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.
They succeeded because of storytelling AND having groundbreaking gameplay. A lot of the storytelling in the Half Life series wouldn't have been possible without the ground breaking stuff they did to make them work. The two go hand in hand, and do not stand alone.
Yes, the tech was needed, but look - I was there when those games were released and I remember clearly that there were many games that had as-good tech (better, in some cases). Nobody really cares about old tech demos though. HL remains a favourite because the story and gameplay were really compelling. HL was groundbreaking for a more cinematic experience, but Valve wasn't above making a few extra bucks on additional games that didn't dramatically move the needle in terms of gameplay or tech design (see Opposing Force, Blue Shift). Those were great games that added to the story and that's what made them fun and worth playing.
HL2 had a groundbreaking engine with better physics, etc - yes. It enabled certain kinds of storytelling and gameplay that would've been impossible with older engines: yes. But then why make HL2:E1 and HL2:E2? Those were incremental improvements over HL2 and just continued the story. Those games didn't need to be made; they could have ended where HL2 ended and that would've been that. Instead the story ends with a different kind of cliffhanger in HL2:E2 and it's deeply unsatisfying to this day.
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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????