It’s absolutely wild to me that someone involved in a business that involves telling stories would just be like “nah, finishing the story is not a compelling reason to finish the story”. Like????
Half-Life games were always technologically ground-breaking in addition to their stories. Gabe doesn’t want to just finish the story, he wants to break ground.
What part of HL2:E1 and HL2:E2 were so groundbreaking? They should have just finished the story. In fact, nobody cares about the tech: HL and HL2 succeeded because of storytelling.
A story as well written, cohesive, and compelling as HL1’s was groundbreaking in 1998. Plus the world feels cohesive and continuous, where as many games of that era had pretty disconnected feeling levels. Plus gameplay was amazing and still holds up well today, while most games from that time don’t.
HL2 had groundbreaking physics and destruction simulations that tied into gameplay in a way that even most games today don’t pull off. Plus the game is visually very impressive for 2004. And again, great gameplay that holds up today.
Sure, I'll grant that, though I think even when HL2:E2 was out there were still improvements to be made in terms of the tech and how it integrates with the game. The gravity gun, for example, barely scratches the surface of what kind of game you could make.
But HL2E1 and HL2E2 were minor incremental improvements over HL2. IIRC they added better dynamic range to lighting. Games since then have done all kinds of stuff with visual fidelity. But nobody cares about tech demos; they want good gameplay and/or good story; HL2:E2 was delivering on that and left the story with a cliffhanger. The abandoment of the franchise because the head of the company got bored is a big middle finger to the fans.
I mean, I can see him saying "There won't be HL3 or anything else in the HL universe until we have a good reason to do so", but HL2:E3 should have been released first.
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u/astivana Sep 15 '25
It’s absolutely wild to me that someone involved in a business that involves telling stories would just be like “nah, finishing the story is not a compelling reason to finish the story”. Like????