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Noclip - Unforeseen Consequences: A Half-Life Documentary
- Thread starter Rodjer
- Start date
"Brrpp - tssssss". That sound alone takes me back to many feelings, memories and places. Also, 1 hour and 47 minutes. Woo!
AHHH.....Half-Life,I remember that series.They made a great second game and then promised three follow up episodes to round out the story......made two,the second of which was a massive cliff hanger.....................................and then didn't bother with the final one,lol.
I anticipate heavy feels when I watch this.
Already did when watching the couple trailers and clips.
Already did when watching the couple trailers and clips.
Interesting documentary, largely limited obviously by the fact Valve once again refused to talk anything Half-Life. Sigh. Also a bit overly long and overexplained at times probably, but still, overall a very enjoyable ride that brings back a lot of memories, especially those incredible HL2 tech demos I must have watched a hundred times at the time. Cool to see them talk about Titanfall 2 which definitely felt like the spiritual successor to Half-Life 2 at times. Also especially appreciated the insight on the engine by modders. Overall, such a sad thing to see an iconic, legendary, revolutionary franchise that printed tons of money just... disappear.
Doom bounced back from a possibly even more unlikely situation, who knows if Half-Life can. But between Quake Champions not making an impact, Unreal Tournament 4 being a half-assed effort that is now effectively canned too, Duke Nukem as good as dead, an era certainly seems to be gone for good. But the memories remain, at least, and games like Half-Life 1 and 2 still hold up in many ways to this day, so kudos to (old) Valve for them. But in regards to Half-Life, it's so odd to see there are dedicated fans who gladly spend thousands of hours remaking these games for free and there's hundreds of thousands if not millions of people ready to play these versions, but Valve just doesn't care seemingly. Truly one of the biggest losses in gaming, imho.
And yeah, Noclip is a godsend. I hope they don't pull a Valve and stop releasing interesting stuff :P
Doom bounced back from a possibly even more unlikely situation, who knows if Half-Life can. But between Quake Champions not making an impact, Unreal Tournament 4 being a half-assed effort that is now effectively canned too, Duke Nukem as good as dead, an era certainly seems to be gone for good. But the memories remain, at least, and games like Half-Life 1 and 2 still hold up in many ways to this day, so kudos to (old) Valve for them. But in regards to Half-Life, it's so odd to see there are dedicated fans who gladly spend thousands of hours remaking these games for free and there's hundreds of thousands if not millions of people ready to play these versions, but Valve just doesn't care seemingly. Truly one of the biggest losses in gaming, imho.
And yeah, Noclip is a godsend. I hope they don't pull a Valve and stop releasing interesting stuff :P
Just finished it. I felt this one was a bit slow. I got into Half life HL2 so maybe I don't have the nostalgia, and I'm really not that into the Mod scene, so it could just be me.
I give NoClip credit, because without being able to talk to Valve, they had to find a way to get content. I thought the highlight was Geoff's description of the early days of Valve. I think this would have made a great hour long documentary, but at it's current length it's a bit much.
But I love video game docs, so still happy this got made.
I give NoClip credit, because without being able to talk to Valve, they had to find a way to get content. I thought the highlight was Geoff's description of the early days of Valve. I think this would have made a great hour long documentary, but at it's current length it's a bit much.
But I love video game docs, so still happy this got made.
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Saw it the other day via Patreon;
I like the idea of the Half Life 2: Episode 3 being basically open sourced.
Although it sucks that Valve didn't even replied regarding the doc.
It could have been nice to give some insight from the people who created it.
Also, I got the impression that Geoff Keighley downplayed the idea of a Half Life VR installment very quickly when he answered about the franchise status, with all the recent indications that Valve are working on it (although we don't know if its development is still active).
I would have liked to see more about Project Borealis, but it was fine as it was.
Overall good documentary with some new insight from Randy about Gearbox's old relationship with Valve.
I like the idea of the Half Life 2: Episode 3 being basically open sourced.
Although it sucks that Valve didn't even replied regarding the doc.
It could have been nice to give some insight from the people who created it.
Also, I got the impression that Geoff Keighley downplayed the idea of a Half Life VR installment very quickly when he answered about the franchise status, with all the recent indications that Valve are working on it (although we don't know if its development is still active).
I would have liked to see more about Project Borealis, but it was fine as it was.
Overall good documentary with some new insight from Randy about Gearbox's old relationship with Valve.
Amazing work by Danny. IMO, it's very telling that this thread hasn't even make a second page, yet there's 30 pages about SonicFox's line about republicans.
I reluctantly agree with most in the doc that it's better for them not to release an Ep3/HL3 at this point. Nearly everyone involved has left, it wouldn't have the same soul anymore.
But, I feel like that soul might live on in Project Borealis. Time will tell.
Thank you for making this Danny, and thank you Marc for letting us at least see your vision for the next chapter.
