Half Life 2 Episode 3 Synopsis Posted (Spoilers?)

Communities Gaming
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First, the post you made here is an edited one but in case folks did not see the original post from Laidlaw’s blog here it is. He basically just switches all the character’s genders around and gives them silly names.

After reading epistle 3 the other day, I came to an opposite conclusion. Probably looking to deep into it all but here it is. I read this as though Gordon is Laidlaw’s mouthpiece to the player [I love the fact he is trying to keep everything in the perspective of the player despite it being out of game.]

Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish.

There has been a change to the work he did in the past for HL such that few will remember what direction he wanted it to go in.

At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me.

The resistance are the people within Valve who wanted to complete HL in one form or another and by this point one of those people has found a way to keep the project alive or it’s totally vanished.

Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside.

Co-worker’s that Laidlaw trusted have either quit or been fired (I’m looking at you Pinkerton, Faliszek, Erik Wolpaw. I’m sure there are others).

I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists.

The research team is everyone at Valve. There have been a lot of changes to the staff though there are still people at the company who wish HL to be completed - there is hope.

I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it.

Laidlaw is telling the players if they want the game, they have to keep asking Valve for it - nothing he can do.

Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle.

Laidlaw is no longer at the company. Stop asking me about shit.

Yours in infinite finality
Gertrude Fremont, Ph.D.

Laidlaw is srsly done.

TL;DR: The game still has a hope of being made. A lot has changed at Valve but employees still have it in the back of their minds. Someday, one person may be able to get it going again. Laidlaw quit so stop asking him about it.

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That is an interesting perspective of interpreting the script. I doubt you are the only one to see it that way.

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Added “spoilers?” to the title just to be on the safe side. Is probably fine though.

mod out…

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I like honesty and I may have. I was quite frustrated and under-caffeinated when I wrote that post. I just wasn’t focused so much at providing “both sides” to what happened because I’m trying to illustrate a reason for their concern with releasing the closing installment in a series that helped to redefine first-person shooters.

I think this is part of growing up in a culture where non-gaming “news outlets” are in the business of “I’m going to tell you what to think”

That’s my thought, exactly. I’m at the point where I feel like I need to teach people how to think, but most people are already too far gone.

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Since the Gman took Alex with him and left Gordon to die, did Laidlaw leave it open to allow the next group of writers to put the player in Alex’s shoes? Granted, Gordon didn’t die, he was saved by the Vortigaunts.

Did anyone come to the same conclusion as me regarding this?

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ME3 was slammed because the whole series was based on the idea that your choices mattered and would change the outcome of the entire story. ME:A was a pile of crap that everyone but the most blind fanboys saw as a machine made product, devoid of any heart, soul and passion made on an assembly line and outsourced to god knows where. A zombie game appealing to nobody except suckers who had their wallet vacuumed out.

I’ve never actually played HL or ME but I seriously doubt there would be a huge blowback to HL3 unless it was legitimately bad or Valve foolishly attempted to drum up a stupidly massive hype campaign

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Mildly related

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If they are going to kill off Judith I am not interested in it…

They have kept us waiting for so long I dont give a crap about it anymore.

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I disagree. Part of the magic of Gordon is that he’s voiceless. This allows for large amounts of imagination to be used and helps the player really become the character.

The Half Life series follows a few overarching rules: 1st person, silent protagonist (never speaks, even in cutscenes, therefore I believe Alyx is out of the running), carry as many weapons as you pick up.

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M

Barney Calhoun was the protagonist in Blue Shift! He turned out to be a chatterbox in HL2 so forth.

You also forgot loading screens from the HL traditions. Although, portal 2 fucked that up.

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I have to disagree as someone who is currently playing Half Life for the first time, I do not feel like Gordon Freeman when playing and having a silent protagonist in a narrative where they are the center of it all is not particularly great. Other than an MIT graduate in Theoritical Physics, what is his character? He is just some scientist like the rest of the Black Mesa Facility other than he is smart enought to wear the H.E.V suit and somehow knows how to use all manner of weaponry and shows no remorse for killing anything. I’m not saying he should be some full flesh character or talk incessantly but show some character period. Even Venom Snake from MGSV has more character than Gordon Freeman and that is the worse Snake in the series in terms of character.

Take DOOM 2016 where the Doomslayer is silent yet still able to show character through his actions. Obviously that game has cutscences but still it is much easier to be in his shoes than Freeman.

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Don’t believe anything at this moment. There is no Half Life 3 and it will probably never be made. If there is an announcement of any kind it will be at E3. For now just believe everything as fake news. Valve is making a lot of money with Steam they just dont care about the Half Life IP.

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A publisher should just buy off Half-Life IP, like Blizzard. Problem solve.

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A HL game developed by blizzard? That could be interesting. I really don’t know how I feel about it. Blizzard makes good games, but the way they tell stories is always so much different.

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God no, would rather it not be made than that.

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