Former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw says he 'retired too hard', but there's no way he's coming back for Half-Life 3: 'We need new stuff, [not] me going 'Well the G-Man wouldn't do that in my day'' : games

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Can I just ask what people expect from a half life story? Like it's always been pretty thin on the ground, right?

What was the first game? Experiment goes wrong, aliens notice us and invade, we kill a bunch of them, there's the occasional macguffin, travel to their planet, beat the big bad enemy, boom, mysterious gman puts us in the fridge.

The two expansions seem like the same story from another POV, I have no memory of any important events from either one.

Second game, gman drops us mysteriously back like 20 years later. We kill a bunch of enemies, there's some more macguffin, the vortigaunts were enslaved now they're on our side. There's a bit of intrigue, we beat the local bad guy, the vortigaunts save us.

The following two chapters, apart from having to rescue people, I couldn't tell you what even happens. The world is implied to be so big that you are an insignificant player and you could never hope to grasp what's really gping on, and we never get more than glimpses of what's really happening. It seems more like the idea of a world that leaves open the possibility of more or less anything happening and within which to set games, than a coherent story with structure and tension and stakes, beyond "world in peril" or "friend in peril", which is pretty bog standard stuff.

Like sure we might be a bit invested in Alyx & her dad's stories, but I always assumed people were hyped for sequels because the games play well and have an interesting backdrop. What exactly is the special sauce that mark laidlaw brings? Yes the environmental storytelling was novel and well done, but it's always been so vague because they're so committed to never leaving the players POV, and they spend so little time explaining the actual world.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think this is why I always loved System Shock and System Shock 2 so much more as the narrative building was so much bigger than any game I've played before I since. I wish someone would sort the licensing out for that game and bring us a System Shock 3.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I'm working up the courage to try those for the first time, but as very old games now, I'm a little apprehensive about all the friction they're likely to have.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Speaking entirely personally, I thought at least Half Life Alyx's story worked on two levels. It was about freeing the gman as Alyx but gman sorta represented... Oh man, now I'm worried I can't remember the game well enough to communicate my original thoughts. I remember playing it and feeling like the gman represented the writers or creativity, a bigger picture concept or something that went meta. And if that was the case it felt like Valve creating a piece of art that said Alyx and VR have revitalized our desire to tell stories and GMAN is free again.

The moment they drop their new headset I'll buy it and play again just to relive the experience but I'd say I'm excited about Half Life because Valve makes A) good games B) they make solid diegetic games which I find to be kinda rare C) their games often feel like they came from a team of artists than just a team of coders. Maybe that's the polish or maybe that's the massive amount of testing I'm led to believe they do but when valve makes a new game it often feels like the guy who made Stanley Parable just made a new game - easy to recognize art because it's so good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I agree the diegetic storytelling is very well done and that did push the craft of game storytelling forwards, but the actual world itself is a lot of texture with very little substance. Loads of cool ideas, but almost no decisions, like they want the freedom to add anything at any time without ever restricting themselves by saying "here is how this concept actually works", or even "this is who this person is".

We never really meet the aliens or the antagonists, ever. The gman is an alien in a skin-suit, and Breen is just a collaborator. They are both essentially puppets.

Like, what was the nihilanth? We killed it, then... what? I guess the vortigaunts were freed, but how does that tie into the slug beings, the human cyborg slavery, any of it? The vortigaunts could easily explain at least some of the world, What does any of it mean?

I get the idea of being deep in and unable to see the forest for the trees, and that is definitely a style of story that you can do, but it's unsatisfying long term. Eventually you have to get at least a glimpse of the broader picture or nothing has any meaning. The world has no rules, which doesn't make good science fiction.

I say this as someone who regularly replays HL2 because I enjoy the texture so much, I just acknowledge it's very limited.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean, I guess you're right as far as I'm willing to debate the point. Does that change anything? I don't feel like the franchise has done the Lost thing where every episode (in this case game) only asks more questions and never answers them. I also don't feel like I'm dying to learn more about the world or that the small scope of their answers takes me out of the experience. Like, it's perfectly encapsulated to what I need to enjoy the "movie" that is this game.

I completely agree that this has costs, and that it probably can't go on for forever. Like one of the costs is I don't super care about this world, it's not a world I want to run a TTRPG in, or could envision a hundred spin-offs. I want the end of this story and I'd be okay if it stopped. Idk, that's a fine thing to make imo. And again, it's been top of it's class in execution since it's inception (never played the smaller games like Blue something or other) so idk - hard for me to nitpick the world or the game.

Now Valve please release your new VR set so I can buy it or the Big Picture 2 and get back into VR.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I think we more or less agree, and I'm not trying to say it's a bad game or even a bad story, just that there's not a lot I need closure on. I think the only thing that could be done to "ruin" it would be to pile on a bunch of unsatisfying answers to the open questions about the world. I'd definitely play HL3 just to experience more of the world, I just don't care that much about where the story goes and I don't think that's ever been the main draw.

