new so I don't have a frame of reference.

I mean, no product is better than a shitty product in this case.

I actually don't agree! They need to resolve the cliffhanger. Leaving it unresolved retroactively makes the whole package worse.

That's not to say I'd be happy with a Mass Effect 3 style ending, but it doesn't need to be some earth shattering gameplay experience.

Nope, nope, nope.

Think about the Matrix series. The first Matrix film was iconic, the second was decent but sort of mid, the third was absolute drek and it taints the entire franchise as a result. I can't watch The Matrix any more without knowing how they fucked up the third film and without that slightly ruining the experience. The fourth I watched but I must admit that it hasn't really left any kind of impression on me.

Resolving at any cost is way worse than leaving something hanging.

I think it's why Firefly is so well regarded: it didn't last long enough to fall to enshittification. And when they did resolve it they only had a feature film's length to do it, so they had to focus and we got Serenity, which is excellent and how they resolved the origin of the Reavers is still a great piece of storytelling.

I mean, the third matrix movie was by far the best in my book. But taste is subjective and all that.

I simply don't believe you.

You realize calling someone a liar is extremely rude, right? Especially given that this is a purely personal opinion which you cannot possibly have evidence to disprove.

I actually enjoyed the third movie a lot. I don’t know why it is hated so much. Fourth movie was an unapologetic cash grab.

Yeah, first movie was sort of "unique", the second one was a cliffhanger for the third one that finally explained what The One was all about. Spoiler for you: Smith is The Zero.

> Fourth movie was an unapologetic cash grab.

The only part I thoroughly enjoyed was when they meta-explained why they've made the cash grab.

For those who haven't watched: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10838180/quotes/?item=qt6078617...

Chefs kiss

Just because they are honestly able to tell me they are phoning it in for money, doesn’t do anything for me. I’m glad that I won’t be watching Keanu anymore. He was so bad, especially in cyberpunk. Ugh.

What fourth movie?

What a weird example to choose. I (and many others) continue to enjoy rewatching The Matrix even though the third one has some boring elements.

I agree. Matrix 3 introduces logic-breaking solutions that contradict the entire premise of that universe, and so the whole is lesser for it.

> Resolving at any cost is way worse than leaving something hanging.

Also agree. Matrix, Lost, Game of Thrones (TV), How I Met Your Mother, they all lost "replayability" because you might care about the characters and the beginning of their journey, but if you know it's all moot or unsatisfactory there's not so many incentives to revisit it. I think GoT really made TV aware of how important it is to a series to have a good, consistent ending.

Game of Thrones' (the book series) fans have a theory about the "Mereenese Knot", a plot that became so convoluted that GRR Martin possibly just don't know how to advance the story in a consistent way, and it's stuck.

I disagree personally. Even a shitty ending to the story is better than nothing at all.

Bro it's just a video game, and at the end of the day you need inspired people to make a art. I would prefer they just stop and refocus instead of forcing out some corporate slop.

> So they had no idea where to go next and were tired.

In my experience, a creative team realizing this and choosing to move on is both important and all-too rare. The only alternative I've seen is to find new project leadership who gets what made the original work, has a vision for extending it in new directions and the energy+talent to execute it.

Obviously, finding that with high confidence is hard to do.

L4D was a real hit though. I don't think they let anyone or them self (the artistic spirit, not Valve) down.

L4D was a genuinely good, groundbreaking game for its time. I didn't think it was possible to have so much fun with a multi-player FPS (CounterStrike and its ilk did nothing for me).

I'm sure there are more impressive MP games nowadays, but back then it felt revolutionary.

Ye it was revolutionary. Both as multiplayer coop and as a zombie game.

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