Half Life 2 Episode 3 Synopsis Posted (Spoilers?)

DerKrieger · August 25, 2017, 6:51am

In a rather surprise move, former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw has posted what appears to be a synopsis of the events of Half Life 3. Read for yourself.

github.com

Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3/blob/master/Epistle3_Corrected.md

# Episode 3

Dearest Player,

I hope this letter finds you well. I can hear your complaint already, "Gordon Freeman, we have not heard from you in ages!" Well, if you care to hear excuses, I have plenty, the greatest of them being I've been in other dimensions and whatnot, unable to reach you by the usual means. This was the case until eighteen months ago, when I experienced a critical change in my circumstances, and was redeposited on these shores. In the time since, I have been able to think occasionally about how best to describe the intervening years, my years of silence. I do first apologize for the wait, and that done, hasten to finally explain (albeit briefly, quickly, and in very little detail) events following those described in my previous letter (referred to herewith as Episode 2).

To begin with, as you may recall from the closing paragraphs of my previous missive, the death of Eli Vance shook us all. The Research & Rebellion team was traumatized, unable to be sure how much of our plan might be compromised, and whether it made any sense to go on at all as we had intended. And yet, once Eli had been buried, we found the strength and courage to regroup. It was the strong belief of his brave daughter, the feisty Alyx Vance, that we should continue on as her father had wished. We had the Arctic coordinates, transmitted by Eli's long-time assistant, Dr. Judith Mossman, which we believed to mark the location of the lost research vessel Borealis. Eli had felt strongly that the Borealis should be destroyed rather than allow it to fall into the hands of the Combine. Others on our team disagreed, believing that the Borealis might hold the secret to the revolution's success. Either way, the arguments were moot until we found the vessel. Therefore, immediately after the service for Dr. Vance, Alyx and I boarded a helicopter and set off for the Arctic; a much larger support team, mainly militia, was to follow by separate transport.

It is still unclear to me exactly what brought down our little aircraft. The following hours spent traversing the frigid waste in a blizzard are also a jumbled blur, ill-remembered and poorly defined. The next thing I clearly recall is our final approach to the coordinates Dr. Mossman has provided, and where we expected to find the Borealis. What we found instead was a complex fortified installation, showing all the hallmarks of sinister Combine technology. It surrounded a large open field of ice. Of the Hypnos itself there was no sign…or not at first. But as we stealthily infiltrated the Combine installation, we noticed a recurent, strangely coherent auroral effect–as of a vast hologram fading in and out of view. This bizarre phenomenon initially seemed an effect caused by an immense Combine lensing system, Alyx and I soon realized that what we were actually seeing was the research vessel Borealis itself, phasing in and out of existence at the focus of the Combine devices. The aliens had erected their compound to study and seize the ship whenever it materialized. What Dr. Mossman had provided were not coordinates for where the sub was located, but instead for where it was predicted to arrive. The vessel was oscillating in and out of our reality, its pulses were gradually steadying, but there was no guarantee it would settle into place for long–or at all. We determined that we must put ourselves into position to board it at the instant it became completely physical.

At this point we were briefly detained–not captured by the Combine, as we feared at first, but by minions of our former nemesis, the conniving and duplicitous Wallace Breen. Dr. Breen was not as we had last seen him–which is to say, he was not dead. At some point, the Combine had saved out an earlier version of his consciousness, and upon his physical demise, they had imprinted the back-up personality into a biological blank resembling an enormous slug. The BreenGrub, despite occupying a position of relative power in the Combine hierarchy, seemed nervous and frightened of me in particular. Wallace did not know how his previous incarnation, the original Dr. Breen, had died. He knew only that I was responsible. Therefore the slug treated us with great caution. Still, he soon confessed (never able to keep quiet for long) that he was himself a prisoner of the Combine. He took no pleasure from his current grotesque existence, and pleaded with us to end his life. Alyx believed that a quick death was more than Wallace Breen deserved, but for my part, I felt a modicum of pity and compassion. Out of Alyx's sight, I might have done something to hasten the slug's demise before we proceeded.

Not far from where we had been detained by Dr. Breen, we found Judith Mossman being held in a Combine interrogation cell. Things were tense between Judith and Alyx, as might be imagined. Alyx blamed Judith for her father's death…news of which, Judith was devastated to hear for the first time. Judith tried to convince Alyx that she had been a

This file has been truncated. show original

Perhaps now we can agree HL is probably dead.

