To me the most hilarious part of The Final Hours was that one dev who admits hes been working at Valve for 11 years, but he hasnt shipped a single game because all of them end up cancelled xd.
I am of the opinion that it is far better to cancel it than to ship something that they feel wasn't good enough. Like 3D Realms should have just cancelled DNF within the first few years and made something else instead of dragging that mess out for 15 years.
@@CommanderZx2 Whilst I agree with the sentiment, this doesn't seem to be what happened here. It seems that the freedom of project choice just meant nothing ever had enough man power and focus to actually get far enough in development to even deem it wasn't good enough.
What I found hilarious was the unnamed senior dev at Valve that told the HL:VR team that they were "draining resources from other projects" FAM Y'ALL WERE DOING NOTHING, WHAT RESOURCES WERE DRAINED FROM WHERE?
Too much freedom is very much a bad thing not only in the work enviroment but also in videogames, glad they are starting to put pressure on deadlines and redirect developers to larger projects, hopefully with a strong leadership we will see actual games from valve in the years to come.
The last 12 years of valve basically go like this "Hey we want make a new a game can we use source 2?" "It's not ready yet" "we should work on it then" _*cricket noises *_ "oh okay"
@hi there yes let's generalize every gamer in one group. You are such a great commenter. Hope you do great in real life. Edit: I just realized I behaved like a dumb idiot. Please forgive me for I have sinned.
No the problem was (maybe still is) Valve themselves. I mean, they made GoldSrc, they made Source, how could Source 2 be a problem? Why didn't they finish Source 2? Because nobody wanted to work on Source 2, everyone split to dozens of small teams and worked on whatever the fuck they wanted. They COULD finish Source 2 and finish L4D3 and HL3, if they didn't split, if they had one direction. This whole "work on whatever you want" thing is Valve's biggest problem.
its really sad to me how people would say "remember when valve made games" and stuff like that when the whole time they were trying to make LOTS of games
Yeah, but that's people for you. People are incredibly entitled and feel like they're owed a game. But still, due to Steam's "wilderness," we did get some amazing community projects such as Black Mesa while Project Borealis and OBM are still in the works.
To be fair, with Valve having little to no public statements made available during that period and refusing to speak on anything HL-related being in the plans, many people fairly assumed that Valve was just *done* with game development. Their seemingly sudden transition into hardware production probably didn't help that.
11:37 Not only was melee combat a missed opportunity for Half-Life: Alyx, but I think it was also a major opportunity missed to properly include Alyx's socket wrench. In some of Half-Life 2's promotional art, Alyx can be seen standing next to Gordon and holding a big socket wrench. Until a year ago I never understood why she was holding a socket wrench. She had never had one, nor has there ever been a connection with a socket wrench and Half-Life other than that promo art. About a year ago I read a post from a Valve employee on Twitter who worked on Half-Life 2 and commented on the wrench. He explained that Alyx was originally planned to have it as her own melee weapon similar like Gordon, after being inspired by the stories she had heard about him with his red crowbar for years. The socket wrench idea ended up getting scrapped but the artwork of it stuck around. I could sort of understand if Valve didn't want to use a crowbar specifically because it's strongly associated with Gordon (although there were other Half-Life protagonists with crowbars too, take your pick). If there were ever a more perfect chance to introduce Alyx's socket wrench, Half-Life: Alyx would have been it.
I'm pretty sure they wanted to, but crowbars kept getting stuck in doorways. I believe this 100%, because I lost a valve that you need to open a door, by it getting stuck in the geometry of a doorway. They may have over-engineered doors in this game. lol
@@Loopy1330 not exactly, thats the engine fighting with itself on which of two entities has higher authority on completing it's task (close or sustain box shape) while this is more like the crowbar not giving any resistance because the new engine can see walls are more powerful than crowbars, which means the latter gives no resistance and either falls out of your hand or gets stuck entirely.
I'll just copypaste my comment on same topic here: Better choice for melee in Alyx would have been to give her... Manhack with a handle. Basically an electric circular saw. Already coded in, has model and damage/hit detection don't depend on player swings so much. And that point was made already by thousands of people before me... I guess? Maybe? At least I was mentioning it since seing the game, surely others also suggested it. Or is there hidden technical difficulty with this approach?
I love the "The final hours". It's a 25.000 words document for god sake! Keighley poured a lot of love into this digital magazine and i love that he takes us into a world that most of us can only dream to be apart of (working at Valve, or game development for that matter). I haven't read it all yet cause I'm taking my sweet sweet time with it :)
While I think they’d be a cool idea, I do think they’d have to slightly redesign the helmet so it’d fit into Combine lore. Eli even implies in Black Mesa East that he doesn’t even know much about the Cremator helmet in a jar, so that’d kinda lock them in a corner lore-wise.
Laidlaw retired specificly because they cancelled borealis vr project, and in frustration he left and released Epistle 3 to show his conclusion for the story. It also explaining how alienating and defeating his late time at valve was, that's the toll of "Wilderness"
I don't think so. If episode 3 followed epistle 3's story, it still wouldn't have been crazy, nor an end to the series. The combine are a universe conquering species, it is not crazy to think that it would never be possible to take them down, and that's what makes Half-Life so damn interesting. Remember, HL2 was nothing like HL1 and nobody saw it coming. Literally anything could have happened after the Borealis. But that's if epistle 3 was what they actually would have used. He wrote it to be a conclusion because it seemed like Valve would never give another sequel, let alone more than one. I seriously doubt the game would have ended in a way that tied up the series.
It's worth noting that according to the Combine Overwiki, Laidlaw later referred to the story as a "fanfic" and a "snapshot of a dream [he] had many years ago.". So I honestly don't think that Epistle 3 is what Episode 3 would've been.
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 Laidlaw's epistle 3 embraced the grand cosmic horror and "man out of time/place" feeling that produced some of the most emotionally resonant moments in the series.
