Even that certain episode number three makes an appearance, and there’s a lot to report, because Valve has managed to surprise us for the anniversary (no, it’s not because Half-Life 2 and its two episodes are free on Steam until 10am Pacific on Monday…).

The third episode of Half-Life 2 is officially shown for the first time. It would have included an ice gun to build transparent walls, or even go Silver Surfer on the ice ramps you built. There would also have been hoppy blob enemies that used Portal 2 technology to bite headcrabs and then spawn by splitting. They would even be able to infiltrate through barred fences. But Gabe Newell wanted more:

“You can’t get lazy and say, ‘Oh, we’re moving the story forward. That’s shirking your duty to the players. Yeah, of course they love the story. They love many, many aspects of it. But to say that your reason for doing it is because people want to know what happens next, you know-we could have shipped it, it wouldn’t have been that hard. The failure, my personal failure was being at a loss. I couldn’t figure out why doing Episode 3 would advance anything,” Newell said. According to David Speyrer, an engineer, they could have easily gone back to the game and made a third episode in two years. He said it was tragic and somewhat comical that after the release of Left 4 Dead, the opportunity was there to finish the third episode and a new engine was needed to continue the series…

Valve didn’t know how to push the game design in a way that they thought was worth it. The ice gun wasn’t innovative enough for the Newells. David Riller, Half-Life 2’s level designer, said they were experiencing “element fatigue” and should have gone bigger or done something different. Writer Marc Laidlaw agrees, as even Arkane struggled with the canceled Ravenholm-based spin-off. So: too much has been covered in the franchise world…

“It was easy to think about VR as a vehicle for Half-Life because that was a huge technological innovation and kind of a core reason for the existence of that product, and I think one of the things we tended to associate internally with the Half-Life IP is innovation. Gameplay innovation is often enabled by technological innovation. Obviously there was a lot of that in Half-Life 1 and 2. It’s certainly an interesting challenge going forward to think about what that means for future Half-Life stuff,” said Valve engineer Brian Jacobson.

This is essentially Valve confirming that they can only return to the franchise in earnest after Half-Life: Alyx if there is enough technological innovation. But what is that? Better VR? Better graphics cards? A brain-implanted Steam Deck? Even Newell’s comment doesn’t help: “The end of Half-Life: Alyx is somewhat of a self-critical realization. I think Half-Life represents a tool that we have and a promise that we’ve made to our customers to capitalize on innovation and opportunities to create gaming experiences that haven’t been done before. And I think there is no shortage of those opportunities that we are facing as an industry right now.”

Valve and the number three are like water and oil…

Source: PCGamer,