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Sidenote, I strongly disagree with the person in the doc who said that "no one plays single player shooters anymore". That's nonsense. Doom, Wolfenstein II, Prey, Far Cry 5, TF2 were all excellent and well-received single-player experiences.
I reluctantly agree with most in the doc that it's better for them not to release an Ep3/HL3 at this point. Nearly everyone involved has left, it wouldn't have the same soul anymore.
But, I feel like that soul might live on in Project Borealis. Time will tell.
Thank you for making this Danny, and thank you Marc for letting us at least see your vision for the next chapter.
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Sidenote, I strongly disagree with the person in the doc who said that "no one plays single player shooters anymore". That's nonsense. Doom, Wolfenstein II, Prey, Far Cry 5, TF2 were all excellent and well-received single-player experiences.
Laidlaw publishing that blog finally settled for me that another HL game from Valve will never happen, so I'm glad the audience will pick up the franchise.
it's telling that modders needed the unreal engine to make something modern - its been so long since Valve made anything new, time has moved on and they are stuck making... skins and card games?
it's telling that modders needed the unreal engine to make something modern - its been so long since Valve made anything new, time has moved on and they are stuck making... skins and card games?
I'm pretty interested in Project Borealis but it's hard to know if it'll manage to be transcendent in the way Valve's Half-Life games can be, or if it'll be hurt by trying to stick too close to the formula in a bid for authenticity. Or some completely different outcome I can't imagine, who knows?
Great doc. It's too bad Valve wasn't interested in participating (though honestly very predictable), but Noclip did the best they could and managed to talk to some pretty interesting people along the way. And to be honest, Valve would dominate the doc if they agreed to be a part of it; it was neat to get the outside perspective and let that breathe a little bit. Plus, the most interesting bits of the Valve story are the bits they probably won't ever be ready to share, as a corporation and probably not even individually: why did Episode 3 go off the rails?
Great doc. It's too bad Valve wasn't interested in participating (though honestly very predictable), but Noclip did the best they could and managed to talk to some pretty interesting people along the way. And to be honest, Valve would dominate the doc if they agreed to be a part of it; it was neat to get the outside perspective and let that breathe a little bit. Plus, the most interesting bits of the Valve story are the bits they probably won't ever be ready to share, as a corporation and probably not even individually: why did Episode 3 go off the rails?
I thought it was interesting hearing Randy bitch about being done dirty by Valve considering his alleged dirty dealings with the Aliens franchise.
Is that really telling? Is it though? Is it really? I find it telling you post this comparison about a thread started on thursday when the game awards were hot, yet the last post in that thread was like 6 hours ago, and compare it to this thread somehow ( a completely unrelated topic i might add), something started basically 24 hours ago.
What a bizarre post.
Damn, this will be perfect for the train tomorrow!
I love the noclip documentaries and this is for one of my favorite game series of all time.
I love the noclip documentaries and this is for one of my favorite game series of all time.
I really enjoyed the documentary. I'm saddened as well that noone from Valve was willing talk about HL, but at the same time...I completely understand. Most of the people who were behind HL are long gone from Valve. I'm surpised that I never heard of Project Borealis though. I'm thankful that this documentary raised awareness of it. I hope that the project gets seen through to completion and releases. I also hope that the project being on UE4 doesn't cause Valve to launch a cease and desist.
Overall though, I got the biggest nostalgia feels from everyone reminiscing about HL's modding scene. Some of the best times I've ever had as a gamer was playing various HL mods like: SvenCoop, The Specialists, They Hunger, Earth Special Forces, Day of Defeat, etc. Makes me wish we could see another modding renaissance that existed during the days of HL and UT. It sucks that the Source 2 engine and SDK were never publicly released. I'm guessing that Valve quitting development of Left 4 Dead 3, and a possible HL3, caused them to change their minds?
Overall though, I got the biggest nostalgia feels from everyone reminiscing about HL's modding scene. Some of the best times I've ever had as a gamer was playing various HL mods like: SvenCoop, The Specialists, They Hunger, Earth Special Forces, Day of Defeat, etc. Makes me wish we could see another modding renaissance that existed during the days of HL and UT. It sucks that the Source 2 engine and SDK were never publicly released. I'm guessing that Valve quitting development of Left 4 Dead 3, and a possible HL3, caused them to change their minds?
Thats the funniest part. Using Sega's money to fund Borderlands 2 instead of the game you were contracted to make.
Is it? Other than newly aquired Campo Santo people I dont see anyone in Valve interested in doing single player games, and even those guys were doing mainly entirely story driven stuff, not fps shooters.
Even Noclip pointed out that Laidlaw blog talked not only about Episode 3, but also about Valve internal changes. It's not the same company and the world moved on.
They're making a VR Half Life game. People visited Valve have played tech demos and when Source 2 gets engine updates (as recently as the Dota 2 update released a few days ago) new strings of code are found related to Half Life VR.