I mean there is a term for what the _Final Hours_ series is, a visual novel. Edit: how the h e c c is there a political mess in the replies, I'm not surprised but _still_
you could definitely call it a visual novel in a literal sense but it doesn't do any of the things you expect from the genre like having a blonde twin tailed anime girl with huge tits trip into you in such a way that your hand is touching her huge tits
4:36 Same "castle" prop overlooking A site on Mirage. I would be really weird (for me at least) to see such a familiar structure on a "new" game. Also a great example of how much Valve reuses assets between games and within CS:GO itself.
I feel like "the wilderness" is probably one of the commonly overlooked flaws of a decentralized business. It's easy to get distracted, or even get overly ambitious with projects in a company, and it was interesting to see Valve go through that quiet time. At least with this video, we got a peek as to why that silence was so long.
@@spetsnaz4537 Did you not watch the video? Attention was eventually being funneled into making the improved replacement for the Source engine, and complications in its development affected the development of other future projects.
@@spetsnaz4537 They took that philosophy too far. Pretty much they allowed anybody to start or stop working on anything whenever they wanted. My speculation: Do you want to work on Source 2? Go ahead! Oh, I made this cool thing that uses randomized buildings. Sadly, Source 2 can't save that, and I don't want to work on the engine...
No, but they run a very slack development team - if you work on valve they just say either join a project or work on your own on anything you want, meaning people jump back and forth a bunch etc. You also wont be fired unless all your coworkers agree to get rid of you
@@guillermogutierrez-santana4446 yeah i guess, but they're mostly passionate employees - alyx only happened because most of the staff pulled together and become passionate about making alyx
So what you're saying is because Source 2 now has more stable foundations, unlike in the 2010s, the chances of more new Valve games just skyrocketed immensely?
its quite obvious... team works on source 2 engine = new franchise... what do you expect? a team fortress 3 or sum dumbshit like that? 😂 its quite obvious its gonna be HL3
Things also take damage when you throw objects at them. I went through almost an entire playthrough killing headcrabs with just boxes and other miscellaneous household furniture.
I'll just copypaste my comment on same topic here: Better choice for melee in Alyx would have been to give her... Manhack with a handle. Basically an electric circular saw. Already coded in, has model and damage/hit detection don't depend on player swings so much. And that point was made already by thousands of people before me... I guess? Maybe? At least I was mentioning it since seing the game, surely others also suggested it. Or is there hidden technical difficulty with this approach?
@@TheArklyte we don't have the full source 2 sdk that we were promised. Only some surface level developer tools that can allow for some pretty cool stuff but still extremely limited. The only one outside of valve who has the full sdk is gary newman (gmod) and is experimenting with it for s&box
I recently finished Black Mesa(remake of HL1), which got me interested in the Half Life series. I still have HL2, HL2 episode 1 and HL2 episode 2 to play. I sincerely hope Valve is back in shape now thanks to HL Alyx and their finished Source 2 engine.
Oh man you are gonna LOVE those games. HL1 & 2 & episodes 1&2 are right up there with WC3, Fallout 2, GTA 3, Total War : Shogun, Heroes of Might And Magic 3 my favorite games of all time etc. the best of the best. And unlike some of the other games i mentioned, Half-Life 2 hasn't really aged at all.
they're not. "Actually money is how the community drives work" - Gabe Newell on a reddit AMA. CSGO and Dota 2 and TF2 gambling lootboxes make billions of dollars a year. Half Life Alyx sold a few hundred thousand copies.
@@gorgolyt nah it is also about the source 2 engine for the most part in the documentary. They stated that even if they put everyone to work on the engine it will not finish faster and it blocked every big title to progress.
@@kopzz i wonder why. there's no reason to not finish faster with more people working on it, except the project was really in an advanced state and code for it is a mess that only one person understands (which i doubt).
@@mercyful22 your statement is like why Corona vaccine cannot be done in 1 day if every single country helps to make it. The reason is similar, not to mention even if you use "everyone" it is not even 1k ppl in the whole company I believe.
@@kopzz i understand, but this is an exaggerated comparison. coding and develop are not the same as vaccines and all the unknown biology interations involved. develop is much more problem solving, as long as the problems are well defined. seems that they were facing a huge lack of communication within the company instead of not having enough people working on it or something related, since apparently the engine never met the requisites that its users had. puting more people to work on source 2 would definitely help to finish it faster if users expectations were clear enough*. looks like they are facing another problems than only the engine itself.
Hey Philip, thanks for making these videos without Alyx spoilers. I really love HL but i couldn't buy one vr headset before and now with corona is literally impossible, so i appreciate those videos without spoilers. Thanks again.
I hoped there was a better reason for valve's "wilderness" era other than they wanted Valve to be a playpen for very gifted developers. Don't get excited for what they have planned next but what they actually finish.
They have 2 other vr games they are working on. 1 slated to come out next year and the other a year later. They also are working on non vr titles rn. So the future of valve games looks to be bright
the reason was worker exploitation, overworked, stressed, burnouts, hiring based on highschool level cliques instead of ability or skill. google: 2013: "Valve's flat structure contains "hidden layer of powerful management", claims ex-employee" and 2018s: "Ex-Valve employee describes ruthless internal politics at 'self-organizing' companies" for the full picture. this interactive PDF is basically just paving over their horrid history with more PR marketing bs like the employee handbook garbage.
6:50 I dont think it failed. The steam input system and the proton comparability layer are direct results of those efforts and they are an indispensable part of the infrastructure of VR. they allow interop between all kinds of VR input (which stops the market from imploding due to exclusives) and make linux play possible respectively. Its pretty incredible
L4D3 or even a remaster of 2 seems probably right now. There is a hidden beta branch of l4d2 that's been getting a lot of playtime recently by valve devs
i don't want valve to make l4d3, I imagine they'll sell characters hidden behind gambling lootboxes, and weapon skins... They're already selling gambling lootboxes to unlock character models in CSGO. And they'll sell gloves in gambling lootboxes for l4d3...