It would be nice to get some explanations of the world that would extend it and allow people to tell more interesting stories within it, but I honestly doubt that those answers exist. It really feels like they're kind of just riffing and they don't have a bigger vision for where it all goes, if I had to guess.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

Au contraire...

That is EXACTLY what we need for universe consistency and coherency

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

He should go back to Oldmanmurray.

He would be age appropriate now.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

New stuff is for new IPs.... Fans want a G-man that operates within his original concept.

It could go either way, the new blood writing for an old IP might be too scared to expand it in any meaningful way - see the newest starwars trilogy for the perfect example.

Fans dont want more of the same though, they want to be even more immersed with expanding lore, and they want it to be meaningful and worthwhile. But when it comes to characters they dont necessarily want them to change. Its the plot that needs to be driven forward.

Investors that want to milk an IP dont care if the property is expanded upon, they dilute the IP in search of profits.

I hope HL3 gives us something worthwhile. I believe GabeN will make sure that happens.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Yeah imagine if they went "ah gaben is old let's replace him. In fact let's just have a new company with only zoomers make the official hl3"

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm glad for Laidlaw not getting stuck on Half-Life. It's been a long time, people grow and move on. Imagine him feeling like this about Half-Life but writing for the sequel anyway out of a sense of duty, completion or other silly reason. It would be a total disaster. Half-Life: Alyx was fantastic, and felt like just another entry, a natural fit, in the Half-Life universe. This is not in spite of, nor because of, Laidlaw being absent from its development. There are simply a bunch of amazing people putting their heart and soul into these games.

I do hope the next Half-Life entry will be a regular PC game though. I wouldn't wish it upon people who don't own VR to miss out on another excellent game.

On a sidenote its crazy we got a Love Death & Robots episode based on Laidlaw's first book. Definitely gonna watch that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Which episode was that?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Season 4 Episode 4 if I remember correctly. He is credited as writer on the Wikipedia list of episodes. I can recommend the rest of the season as well, less than two hours

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

Not bad but not what I expected

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

All the new hype about a possible HL3 coming soon™ are more than likely a sequel to Alyx, considering it also coincides with leaks, trademarks and other info about an incoming new VR setup from Valve and/or a new Steam Deck.

It could be a straight up new VR game, or, hell, it could be doing something to show off a new idea in the handheld space now that I am really thinking about it. Maybe the new Steam Deck will have gnarly new gyroscopic motion tech or something they wanna show off.

They've been pretty adamant about not making a sequel for the sake of a sequel; if they have nothing they think is super cool to show off, they're not doing it. So the likely true rumors about them doing something is still exciting to me, even if it's not HL3 itself.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah. They have been developing their new Deckard VR headset, so I see it being more aligned with that than anything else. They don't really have another reason to just release HL3.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

They might have just cracked a new mechanic. Let's not get too hasty - especially considering the reports of non-VR HL3 being beta-tested end to end, with such a mechanic: supposedly it has actually good procedural generation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

This is the first I'm hearing of that specifically but would help explain the seemingly random pickup of Hoppoo games recently.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

Oh no...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This reminds me of something that one of the other developers said while commentating a Half Life 2 speedrun: "When the main villain in the story looks like your high school principal, you know it was made by old people."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Is the G-man the main villain? I thought it was always a little unclear. In HL it's the Nialinth snd and HL2 it's the Combine. G-man seems like he's not clear on what side he is on, and it always felt that vagueness was intentional.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think the principal is the white bearded guy. I don’t see the G-man being the enemy, because it’s him who wake up Freeman in HL2. “Wake up, Mr Freeman, wake up and smell the ashes.”
In HL1 I’ve always seen him as the corporate fucker who is trying to save the company.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

When Dr. Breen captures you in the citadel, he (implicitly) admits that it was the G-man who convinced him to let the anti-mass spectrometer cause the resonance cascade. The G-man arranged for the company, and the rest of Earth, to be destroyed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They were talking about Wallace Breen. That should speak for itself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It's weird, Breen is so... forgettable to me.

To be fair, they both look like high school principals.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Oh no.. that doesn't bode well.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

This kind of mentality is how most modern sequels of old properties have failed, BTW.

Majority of the audience are the people that would say "The G Man wouldn't do that in my day." That kind of thinking helps continuity as well.

Otherwise you end up with spectacular failures like Star Wars Episodes 8 and 9.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago

Eh, I think there's just as many examples of burned out creatives not wanting to make a sequel, being forced to make a sequel, and it turning out poorly. A recent example would be Matrix 4.