Broadly speaking, Gearbox's behavior was not exactly out of line. Sega gave them funding in exchange for a particular product. So long as the product is delivered, how the money is spent isn't particularly relevant. If you're a company working on multiple projects at the same time, it's not unusual to use money received to keep the lights on.
Colonial Marines has always bugged me because while it's a flawed game, the controversy around it reflects a lot of the blind GAMER RAGE nonsense that has come to dominate internet discourse. As an example, when Colonial Marines is discussed online, the fact the game's graphics were overhauled in a post-release patch is almost never mentioned. There's this mentality that Gearbox were "lazy" and "incompetent" that both ignores their body of work and the fact that although Colonial Marines was a bit of a train wreck, they did try to deliver a quality product to the point of giving it above-average (particularly for 2013) levels of post-release support, on PC at least.
Miss those modding days, full blown total conversions, we dont get them anymore do we (understandably) ? At least not the amount of them.
Half Life would have had the darkest ending in the history of video game franchises if Laidlaw's blogpost was true. In retrospect, I am happy not to have played through it.
It's not the same company that started work on HL3 many moons ago, and they are definitely not a company currently interested in continuing that work, but to say there is no internal work being done at Valve on the Half-Life franchise is incorrect.
It's funny to me the contrast between the hardcore fans, and Valve itself. I always suspect that for the creators themselves, Valve, Half Life wasn't that special of a product.
I honestly believe this to be more true of the man in charge at Valve, Gabe Newell.
Despite disliking him greatly, Randy was easily the best part of this documentary and had fantastic insight.
Couldn't have said it better myself!
Overall very good, with some slow bits (didn't need the story about being stoned). It was nice to see the diversity of people who were featured, but there was still a void left by not being able to have any current/former Valve employees in it.
Yeah it is, really. Don't be asinine, of course a thread 5 days old will have more posts than a 12 hour one. I'm talking about the velocity here, the first 24 hours of each. The other thread blew through 10 pages, this one has still yet to reach it's second. For one of gaming's most "beloved" franchises, this really is indicative that the gaming world has indeed moved on. It affirms the unspoken question of if valve dropped Episode 3 tomorrow, would anyone care?
What a great documentary. These 2 hours just flew by.
I really loved this quote from Randy:
"... when Valve stumbled upon a fun thing, their instinct was to give it to the player, whereas id was afraid that the player would break the integrity of their technology"
I miss old Valve, but even though I gave up on waiting for HL3 a few years ago, I believe it can still happen. All it needs is a team that's passionate about making a HL game.
Looking at past Valve games, I believe that they are still works of passion. Portal 2 gathered whole Valve to work on creative new gameplay ideas, Dota 2 was made by players of original Dota and LoL, Artifact is a child of people who are fans of MtG and Hearthstone. Some may say that Valve made these games just to cash in, but I don't think any of them would have happened without actual passion and initiative by the developers.
Same with HL3, I think all it would take is a dedicated and passionate team. Too bad it would hard to find people who would take such a massive responsibility to make a game that would probably not meet the expectations of the fans. HL3 is not more of a legend than a game now and maybe it should stay that way.
I really loved this quote from Randy:
"... when Valve stumbled upon a fun thing, their instinct was to give it to the player, whereas id was afraid that the player would break the integrity of their technology"
I miss old Valve, but even though I gave up on waiting for HL3 a few years ago, I believe it can still happen. All it needs is a team that's passionate about making a HL game.
Looking at past Valve games, I believe that they are still works of passion. Portal 2 gathered whole Valve to work on creative new gameplay ideas, Dota 2 was made by players of original Dota and LoL, Artifact is a child of people who are fans of MtG and Hearthstone. Some may say that Valve made these games just to cash in, but I don't think any of them would have happened without actual passion and initiative by the developers.
Same with HL3, I think all it would take is a dedicated and passionate team. Too bad it would hard to find people who would take such a massive responsibility to make a game that would probably not meet the expectations of the fans. HL3 is not more of a legend than a game now and maybe it should stay that way.
Yes well this may be a shocking revelation but there are different topics that get different attention. Not sure a documentary about Half Life not even featuring any Valve members is worth a lot of attention. Maybe you would have a point, minus the bizarre comparison if the thread title was name 'Half Life 3 Announced!'. So yeah, nothing about this thread not getting a lot of post affirms anything about how people no longer care about a HL 3.
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Has there ever been the beginning of an explanation as to why Gabe seemingly hates even talking about this beloved franchise now?
Did he possibly turn sour on it due to fan obsession and possible non stop questions?
I admit that from both an artistic (integrity of vision) and financial (a follow up, whether ep 3 or HL3 would sell gangbuster) point of view, I don't get it.
Did he possibly turn sour on it due to fan obsession and possible non stop questions?
I admit that from both an artistic (integrity of vision) and financial (a follow up, whether ep 3 or HL3 would sell gangbuster) point of view, I don't get it.