Interesting stuff. I've always been a fan of alternative management structures and employers that seek to benefit their employees... Tho is seems that experiment went wrong at valve. I'm not a valve fanboy to the degree some may be but back around 2008-9 Valve was this dominant powerhouse of quality. Those source 2 engine leaks would literally be mind blowing ten years ago. Now they hold up but are not really anything special, especially with the possibilities of the new PS4 workflow and unreal 5. I think Valve shit the bed in a way. They still have a certain level of quality when they ship, much like Blizzard or other triple A devs. It's fascinating that valve didn't fall behind because of over management or discounected business suits but by being too unrestricted. It is truly sad to think what could have been. I have stronger sentiments towards Bungie who totally ruined Destiny in what it could of been. A similiar story of an engine that just wasn't ready, but they shipped anyway. Though for them there was more internal management problems going on with 2 principal designers, their principal writer, and the solo musical lead all leaving before the project shipped. Crazy stuff, I guess nothing lasts forever. He's to the best for valve.
I think it's just an issue that the company grew too large for that kind of flat structure, since it seamed to work alright up to the mid-2000s when they were only really working on 1 or 2 projects at once and were a much smaller company in general. There's a theory known as Dunbar's number that people are only really capable of maintaining stable, meaningful relationships with around 150 people at most - above that and the relationships become much less stable and people no longer know each other on a first name basis. Seeing as Valve is now well above that with over 350 employees it's easy to see how a management structure relying on casual social relationships rather then a defined hierarchy started to break down.
valve is only alive because they managed to pioneer cosmetic lootboxes and selling games digitally. Valve could afford to hire the best coders in the industry and let them work on whatever they wanted without direction because they had a constant stream of money coming in. Honestly, they are a bit like amazon, invest in R+D because they have AWS. If even one of those side projects became the next big thing, they wouldnt care.
@@checker297 Thats what I was saying, Valves creative downfall wasnt from other management structures demanding ship dates and sales numbers, it was from the lack of hierarchy in the company which is kind of the opposite of what most people think when video game companies fail tp produce meaningful content or fall behind. Bungie failed because of Microsoft/activision, Blizzard is failing because of chinese money and interests. Im not saying I think that but thats what the narrative always seems to be. For valve it was entirely different.
Its funny, the only reason I came across this very visual novel yesterday is because Geoff himself was reading it on stream. Glad he did and I got to save it
@@chinesesparrows Early success and overambition? Valve was making critically acclaimed games for over a decade and they were pushing gaming technologies, HL2 was revolutionary when it released and now they're pushing the boundaries of VR experiences. I'm not sure what you call early success and overambition when most of their titles are critically acclaimed just because they spent a couple years trying to figure out what to do next. 3drealms is a whole different story
@@3htthexy Exactly! The main problem Valve had was what they now call "The wilderness", they saw that they could give some developers free reign to try anything they wanted and great projects came out of it, so they took it to the extreme.
1:21 We finally know a new reason Episode 3 could have got cancelled: Source 2. Valve must have finished Source 2 waaay too late and people started making half life 3 memes by that time.
So strange to me that after all this time period of cancelled projects and experiments, the one that people stuck with and completed first was *Artifact*
Wow. I was worried Valve had basically given up on game development because they thought focusing on running Steam would be more profitable. It's really exciting to know that they've been actually trying to make games all this time. Their work on those projects hasn't gone completely to waste, either! They could still salvage their unfinished projects and complete them or recycle their content.
Seems valve are focusing on vr because lets face it source 2 is probably the worst major game engine right now in terms mass use (unity and unreal) or visuals (unreal and cryengine) or artistic capability
@catz64 lol what? are you trying to say that L4D3 should be a VR only game? do you know how expensive that VR thing on 3rd world country that only small number of people can afford it? do you expect valve to lose half of their audience?
It sort of seems to me like once they completed Portal 2, their magnum opus, it was physically impossible to make anything better, so they got stuck and didn’t know what to do for awhile.
I completely disagree that it is physically impossible to make a game better than portal 2. Portal 2 is a flawed, as incredible as that game is. So is alyx, hl2 and the episodes, lfd2 ect.. They got stuck because of internal politics. Half of the company wanted to develop another game while developing a new engine (ala half life 2), and the other half wanted to wait until source 2 was finished. As well as this a lot of the higher ups at valve still didnt believe in vr and were making it very difficult for the devs to work. It's ironic too because as much as they like to say it source 2 isn't even finished, at least when alyx was shipped. Theyre isnt even functioning water lol
I can't understand one thing. Normally a game engine made in one or two years why it took fucking almost 7 years to finish it. Instead of working on several projects, they should've focused on finishing the damn engine.
They got no shareholders to answer to. They got no deadline to answer to. They got no pressure to answer to. Valve was a victim to its own "work on what you want" philosophy. Flexibility and creative freedom sounds like a dream work but it needed to have a sense of direction and focus.
TH-cam unsibscribed me recently but this came in my recommended and I'm glad to be back! Hopefully it wasnt many this happened to, cause your content has always kept me entertained! Really sucks that this stuff happens though :c
Who knows, maybe all the time that they lost in "the wilderness" means that they have a lot of interesting concepts and ideas just stored up but now with the right hardware and direction, they can tackle and possibly develop these ideas
Just as I finished VNN's highligths video on the final hours, I find out that I'm 30 minutes late for this as well, glad people are jumping on top of this so fast.
It may be possible, but some say that it would look a LONG ASS TIME AND EFFORT to port a game to another engine. Anyways, TF2's current source engine is still decent, not great nor bad, just decent.
did anyone else notice that at 3:45 .. "HL3 Developement" tab, proves that they were starting to make a HL3 a some point, i guess that's when it got put on the backburner till ALYX was developed.
Truthfully, I care more about getting more Source 2 SDK tools into the hands of modders than I do about HL3 at this point. A second renaissance of Sourcemodding this time with VR support sounds way more enticing to me than a sequel I am now waiting more than 12 years for, I'm glad Alyx has more than demonstrated how fucking _good_ source 2 can look.
That was great and actually bitterly needed. Thank you for that summary of very solid reasons we may still have no HL3, but also could get one that´s better than one could hope, great work !
A realy sad thing is that valve once did a official statement that Left for dead 3 was never in development and they flamed on Valve News network for saying so. And now when they admit it, damage is done and nobody says otherwise.
they simply stated that it 'isn't in development at the time, but was for a brief period of time' which is more likely true, but doesn't mean that they cannot continue it later or even already did VNN is dyslexic and from what i can tell his reading and understanding of article is somewhat strange
I really hope HLA was indeed a starting step and that in future games they will properly introduce more VR features like body tracking, physics, melee, sprinting, jumping, etc.
