End update confirmed
this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
164 points (96.6% liked)
PC Gaming
14692 readers
402 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Former employee hypothetically doesn't want to do task related to former job.
"[...] the internet will interpret anything you say as a confirmation that Half-Life 3 is in the works and will be announced [...]"
HL3 confirmed!
"[...]confirmation that Half-Life 3 is in the works and will be announced [...]" Pog!
We should send him an 11-foot pole.
he says, "I don't want to touch that with a 10-foot pole. Or even a grav gun separating me from that 10-foot pole. A grav gun to a 10-foot pole, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it with Dog's arms."
main source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFcri936k-w
Answer: It has nothing to do with half life, valve or whatever. He just doenst like to work with long established lore because he then gets yelled at by people who remember stuff better than him.
I mean, it's a fair criticism/thought to have imo. Nerds can be absolutely insufferable if something isn't 100% according to lore.
When working with existing lore they should hire one of those nerds who can advise them. Pretty simple.
I think the problem then becomes, there's usually another equally big nerd who has been beefing for the past 15 years with the nerd you hired about the interpretation of some minor aspect of the lore that wasn't fully explained, and each of them have a legion of weird followers who will immediately declare war on you and start sending death threats the instant you show preference to one side over the other, even if you do it unwittingly.
Uhh, maybe.
I do think that the over-emphasis of lore in media as important detracts somewhat from the thematic and narrative content. In some cases, I think it borders on illiteracy.
I guess whether hiring one is a solution or not just depends on how insufferable he finds listening to these people.
At the end of the day, art is art and art is usually made with some kind of message in mind. "Lore" doesn't always include that message, so I agree. "Needing" to stick to lore 100% does detract from the overall message or theme of the work.
If the message isn't compatible with the existing lore IMO pick a different message, make up an original story without the pre-existing lore, or find a different world to make a story about where it does work.
Though I doubt it's often the case where the existing lore is incompatible with whatever message but lazy or negligent writing where they either didn't know or didn't care about the conflicting lore but it would have been possible to massage the story to work with both.
TBH this is one of my favourite things about Doctor Who. In an age where sci-fi shows tend to be very intricate about their lore and people go through trailers frame-by-frame to dissect the meaning of everything, Doctor Who is extremely insistent about not giving a flying fuck at all about almost anything to do with lore and canon. It's pretty much: there's the Doctor, and the TARDIS that looks like an old police box and there's usually at least one human tagging along, and that's it. Literally everything else can be thrown out of the window without any regard at all. The moon is an egg. Nobody can even agree on how many Doctors there are. David Tennant is probably at least three Doctors, kind of. We don't even 100% know which actor currently plays the Doctor lol. It's absolute chaos and I kind of love it
Yeah.
I don't mean to attack lore as a concept, by the way. Lore is art all the same.
I just don't like the way that some people hyperfixate on it so much that an artist trying to do something new, risky, or interesting becomes basically impossible.
People will get stuck on details so much that they end up choking their favorite works to death without even realizing it. As a broad example, I would point to Star Wars.
I was thinking Star Wars even before you mentioned it.
Hahaha, of course.
You know, I was dragged into seeing episode 9 against my will (I was fine with it), and that movie, like... actually pissed me off. I was legit getting whiplash from all the location changes.
It was when they asked Rose to go with them that I realized JJ did this specifically to spite Rian Johnson
Plus there can be conflicting lore or fan canon that is preferred
Shadow of the Erdtree came relatively early and plenty of people got their panties in a bunch because some of it contradicts by then firmly established fanon. These gaps have been filled for decades.
You act like soul games have a coherent story. Its mostly broken up pieces of lore that people cant take with a 100 percent certainty. So that get pieced together by some.
I read online that Miyazaki was a huge fan of western fantasy (why all the Souls games are all medieval fantasy with dragons and knights and shit), but coming from a Japanese background he didn't really understand all the stories and details at first; he basically was just drawn to the "rule of cool" with medieval fantasy, and he wanted to emulate that disjointed feeling when you play his games.
That all could be entirely wrong though.
Holy fuck, thank you for saying this. Every single time someone talks about the lore of Dark Souls or Elden Ring or whatever the fuck else I'm sitting here, screaming in my mind "what fucking story."
honestly I don't blame him nor do I blame Valve if they never release it.
At this point if a Half Life 3 did exist it would literally have to be the most perfect game in all of gaming to ever exist. It reminds me of the whole Duke Nukem Forever thing from like 10+ years ago.
Except Gearbox is an objectively shit company that put out an objectively shit game.
It wasn't a matter of not meeting expectations. It was a matter of being unfunny assholes who didn't care about the work to begin with.
Yeah, there's simply no way they could meet expectations anymore and I think they know it.
I just want a god damn conclusion to the fucking cliffhanger they ended Episode 2 on. I don't care if it's just more HL2 or slides back to HL1 or is the shittiest game ever; I just want resolution. 😬
I wouldn't be so sure. I felt the exact same way about Shenmue, and the third game ended up being worse than if they just left it alone.
At this point I would be happy if they patched Ep2 to fix the cliffhanger and gaslight everyone that its always been that ending lol
Didn't half-life alex expand on it? Haven't played it myself.
Not really no. It's a separate story with separate characters in a different part of the world. They reference a couple things, but it doesn't give any hints or conclusions to the main series.
It retcons the end of episode 2 and then ends on it's own cliffhanger. Its weird to do that and then have no plans for a third.
Well epistle 3 was released that can at least give you an idea about what the arc was going to be. Ofc it might not have ended up as the final draft. I found it kinda depressing tbh.
If they ever want to develop another Half Life, they should release some cheeky 5 minute game as HL3 that ends with an imminent release date reveal for HL4 to sidestep the expectations.
I would personally be OK with engine updates (with a focus on getting that timeless look like in HL 1/2) and a continuation of the story.
Unless they decide to go with a hybrid genre model, it will be difficult to make a game as innovative as HL1/HL2.
I hate this writer Chris F and every commenter in this thread for being right.