Valve has defined why we by no means acquired Half-Life 2: Episode 3.
Half-Life: Alyx will not be solely the primary new entry within the dormant sequence in nicely over a decade, it additionally represents Valve’s return to creating the games that put it on the map all these years in the past.
But the query of why the developer by no means adopted up Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and completed that story was by no means adequately answered, till immediately. Valve, in line with stage designer Dario Casali, sees Half-Life games as means to push expertise ahead, or resolve sophisticated issues.
While Valve was pleased with the episodic mannequin at the beginning, the developer’s ambition shortly grew. This result in a two-year growth cycle for Episode 2, versus Episode 1’s roughly one yr of growth.
“We found ourselves creeping ever forward towards, ‘Well, let’s just keeping putting more and more, and more, and more stuff in this game because we want to make it as good as we can,’” he informed IGN. “And then we realised these episodes are turning more into sequels.”
This lead Valve to rethink its method to game growth, and the so the studio began on the lookout for “what is going to make that next big impact.” This search really resulted in Half-Life prototypes that the general public by no means noticed. All these cancelled tasks, nicely, weren’t enjoyable to play.
“Our judge and jury is always the playtesting,” Casali defined. “It never comes from us. It always comes from somebody outside. And they always tell us how we’re doing. And no matter what it is that we’re doing, we get validated by that playtesting process, and we stick to that religiously.”
During this section, Valve was additionally engaged on Source 2.0, because it wasn’t pleased with the unique’s limitations. Having had a horrible expertise creating an engine (Source 1.0) and a game on the identical time (Half-Life), Valve determined to give attention to creating the engine. Once work on Source 2.Zero was finished, Valve went again to Half-Life.
The results of this work is Half-Life: Alyx, which solved the studio’s dilemma so far as making Half-Life games push game design ahead. VR was a no brainier, and so it was.
Read our Half-Life: Alyx review on the hyperlink, and are available again after you end the game to learn our interpretation of the ending.