Somehow that information makes me feel bad, so many years criticizing that they did nothing, when the jobs really were done, but they did not reach something satisfactory. Which was better for them to let launch than launch to get more money, somehow, this gives me another perspective, although I may still be complaining, at least now because Valve's AntiCheat is still not very strict.
This is wonderful news. It sure was a sign when they released Alyx, but knowing why makes a world of difference, especially for the future. Can't wait to see their next announcement, whenever it may be.
Yeah, Half-Life Alyx was incredibly good, but I totally agree. It makes me excited to see what more Valve can do with VR. Or if this title has even given them fresh ideas for more flat-screen based video games. It definitely has seemed to help them get over the hurdle that Episode three left them at. Kinda seemed like they were fumbling around, like they didn't know exactly what they were doing. That all seems like a bad dream in the past now, hopefully Valve can keep this up.
I have to commend Valve for trying to give creative types freedom and have them spread their wings honestly, it's something that's sorely needed in many parts of our modern industry (not just game development, but perhaps the entire working world as a whole) the problem is that it's like Philip said: creativity is good for starting something, but not always good for actually finishing it. Having a few of my hobbies consist of creative endeavors, this really speaks to me on an uncomfortably close level. It's so easy to start a new project after another, to shine in the afterglow of having realized an idea, this high that you get when you see the individual parts get together and you think to yourself "yes, this is it, this I can do something with" but when it actually becomes time to realize this dream, it often becomes a nightmare. I'm glad Valve learned their lesson and I hope they'll stay with the philosophy that the golden middle is always the best path to take.
11:50 Better choice for melee in Alyx would have been to give her... Manhack with a handle. Basically a saw. Already coded in, has model and damage/hit detection don't depend on player swings so much. And that point was made already by thousands of people before me... I guess? Maybe? At least I was mentioning it since seing the game, surely others also suggested it. Or is there hidden technical difficulty with this approach?
They probably playtested it and didn't think it fit. Valve knows what they're doing when it comes to the stuff they cut and the stuff they leave in. everyone always thinks the cut content is better, but there's a reason they cut it in the first place. They extensively playtest and discover these things. It probably just wasn't as fun or detracted from the rest of the gameplay
@@3htthexy "detracted from the rest of the gameplay" most likely this one. ALyx is known for it's difficulty coming mostly from resource management and the item spawn adjusting items for players. Hence why people, who barely use shotgun to use it as emergency power boost barely find ammo for it, but people, who go with guns constantly empty are swimming in it. Having effective melee weapon ruins that balance by allowing player to skip it. Not to mention the whole emergent "teleporting psycho with a saw" gameplay that would have ruined the mood of the game by not suiting the character. However I was speaking about solution to the problem, not why Valve decided against it. You don't have to calculate the speed and angle to make out damage of melee weapon, don't need to limit player so that they won't hit their hands with controllers on the wall or ceiling while bashing like madman and don't have to explain how Alyx does anything at all to heavily armored soldiers without using exosuit equipped HEV like Gordon does. Saw answers all of those questions. The fact that Valve didn't use it, is different question.
the worst part about manhacks is if you kill a combine soldier before he deploys it, he still has an undeployed manhack. You can't pick it up, you can just knock it off of its corpse and kinda push it around with your hand models.
That's pretty interesting life lesson learned. Modern times are about "having the freedom to do whatever you want" but it only leads to loss of motivation. You won't live a good life if you just follow your whims. Making commitments and sticking with them through adversity is needed to achieve things.
Another thing worth to note is that Valve did not like what Microsoft was doing in Windows 8 days, making them to move away from Microsoft's DirectX and rely on cross-platform open source ones instead such as SDL2, Vulkan/OpenGL (Mainly Vulkan) along with their own developed Steam Input, Steam Audio, SteamVR which are cross-platform and open source which definetly affected the development of Source 2 Engine in order to cover all 3 major OS on PC which are Windows, Mac and Linux. Of course as a bonus. Apple kept shooting themselves in the foot with their questionable decisions which made Valve to drop SteamVR and Proton support on Mac, plus they had to buy out and make MoltenVK (Vulkan To Metal wrapper for Mac) FOSS (Free [as in freedom] and Open Source).
well whoever the one or two people working at TF2 is listening and there actually have been updates that helped with both hackers (kick) and bots (kick, chat restrictions, exploits), so I'd say that gives a glimmer of hope for TF2. plus they said it was postponed, but not outright cancelled, so there's still a chance!
This was a really interesting look into Valve, and what they have been up to. Their "stay quiet until we release a game for certain" strategy of communication was seriously starting to get annoying. The only devs that has been different in Valve were the Steam Link and Steam Controller ones, they were on the boards chatting away - explaining difficulties and solutions, all while constantly asking for feedback and testing. It was so refreshing to see. Kudos for those devs leading the way to a more open Valve, and I really think they did.
From what they stated after its failure, it seems like in the flat structure some of the artifact members had enough charisma to hold the team together long ejough to release the game, but didnt actually have the proficiency to make the game any good
@@luminomancer5992 its actually fun but to niche to ever be as good as the casual card game in how complicated it is and also many Card game creators were involved in the production right off the start which made many of the original dev team to not leave before any groundwork was done.
the main reason is it could be run on phones. That's why they also immediately started pushing Dota Underlords: multiplatform can run on phones. Valve wants to get into the mobile gaming market because it sells even more microtransactions. MTX is the main source of revenue for valve after Steam game sales. They make hundreds of millions off of CSGO and Dota 2 a year.
The biggest oversight Geoff made in this book was claiming that Lazslo appeared in Episode 2, and not just the main game. I also think one sentence in there missed an 'and' between words. But since the book shows a v.1.0 when it's launched, I hope he's able to fix the Laszlo mistake, CS:GO gloves mistake, and maybe even polish up the 3D valve office thing.
