It is a tragic day for fake archaeology. Firewatch builders Campo Santo have positioned In The Valley Of Gods on maintain, as a substitute selecting to work on Half-Life: Alyx, Dota Underlords, and different Valve initiatives. This follows their transfer to Valve final 12 months, which John (RPS in peace) quizzed them on at length in 2018. That means we’ve bought a bizarre, melancholy portal into when Campo had been enthusiastic about what the transfer would imply for his or her new game.
Half-Life with a sprinkling of Firewatch sounds neat and all, however I used to be trying ahead to filming pyramids.
Campo co-founder Jake Rodkin made the announcement in a statement to Polygon. “In the end, Valve Time makes fools of us all”, he stated, earlier than explaining that the trail away from The Valley Of Gods was one thing of a slippery slope.
“You hear a lot about how at Valve you can work on what you want. It turns out that’s true, and there’s a lot of work available. As we integrated ourselves into Valve it became clear there was a lot of valuable work to be done on Half-Life: Alyx. Some of us starting lending a hand, and have since become full-time on the project as it approaches launch. Similarly, some ex-Campos are working on Dota Underlords, some are on Steam, and so on. So to answer your question as of today, In the Valley of Gods development is on hold — but it certainly feels like a project people can and may return to. And when that happens, we’ll find an exciting way to let fans know.”
I’m suspicious of that particular “when” mingling with a hesitant “can and may”. It’s simple to think about the crew will simply maintain sliding down that slope, additional fragmenting as they transfer on to greater and different issues. That’s their prerogative, in fact. As (ex?) Campo Studio head Sean Vanaman put it to John, when telling him about how he loves serving to different devs get established: “no one on the team that I’m on would begrudge me pursuing those things if it was what satisfied me as a human being, and also what made good sense for the enterprise as a whole.”
He then added, a bit heartrendingly, “I love working with this group of folks and I don’t see that changing so it’s too hard to say.”
In The Valley Of Gods can and could also be about unearthing and documenting historic pyramids in 1920s Egypt. Its Steam release date has been modified to “TBD”.