I agree that continuity is important, but I think inspiration is the most important thing. If somebody doesn't have a good story to tell in a universe, it doesn't matter if they have perfect attention to continuity, they're telling a bad story.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

we could do something crazy like create new IPs

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (3 children)

There's so many great book series out there. Ian Banks' Culture Series, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Ruin series, could re-do Altered Carbon properly and base it on the second book more faithfully; which was actually quite interesting. Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series. Terry Pratchett's last contribution in The Long Earth series. What happened to the supposed adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars series? Neal Asher's Polity series. Dan Simmon's Hyperion, anyone? And that's just a small fraction of more modern SciFi.

None of these series really get a look in because we're still busy repeating the same formula ad nauseam until the fan base literally can't take ingesting another two hours of recycled dross.

Let's try something new.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'd commit grave sins to be able to inhabit and play in Reynolds' Revelation Space universe. The bizarre post-human factions alone, so alien and horrifying in the best way. Could legit make for a really dark MMO. I'd have to go Ultra, though, no question.

The extreme timescales, the highly personal, self-driven body modification, culminating in a truly unique, grotesque sort of personality to one's own body...one which can't help but physically, visibly project the creeping, gibbering paranoia nurtured by millennia spent slowly becoming so estranged from every other lifeform once called kin, making one's journey through time and space utterly, irreversibly alone, even when traveling with others...

For sheer thrill and a tight looter-shooter game, on the other hand, I'd be SO stoked for one using his Revenger universe. Ohhhh to crack those baubles, each a potential Pandora's box of hilariously dangerous relics involving hideous and long-forgotten exotic physics...not to mention, who knows who or what has been lurking just beyond perception, waiting for you to do the risky dirty work of extracting some particularly nasty doodad...

One can dream.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

100% agree with this. So many cool sci fi concepts that would make great movies. The only thing I want to add is that I think short stories make for better adaptations into movies. They're much more similarly paced.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I enjoyed Altered Carbon's first season but was out immediately after s2e1. Wasnt aware of it being an interpretation of a book. Is the first season more accurate, or is season 2 shit for some other reason?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The first season does the detective noir thing pretty well, and doesn't deviate too far from the novel. They tried rolling the second book (Broken Angels) and the third book (Woken Furies) into one season, it didn't work out at all.

Now I want to make an ai slop Altered Carson poster.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for the info!

The aesthetics, acting, and writing seemed to take an immense dive; I was half convinced I wasn't even watching the same show. By the time I started s2e2 I had already googled and found out that it wasn't just me and that it doesnt get better (I tend not to search ahead of time to avoid spoilers). What a disappointment. I really liked the detective noir thing.

I might have to check out the novels.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

The same author did another similar novel called Thin Air, which you might like - it maintains that tech noir theming.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

To be fair to Star Wars, the suits at Disney changed tactics because of negative fan reaction to the first sequel so we don't actually know how good they could have turned out if we had just let the creatives in charge finish their vision that started in 7. 8 and 9 were weird specifically because Disney suits were afraid of pissing off fans and changed direction twice instead of committing to the original vision. Fans complained about the prequels as well but Lucas committed to his vision and now so many years later the prequels are viewed far more favorably.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (4 children)

As an avid pre-Disney SW fan myself, fans weren't that pissed at 7. Outside of it being ~~ANH again~~ very safe and Rey being too good at everything from the get-go with absolutely no character development to support that, 7 was met with mostly lukewarm reception. Not awful, but not great either. It played it safe and everyone could tell.

Then Rian entered the picture. The individual that is documented on video saying he wanted to make a movie that at least half of viewers hated. Well, mission accomplished, buddy.

Tied up every loose end from 7 and tied up its own loose ends leaving absolutely no meaningful questions for 9. Not to mention half the movie could have been deleted with no consequence (seriously, what on earth was going on with the Canto arc?), multiple character assassinations, killed off a character with lots of potential to be a decent BBEG in the most unceremonious way ever, and introduced a major canon-breaking scene.

I feel bad for JJ on 9 honestly. How do you even follow up on 8? 7 was such a soft-ball lay-up for anyone to write a sequel to, and Disney thought the best guy for the job was Mr. I Want To Make A Movie That Passionate Fans Hate? Its almost like Rian was spiteful and wrote 8 to be bad on purpose because he didn't like that Abrams had written 7. Why they did not have JJ just write the whole trilogy is beyond me. Would definitely have been better than what we got, at least it would have been more coherent. At the very least, mid is better than awful. Maybe Rose Tico could have been a real character with actual development and purpose instead of a useless character with an entirely unnecessary death.

The prequels are only viewed better now because 7, 8, and 9 proved something could be worse. As Qui-Gon Jinn said, "There is always a bigger fish."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I don't understand the particular hate for 8 at all. I mean, I hated it, but slightly less than 7 and 9.

Real fans only like the OT and Andor. Prequels were horse shit. 7 was absolute dog shit. 8 at least tried to do something interesting, but failed and ended up being cow shit. 9 was JJ slinging his own diarrhea on everyone.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You felt bad for JJ because he brought back palpatine?