I have a theory on what the end of Half-Life Alyx means for the narrative (spoiler warning): My theory surmises that Gordon’s true obligation by the end was to get Alyx to White Forest to guarantee Alyx’s hiring within G-Man’s restrictions. G-Man used Gordon for the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 but knew all along he would be betrayed by Gordon, so he invested in Alyx as well by saving her from Black Mesa. He only continued his investment in Gordon during Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and 2 because Gordon could protect Alyx. The possible future that includes Eli’s death would happen if G-Man doesn’t take Alyx. I’ll call it the “original future”, even though it’s not the future that came to be. Since Alyx chose to protect Eli, she basically chose a different outcome, preventing the “original” future from happening. Think of it like Gordon’s choice in HL1 between living in stasis or dying against Grunts. She chose which outcome would happen. The reason G-Man didn’t just change everything and forcibly take Alyx into stasis whenever he wanted is because he has to “abide by certain restrictions”. I think he can see possible futures, but he can’t change a past that has already happened. Basically, I think he’s required to operate in the same present day as everybody else has to, and he can’t nudge stuff from their past. I think that swapping Eli and Alyx was required for G-Man’s plan to work. In both possible futures, Eli and Alyx are the only two people directly impacted, so one has to swap with the other to be able to change the outcome. Instead of Eli dying and Alyx living, Alyx is taken and Eli lives. It’s the cleanest way to differentiate the futures. This all leads me to think that G-Man isn’t travelling back in time or anything like that. He’s just clairvoyant about what will happen in the future, so he manipulates people in the present to allow him to change stuff later. At this point, the events of Half-Life: Alyx are still technically the present. I think that a new timeline wasn’t created, Alyx just gets to exchange the “original” outcome for a new outcome. All the events leading up to either future would be basically the same, including her visiting the Vault, but they would differ at White Forest, because that’s where the events diverge based on her choice. That’s why Gordon needs to bring Alyx there regardless of which future she picks. Both futures (the “original” one that was prevented and the one that she chose) involved White Forest. He can only put Alyx in stasis after he saves Eli because he has to keep both timeline the same up until the moment where he nudges. Once G-Man has saved Eli with a nudge, the similarities between futures end, eliminating the other future from happening, and G-Man’s end of the deal is done. Alyx is contractually obligated to hold up her part of the deal, which means she must now be taken. Here’s a summary: with the events of Half-Life: Alyx as the present day, G-Man offered Alyx a choice between futures. She could choose the outcome of what happens at White Forest. Because these two futures would have the same events up until the Advisor attack, Alyx must inevitably reach White Forest. Both futures hadn’t happened yet, so she could choose which one happens. Since she chose to exchange her life for Eli’s, the “original” future (where G-Man doesn’t save Eli) never happens. An exchange was the preferable way to do the deal because it means the two people affected (Eli and Alyx) can exchange without changing anybody else. As soon as the attack at White Forest happens, G-Man enacts his nudge, closing the timeline into the future she chose. Alyx is taken to close her end of the deal, and there’s no loose ends on the timeline. No time travel or paradoxes involved, just G-Man acting during the present and future. *So what does this means for the timeline of the Half-Life series?* -The ending of Half-Life 2: Episode Two didn’t happen. It happened in a potential future that was used by G-Man to manipulate Alyx into giving herself up. The ending to Alyx is what actually happened as she chose that outcome. One future was exchanged for the other. -It means G-Man knew Gordon would be taken eventually, but may not have known the exact way, since Vortigaunts act out of time and space like he does. -It also means that there are technically no simultaneous timelines or time paradoxes going on, just two different events at White Forest to choose from. G-Man only changes what happens at White Forest, so either choice wouldn’t affect the preceding events, meaning nothing about Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 was changed. -Half-Life: Alyx didn’t happen in a new timeline G-Man created. It actually happened before the Half-Life 2 we know. This means even in Half-Life 2, Alyx had already made this deal. They’re probably gonna explain it as G-Man erasing her memory of what she found in the Vault.
I think you're right. In HL2, HL2:E1 and HL2:E2, when Alyx dies you get a message Assignment: Terminated Subject: Gordon Reason: Subject failed to protect mission critical resources It seems implied that that message is coming from gman. And therefore gman wants or needs Alyx alive, otherwise game could just fade to black and not show this message. Only point at which Alyx is allowed to 'die' is when vortigons are there to save her, allowing gman to have a chat with you and deliver message to Eli. I think by this logic all HL2 games were in timeline gman was creating to get Alyx on his side, so I think your theory is right.
Iridium The events of Half-Life 1, 2, Episode 1, and most of Episode 2 still happen the exact same regardless of what future she chooses. The only place the futures differ is during the Advisor attack in White Forest. G-Man told Gordon that Alyx was his investment during his heart to heart in Episode 2, so that has been confirmed.
@@KizaruB you said that gman doesn't travel back in time, but is instead only able to nudge the timeline by being clairvoyant. You also said that Gordon's purpose was just to protect Alyx up until Advisor attack, right? I said I agree and I pointed the "assignment terminated" as extra proof for this idea that gman planned all along to recruit Alyx.
Iridium You’re right. If I sounded like I was disagreeing, that wasn’t my intent. We agree on the theory, and that’s what matters. I think that game over message is just a coincidence. That same message appears in Half-Life 1 if you kill important scientists and in Half-Life 2 if Barney dies or you submerge the Scout car. I do agree that it probably represents G-Man like you said.
Thank you for making this. I love Valve and they have made so many great games. I didn't realize the turmoil they had internally and it makes me appreciate Alyx so much more.
To me the most hilarious part of The Final Hours was that one dev who admits hes been working at Valve for 11 years, but he hasnt shipped a single game because all of them end up cancelled xd.
I am of the opinion that it is far better to cancel it than to ship something that they feel wasn't good enough. Like 3D Realms should have just cancelled DNF within the first few years and made something else instead of dragging that mess out for 15 years.
@@CommanderZx2 Whilst I agree with the sentiment, this doesn't seem to be what happened here. It seems that the freedom of project choice just meant nothing ever had enough man power and focus to actually get far enough in development to even deem it wasn't good enough.