FaunCB · August 25, 2017, 6:57am

God dammit I was going to do it.
Oh well I guess I’ll just save it to a doc then.

Prenihility · August 25, 2017, 7:27am

Well. Didn’t i choose a good time to log in? lol

Interesting.

But i don’t see the need to turn this into some sort of fear porn. So the writer leaked the story for HL3, which was probably written who knows how many years ago. Probly just said “fuck it”.

Now… WHY is the interesting part. I skimmed through most of it. Whatever. Can’t find the original post. Link is dead in linked video.

EDIT: Oh… wait. I got it working, now. Heh… interesting. I may be overthinking it, but judging from the mischievously mispelled names in the original and spelling mistakes in general - it seems our friend Marc either:

A. Got drunk and leaked the script to the game as a big “fuck you” to Valve/Gabe/Whatever possible drama may have unfolded during the development.

Or

B. Simply leaked the script to the game as a big “fuck you” to Valve/Gabe/Whatever possible drama may have unfolded during the development.

PendragonUK · August 25, 2017, 8:37am

How long before it’s a playable mod? I guess it would take a few years if done properly.

Some_Tech_Noob · August 25, 2017, 9:52am

probably should get on finishing hl and hl2

oops

anon69321716 · August 25, 2017, 11:15am

Look at that. Just as I am playing through the Half-Life series for the first time, this occurs conveniently.

catsay · August 25, 2017, 11:27am

Half Life 3 is dead. Long Live Half Life 3.

HL3 will pretty much be community made if ever. This might be what get’s that started.

Dje4321 · August 25, 2017, 1:30pm

The thing i found most interesting is learning just HOW powerful the combine are and how futile the fight for freedom was.

It would have been cool to see the ending where gordon freeman reveals that the entire HL series was just him sitting on a beach recollecting about what happened to him and the world around him. I wonder what gordan feels after the incident in HL1 that caused the combine to take over earth and how he caused it.

So many questions that can never be anwsered

Madrix999 · August 25, 2017, 2:10pm

Considering valve hasnt made any original games for a very fucking long time (which is probably the reason a lot of people left, including him) he probably got angry at the fact they werent doing shit anymore other than microtransactions and such, so he posted it. My take on the situation

SudoSaibot · August 25, 2017, 4:03pm

Gabe has stated there are 3 titles to be announced this year. I wouldn’t doubt this was a calculated move.

anon69321716 · August 25, 2017, 4:58pm

When and where did he said this? I know there was the DOTA 2 trading card game but what else?

SudoSaibot · August 26, 2017, 12:28am

I’ll find it and post once I’m home. It was an interview with several reporters from earlier this year.

Edit:

I don’t remember what video I heard more on the time span.

anon43920604 · August 26, 2017, 3:21am

I don’t see how/why they don’t just do HL3, and simply make it half life combat + portal guns

Hell, do that in VR and make everyone vomit lol

SgtAwesomesauce · August 26, 2017, 6:10am

Have you seen the backlash from Mass Effect 3?

They don’t want that, that could be why. Valve is basically a perfect storm of reasons why not to release the most highly anticipated thing (not even just games, but everything on earth) ever to be thought of.

Shit man, I remember buying Half Life 1 in '99 at a store. Damn it, this was my childhood. I saved lawn mowing money for almost a month to get that game and this is how the series ends nearly 20 years later.

I’m a lot more sad about this than I should be.

I really think the first and last paragraph were more Marc talking about Valve.

anon43920604 · August 26, 2017, 12:10pm

I know the feeling.

I just want an official ending to the story lol.

I feel that the comparison to EA is a bit unfair, Valve isn’t stupid enough to have dialogue as completely mind-fuck stupid as “I’m sorry, my face is tired”. Sure Valve has done shitty and stupid things in the past, but they’re still better than fucking EA and Ubisoft.

SudoSaibot · August 26, 2017, 1:24pm

I wonder if Tool is composing the soundtrack…

Prenihility · August 26, 2017, 1:47pm

They came out with information 1-2 years ago that Valve were scared of pulling a Mass Effect 3. The excuses are so painfully pathetic.