He’s a fucking hack and doing that was a choice. Single-handedly ruined any potential the sequels had.

How shocking that the guy who can’t write endings couldn’t write an ending.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I felt bad for him because how do you make a good follow up to something that left you no questions to answer? No matter what he wrote, it was not going to be good. Nothing could have been written that would have been a home run.

JJ didn't ruin the Sequels. 7 was a decent start, if overly safe with some minor problems. Rian ruined the Sequels with 8. 9 was a foregone conclusion. Everyone going into that theatre expected a movie they weren't going to like because of 8. Its evident by their appeal to a younger audience by shoving part of the story into Fortnite. The older audience wasn't very interested in seeing 9 after they saw 8, so Disney needed the disillusioned fan's kids to get them to bring them to see what they saw in Fortnite.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Rey being too good at everything from the get-go with absolutely no character development to support that

I don't know where you seem to feel like this was just a lukewarm response to that. Male fans were absolutely unhinged with hatred over this point.

The Wikipedia entry for Force Awakens literally has a portion dedicated to fan backlash, which also included backlash against Boyega with bullshit crybaby screams of "white genocide" and "cultural marxism."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens#Fan_backlash

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

We're supposed to take racism and far-right conspiracies as legitimate backlash? Normal people don't care about shit like that. I'm with the other person, the reception was lukewarm because it played it safe.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wikipedia is not a reliable source, especially when it comes to general public opinion. It has the habit of magnifying minority/fringe opinions, or making tiny issues seem like they were a huge deal.

According to the edit history of that page, that section did not exist on the page until 2023. Coincidentally, one of the 3 sources cited in that section was published in 2023. They also decided to add two Opinion Editorial articles, one from 2015, and the other from, take a guess, 2023. OpEds have no requirement to be factually correct, and therefore are in general, an awful source of actual information. Including these kinds of articles does not present an extension of good faith, and makes it look like the person adding them is doing it only to present a source, regardless of its credibility, so they can include whatever they are trying to add. All of those edits, including adding that section, were from the same person. That user never made an edit to that page until 2023. And they never made an edit to that page since.

Since 2023, there have been 3 edits. One of them was apparently yesterday, which was instantly reverted. The second edit is interesting because it says "[...]presenting the controversy as being bigger than in reality would lend undue weight to fringe opinions." This edit was, of course, instantly reverted by the same person as before, but they are different from the person that added the Backlash section who was never seen again on this page since 2023.

Looking at this new user's edit history on this page, they started editing the page in 2021 with only a single edit, 3 edits in both 2022 and 2023, and 2 edits in 2025. What is interesting about this user is that they only ever reverted changes to the page; they made no other edits except for reverting edits from other users.

The point being, some users on Wikipedia will decide that they want a specific thing in a Wikipedia page, and will disregard any changes made to them in order to force what they want to be on that page. Sometimes this is warranted because of vandalism (which did not occur, from what I can tell, until yesterday), but most of the time it is because of personal bias from people who have more "trusted" Wikipedia accounts. Wikipedia listing opinions is of course, incredibly dangerous, as it can lead to the general public (who doesn't actually research something or check sources) believing whatever is on the page when they read it. This is why Wikipedia has a policy that doesnt allow individual/personal reviews of movies to be included in articles, for example. This is what makes Wikipedia such an unreliable source, and anyone quoting it should thoroughly review not only the sources cited but also the edit history of the page they are citing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wikipedia doesn't have to list opinions. It just has to magnify certain ideas and opinions from other sources, under the guise of impartiality and "Objective Journalism".

“So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here–not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.” ― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

I think this is partially discounting the people that do genuinely try their best to keep Wikipedia factual. There are certainly many people that contribute to Wikipedia and do an excellent job trying to maintain factually correct articles all across the site. AFAIK, they are not paid for this. In particular, math related pages tend to be the most pure pages since there is little room for opinion in such a topic.

The problem is that even just 1 user abusing their "control" over a Wikipedia page will throw the entire site's credibility into question. People like that, unfortunately, are often ones that seek out places where they can have "power." Controlling information, or globally accessible pages that document events in history, no matter how small, is incredibly alluring for this kind of person.

It is an issue inherent to the Open-Source style approach of Wikipedia. Anyone can make an edit, but any edit can also be reverted. For topics where opinion is introduced, this often leads to Edit Wars, fighting in Talks, and the eventual locking of the page so no further edits can be made.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This is a great write-up. 8 puzzles me because I don't think Rian Johnson is a terrible writer or filmmaker. Knives Out was good, albeit maybe a bit smug at times with its own cleverness.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

I wish he'd been given all three movies.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

I interpreted this more like a reference to the original developer of God of War who was pretty vocal about not being happy with the new games.

Games