What I found hilarious was the unnamed senior dev at Valve that told the HL:VR team that they were "draining resources from other projects" FAM Y'ALL WERE DOING NOTHING, WHAT RESOURCES WERE DRAINED FROM WHERE?
lol
Too much freedom is very much a bad thing not only in the work enviroment but also in videogames, glad they are starting to put pressure on deadlines and redirect developers to larger projects, hopefully with a strong leadership we will see actual games from valve in the years to come.
The last 12 years of valve basically go like this
"Hey we want make a new a game can we use source 2?"
"It's not ready yet"
"we should work on it then"
_*cricket noises
*_
"oh okay"
"Source 2 works on my pc. You try rebooting?"
portal 2. 2011
they should release "The Lost Box" with all the most stable versions of all the projects that were cancelled
its just a dusty cardboard source engine box as the icon
I swear! Look at what black Mesa became. give the prototypes to the community
volvo's own asset store
@@Ribbons0121R121 and everything that has to be on the box is hand written or hand sketched
@@Ribbons0121R121 a bit of masking tape with a version number written on it
*puts a lot of effort into a fully fledged 3d story book*
"boo! this sucks! i expected guns and shoot and stuff!"
Lol
All gamers in a nutshell
@hi there Sir this is a wendys
@hi there yes let's generalize every gamer in one group. You are such a great commenter. Hope you do great in real life.
Edit: I just realized I behaved like a dumb idiot. Please forgive me for I have sinned.
Mama mía green
People have been blaming TF2 and Steam for the lack of Half-Life 3, but really, it was Source 2 this whole time...
Who blames tf2? They get like one update a year. But I get what your saying.
@@devinarato69420 actually less then once a year when it comes to content other than community made cosmetics.
@@devinarato69420 the Game received more updates before
But he forgot to mention csgo and dota
No the problem was (maybe still is) Valve themselves. I mean, they made GoldSrc, they made Source, how could Source 2 be a problem? Why didn't they finish Source 2? Because nobody wanted to work on Source 2, everyone split to dozens of small teams and worked on whatever the fuck they wanted. They COULD finish Source 2 and finish L4D3 and HL3, if they didn't split, if they had one direction. This whole "work on whatever you want" thing is Valve's biggest problem.
@@devinarato69420 Yeah, there are like four game developers or less working on it
The world is a better place when Valve is releasing games.
Uh...
UH...
U H ...
Uh...
HMMM
The title to this video occupied my mind for 13 years, for it all to be answered at once in 13 minutes
And a half
You could say it took a half lifetime of your life.
EXECTLY
"Perhaps I treated you too harshly"
Mad Titan
7:32 "The Vader headset might've cost $5,000, but was never made."
*Rich people:* Aww, dang. I wanted a budget headset to start getting into VR. :(
I probably would have bought it. I'm not rich though so it's a good thing that it didn't release.
If Apple sold their own vr headsets, they would start laughing at five thousand.
@@3OrMoreBones Then to make more money they would make most of the parts out of glass to get money from repairs.
3OrMoreBones they are going to start selling some soon actually
@@Durpy337 but with encrypted serial codes to where you're forced to swap the entire system, rather than fix a rigged chip.
its really sad to me how people would say "remember when valve made games" and stuff like that when the whole time they were trying to make LOTS of games
Yeah :(
Thats how it felt
Trying does not mean much for the public if it isn't completed , or if they cancel projects outsourced to other studios that progress well
Yeah, but that's people for you. People are incredibly entitled and feel like they're owed a game. But still, due to Steam's "wilderness," we did get some amazing community projects such as Black Mesa while Project Borealis and OBM are still in the works.
To be fair, with Valve having little to no public statements made available during that period and refusing to speak on anything HL-related being in the plans, many people fairly assumed that Valve was just *done* with game development. Their seemingly sudden transition into hardware production probably didn't help that.
11:37 Not only was melee combat a missed opportunity for Half-Life: Alyx, but I think it was also a major opportunity missed to properly include Alyx's socket wrench.
In some of Half-Life 2's promotional art, Alyx can be seen standing next to Gordon and holding a big socket wrench. Until a year ago I never understood why she was holding a socket wrench. She had never had one, nor has there ever been a connection with a socket wrench and Half-Life other than that promo art. About a year ago I read a post from a Valve employee on Twitter who worked on Half-Life 2 and commented on the wrench. He explained that Alyx was originally planned to have it as her own melee weapon similar like Gordon, after being inspired by the stories she had heard about him with his red crowbar for years. The socket wrench idea ended up getting scrapped but the artwork of it stuck around.
I could sort of understand if Valve didn't want to use a crowbar specifically because it's strongly associated with Gordon (although there were other Half-Life protagonists with crowbars too, take your pick). If there were ever a more perfect chance to introduce Alyx's socket wrench, Half-Life: Alyx would have been it.
I'm pretty sure they wanted to, but crowbars kept getting stuck in doorways.
I believe this 100%, because I lost a valve that you need to open a door, by it getting stuck in the geometry of a doorway.
They may have over-engineered doors in this game. lol
@@xenoneo You mean like how with Source 1 you can wedge a prop between a doorway as the door is closing, and it gets infinitely stuck?
@@Loopy1330 not exactly, thats the engine fighting with itself on which of two entities has higher authority on completing it's task (close or sustain box shape) while this is more like the crowbar not giving any resistance because the new engine can see walls are more powerful than crowbars, which means the latter gives no resistance and either falls out of your hand or gets stuck entirely.
I'll just copypaste my comment on same topic here:
Better choice for melee in Alyx would have been to give her... Manhack with a handle. Basically an electric circular saw. Already coded in, has model and damage/hit detection don't depend on player swings so much.
And that point was made already by thousands of people before me... I guess? Maybe? At least I was mentioning it since seing the game, surely others also suggested it.
Or is there hidden technical difficulty with this approach?
Socket wrench mini game but you have to search the area for your god damn 10mm socket first
I love the "The final hours". It's a 25.000 words document for god sake! Keighley poured a lot of love into this digital magazine and i love that he takes us into a world that most of us can only dream to be apart of (working at Valve, or game development for that matter).