Some people believe it’s hard to make a good video game. I believe - quite literally that it’s impossible to fuck something like this up. Valve did the impossible. They started something great, and they couldn’t continue.

SgtAwesomesauce · August 26, 2017, 6:20pm

I think that while it’s very difficult to make a game that’s FUBAR, it’s easy to make a game that’s poorly received, at least in the video game press.

Let’s use the responses to ME: A and ME3 as an example.

According to VGChartz, mass effect 3 sold 3.08M copies. That’s not a bad haul by any standard. that’s 180M in revenue from sales, assuming every copy was the basic edition (priced at US $60)

Mass Effect 3 sold 30,000 more copies than the original Mass Effect and was outsold by Mass Effect 2 by 990,000 copies. While I wouldn’t say this was a glorious success, it’s definitely not a failure. It shows that the game was at least partially well-received.

Now let’s touch on the video game press. Websites like rock paper shotgun, IGN, Kotaku and the like all gave positive reviews, some of them mention being a bit let down by the ending. All in all, I’d say it was good, but I’ll be harder on them in a bit. Keep in mind these reviews were in 2012.

Moving on to the youtube reviews, you had a shitstorm of angry people ranting and raving about every little detail. This inspired a fervor which really ruined the reputation of ME3.

Personally, while the ending was aa bit lacklustre, I was okay with it as it did add a sense of finality to the series.

Now, let’s talk about ME: A. The first important thing to mention is that it was developed by BioWare Montreal, not Edmonton. This means that not only were the artists different, but the managers and directors were different as well. By this time, we’d had nearly 8 years since the original Mass Effect and a number of fans of the series wound up with jobs working at BioWare. I can’t say if this had anything to do with it or not, but I do think it helped to shape the direction (not in a bad way) of the game. While it’s true that there were a lot more boring quests and whatnot, we got a more exploration focused game, similarly to the first Mass Effect.

The problem with the game was not game itself. It was the fit and finish. We had characters who had poorly designed faces and utterly insane dialogue. This was mercilessly attacked by the video game press and, again, cemented the bad reputation of a major title from EA and BioWare. It’s become a situation that’s not acceptable and this has caused other game development outfits to be scared to have the same thing happen to them.

This is what Valve is scared of. I would be too. The problem is that since their last episode released in 2008, the atmosphere changed. It’s become cancerous and needs some major changes to get back to where it once was.

Game developers don’t owe you anything. That said, you, as the review industry, owe them a fair review. Mass Effect 3 was a good game. Mass Effect: Andromeda was not a bad game, but wasn’t on the same level as the other games of its namesake. Andromeda got a bad reception for a number of reasons:

It wasn’t ready. I’m fairly confident BioWare was getting a lot of pressure from EA to launch the game before it was complete. This is evidenced by the fact that a lot of the problems were fixed by the second patch, which was very quickly released.
Bad news is good for news. Incendiary titles get more views and money than titles proclaiming good news. Basically, negativity sells in this fucked up world.
Some people thought they were owed something. That’s just not true. If you want it, buy it. If you don’t, don’t. What you shouldn’t do is put out a scorching review to sour the entire audience to the game.

This wasn’t originally intended to be a rant but I got a bit carried away.

Prenihility · August 27, 2017, 3:26am

Hmm. Ok, i’ll be honest. I thought that you blew this way out of proportion. But i do have to agree because part of the problem is there are a lot of mongoloids who can’t think for themselves. They listen to some pretentious tard and think they’ve been informed. Now if only they could form their own opinion - or in the case of gamers (true gamers) - actually take in your gaming with SOME level of analytical skills and observe. Instead of just jumping to conclusions and/or taking in your gaming like an IV drip. Pathetic. Especially from the damn game press. OMFG.

It’s like the “news”. Misinforming, except now in an industry that wasn’t nearly as large 15 years ago. Ugh… I hate people who can’t think for themselves. Just quit gaming at that point. The negative side to popularity, i guess?

Willdrick · August 27, 2017, 1:35pm

I read it on github yesterday, I’m kinda bummed that the writer didn’t at least try to expand it. It feels like he figured HL3 wouldn’t happen anytime soon and wrote that out of anger/spite towards valve.

Otherwise, he could’ve written a whole novel or something at least more engaging and detailed than a 2044 word summary