Gabe Newell Offers His Thoughts On Half-Life 3’s Development
There has been a lot of anticipation brewing for the next installment in the Half-Life series, as well as some displaced trolling here and there. There are rumors buzzing that Valve will announce the new title at E3, and others say it will never come in a lifetime. Plenty of fans look to the developer for some sort of answer, some sort of hope that they can count on for the future, and many lay in wait with a kindled flame in their hearts.
In a late episode of Seven Day Cooldown, a podcast on the net, Newell took some time to go over the development processes of a game he calls “Ricochet 2,” which is believably a coded name to discuss the next Half-Life. In his heart, Newell feels that if the company exposes fans to the begrudging matters over the game’s development, it will be a way of doing players a sort of injustice. About the game, he commented:
“In terms of Ricochet 2, we always have this problem that we talk about things too far in advance. We end up changing our minds as we’re going through and developing stuff, so as we’re thinking through the giant story arc which is Ricochet 2, you might get to a point where you’re saying something is surprising us in a positive way and something is surprising us in a negative way, and, you know, we’d like to be super-transparent about the future of Ricochet 2.”
When listening to Newell’s explanation, I can understand where he’s coming from. In a way, it warms my heart to know that, while totally aware of the upset that holding out on fans causes them, the developer cares enough to not make any attempts to let the community down. There’s been plenty of time that’s passed between the last Half-Life and today, and the FPS/action genre has drastically changed. Maybe Valve wants to make sure they don’t get caught up in the ruckus that’s hit the industry? Maybe they want to make sure they’re providing us with a game that we’ll talk about and play for years to come?