I haven't read it all yet cause I'm taking my sweet sweet time with it :)
You're a good fan
VALVE also has me fascinated.
They cut the Cremator.. again!
hi noclock
While I think they’d be a cool idea, I do think they’d have to slightly redesign the helmet so it’d fit into Combine lore. Eli even implies in Black Mesa East that he doesn’t even know much about the Cremator helmet in a jar, so that’d kinda lock them in a corner lore-wise.
Omg its real nolick!!
poor cremator
13:37 length, Philip is a Leet Krew member confirmed.
Yes
was looking for this commetn
I love it when Philip dips his toes in a video like this. Always so well researched and edited. Like a mini-documentory. Keep it up!
All he really did with this one is paraphrase a lot of the stuff from that book. At certain points he quotes it verbatim.
Making it into video form is still lots of worn
this! keep it up phillip. when it ended, i was sad lol
Laidlaw retired specificly because they cancelled borealis vr project, and in frustration he left and released Epistle 3 to show his conclusion for the story. It also explaining how alienating and defeating his late time at valve was, that's the toll of "Wilderness"
you know, im glad laidlaw left, his plans for half life were just anti climactic and depressing to the point that it would probably piss everyone off
I don't think so. If episode 3 followed epistle 3's story, it still wouldn't have been crazy, nor an end to the series. The combine are a universe conquering species, it is not crazy to think that it would never be possible to take them down, and that's what makes Half-Life so damn interesting. Remember, HL2 was nothing like HL1 and nobody saw it coming. Literally anything could have happened after the Borealis.
But that's if epistle 3 was what they actually would have used. He wrote it to be a conclusion because it seemed like Valve would never give another sequel, let alone more than one. I seriously doubt the game would have ended in a way that tied up the series.
It's worth noting that according to the Combine Overwiki, Laidlaw later referred to the story as a "fanfic" and a "snapshot of a dream [he] had many years ago.". So I honestly don't think that Epistle 3 is what Episode 3 would've been.
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 Laidlaw's epistle 3 embraced the grand cosmic horror and "man out of time/place" feeling that produced some of the most emotionally resonant moments in the series.
I mean there is a term for what the _Final Hours_ series is, a visual novel.
Edit: how the h e c c is there a political mess in the replies, I'm not surprised but _still_
you could definitely call it a visual novel in a literal sense but it doesn't do any of the things you expect from the genre like having a blonde twin tailed anime girl with huge tits trip into you in such a way that your hand is touching her huge tits
@@CaroFDoom well visual novel DID originated in japan.
I dunno Gaben dummy thicc
@@CaroFDoom omg is that the real carofdoom
Falbere! no its the fake carofdoom
1:22 Is nobody gonna talk about how awesome this small hallway looks with the Half-Life 2 Citadel wall design?
4:36 Same "castle" prop overlooking A site on Mirage.
I would be really weird (for me at least) to see such a familiar structure on a "new" game. Also a great example of how much Valve reuses assets between games and within CS:GO itself.
we also got a lot of these assets in the dangerzone map (dont know the name)
Flipping assets like hot cakes
@@RafaAelM It's Sirocco
I don't mind studios reusing assets if that helps them dedicate more time and work into more important stuff than making new doorways or crates.
@@hellvengtfo Are you serious? Having original doorways is an integral part of a game's experience!
I feel like "the wilderness" is probably one of the commonly overlooked flaws of a decentralized business. It's easy to get distracted, or even get overly ambitious with projects in a company, and it was interesting to see Valve go through that quiet time. At least with this video, we got a peek as to why that silence was so long.
wasn't that decentralization a common development philosphy since half-life 2, and all the titles that had been released after it? what changed?
@@spetsnaz4537 Did you not watch the video? Attention was eventually being funneled into making the improved replacement for the Source engine, and complications in its development affected the development of other future projects.
@@spetsnaz4537 They took that philosophy too far. Pretty much they allowed anybody to start or stop working on anything whenever they wanted.
My speculation: Do you want to work on Source 2? Go ahead! Oh, I made this cool thing that uses randomized buildings. Sadly, Source 2 can't save that, and I don't want to work on the engine...
2:41 It seems Francis needs some new pants...
I want that mode XDD
This raises the question:
Why were you staring at Francis's ass?
@@liyifenn
Please don't bully him, it's OK to be gay...
:P
It's fresher this way.
No he doesn't ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I'm so glad to hear that valve didn't just destroy their development team as much of the internet has assumed.
No, but they run a very slack development team - if you work on valve they just say either join a project or work on your own on anything you want, meaning people jump back and forth a bunch etc. You also wont be fired unless all your coworkers agree to get rid of you
@@azorah3986 so basically these people are incentivized to start coup-de-tats? None of them have to even do work so long as they agree to it?
@@guillermogutierrez-santana4446 yeah i guess, but they're mostly passionate employees - alyx only happened because most of the staff pulled together and become passionate about making alyx
"perhaps i treated you to harshly"
My god, they made commically large key!
only a keyful
but is a comically large key even a key at all?
"Only a keyhole!"
So what you're saying is because Source 2 now has more stable foundations, unlike in the 2010s, the chances of more new Valve games just skyrocketed immensely?
L4D3 but actually work this time lets fucking gooooo
Team Fortress 2, source 2
I sure do hope we can see that “rpg” project come to fruition. In VR. Also open world l4d3 sounds badass
And that Valve's finally leaving their "work on what you want" philosophy. Definitely a much higher chance to see a new game in the next few years.
@@DawnAfternoon soon, valve will be making 1 game a year again, but unlike EA, each game will be worth your money
Valve has given us their office, which means raiding would be easier to see if they actually will make a Half Life 3
*call the payday gang*
the heavy update you mean
I can't believe Half Life 3 is more plausible than a big TF2 update
@@davidtyierejian1033 L4D3, Portal 3, Half Life 3, and CS:GO in Source2 are all more likely than a new TF2 event lmao
@@POTUSOfficial portal 3 really isn't though
its quite obvious... team works on source 2 engine = new franchise... what do you expect? a team fortress 3 or sum dumbshit like that? 😂 its quite obvious its gonna be HL3
Talking about Melee combat in vr- I guess there kind of is melee in HL:A - Manhats seemed to take damage when I hit them with my gun
Things also take damage when you throw objects at them. I went through almost an entire playthrough killing headcrabs with just boxes and other miscellaneous household furniture.
I'll just copypaste my comment on same topic here:
Better choice for melee in Alyx would have been to give her... Manhack with a handle. Basically an electric circular saw. Already coded in, has model and damage/hit detection don't depend on player swings so much.
And that point was made already by thousands of people before me... I guess? Maybe? At least I was mentioning it since seing the game, surely others also suggested it.
Or is there hidden technical difficulty with this approach?
@@TheArklyte we don't have the full source 2 sdk that we were promised. Only some surface level developer tools that can allow for some pretty cool stuff but still extremely limited. The only one outside of valve who has the full sdk is gary newman (gmod) and is experimenting with it for s&box
I recently finished Black Mesa(remake of HL1), which got me interested in the Half Life series. I still have HL2, HL2 episode 1 and HL2 episode 2 to play. I sincerely hope Valve is back in shape now thanks to HL Alyx and their finished Source 2 engine.
Oh man you are gonna LOVE those games. HL1 & 2 & episodes 1&2 are right up there with WC3, Fallout 2, GTA 3, Total War : Shogun, Heroes of Might And Magic 3 my favorite games of all time etc. the best of the best. And unlike some of the other games i mentioned, Half-Life 2 hasn't really aged at all.
You shouldn't have started with Black Mesa imo
Raph I think that it’s a good way to start
@@dominicstocker5144 idk, if you start with a fan made remake you're not really experiencing the series
they're not. "Actually money is how the community drives work" - Gabe Newell on a reddit AMA. CSGO and Dota 2 and TF2 gambling lootboxes make billions of dollars a year. Half Life Alyx sold a few hundred thousand copies.
I long for the day when I can finally stop making Half-Life 3 jokes and start making Half-Life 4 jokes.
Oh mai gahd valve very noob no hl4
Valve plz hl4
I mean, Half-Life Alyx is basically HL3
half-life 4 confirmed
@@Galactipod Surely half life one and a half?
@@Galactipod man Volvo released Holf Lofe Alex so they ould name the new Half Life
half life 4
So basically source 2 is to blame for all cancelled and delayed projects...
Let’s see if we’ll die before source 3 comes out or not.
Ultimately their crazy management is to blame, not any particular piece of technology.
@@gorgolyt nah it is also about the source 2 engine for the most part in the documentary. They stated that even if they put everyone to work on the engine it will not finish faster and it blocked every big title to progress.
@@kopzz i wonder why. there's no reason to not finish faster with more people working on it, except the project was really in an advanced state and code for it is a mess that only one person understands (which i doubt).
@@mercyful22 your statement is like why Corona vaccine cannot be done in 1 day if every single country helps to make it. The reason is similar, not to mention even if you use "everyone" it is not even 1k ppl in the whole company I believe.
@@kopzz i understand, but this is an exaggerated comparison. coding and develop are not the same as vaccines and all the unknown biology interations involved. develop is much more problem solving, as long as the problems are well defined. seems that they were facing a huge lack of communication within the company instead of not having enough people working on it or something related, since apparently the engine never met the requisites that its users had.
puting more people to work on source 2 would definitely help to finish it faster if users expectations were clear enough*. looks like they are facing another problems than only the engine itself.
Hey Philip, thanks for making these videos without Alyx spoilers.
I really love HL but i couldn't buy one vr headset before and now with corona is literally impossible, so i appreciate those videos without spoilers.
Thanks again.
Finally! Was hoping for a this type of video, covering the games. Cheers!
I hoped there was a better reason for valve's "wilderness" era other than they wanted Valve to be a playpen for very gifted developers.
Don't get excited for what they have planned next but what they actually finish.
They have 2 other vr games they are working on. 1 slated to come out next year and the other a year later. They also are working on non vr titles rn. So the future of valve games looks to be bright
the reason was worker exploitation, overworked, stressed, burnouts, hiring based on highschool level cliques instead of ability or skill.
google: 2013: "Valve's flat structure contains "hidden layer of powerful management", claims ex-employee"
and 2018s: "Ex-Valve employee describes ruthless internal politics at 'self-organizing' companies" for the full picture. this interactive PDF is basically just paving over their horrid history with more PR marketing bs like the employee handbook garbage.
6:50 I dont think it failed. The steam input system and the proton comparability layer are direct results of those efforts and they are an indispensable part of the infrastructure of VR. they allow interop between all kinds of VR input (which stops the market from imploding due to exclusives) and make linux play possible respectively. Its pretty incredible
That first image is cursed. Gaben used to be just one person, not 5
I want to see what the "Vader" headset would have been capable of 🤔
It was just a button that goes inbetween your eyes that produces a hologram
Likely not much better than the valve Index, but with plenty of cost innefective features and design choices
Probably had mechanical teeth of some kind to properly simulate headcrab munching your head
8:24 I like how he flips them off after waving to them.
Was finding for this comment
i did a stream of this and that headcrab scared the hell out of me. Also how couldn't you mention russel's sexy moustache
No offense, but I've never ever watched you're content but youtube sent me a notification of you're stream and it's very odd to find you here.
Hopefully Valve is coming out of those dark times with some rejuvinated optimism, L4D3 has been beckoning for a while now
th-cam.com/video/6QNMrCKdVIE/w-d-xo.html
The upcoming spiritual successor to 'Left 4 Dead 2' by it's original creators
Don't know how I feel about the open world aspect of L4D3 concept, but I REALLY love the setting in Morocco!
An updated Day of Defeat version would be great as well.
L4D3 or even a remaster of 2 seems probably right now. There is a hidden beta branch of l4d2 that's been getting a lot of playtime recently by valve devs
i don't want valve to make l4d3, I imagine they'll sell characters hidden behind gambling lootboxes, and weapon skins... They're already selling gambling lootboxes to unlock character models in CSGO. And they'll sell gloves in gambling lootboxes for l4d3...
3:50 The Half Life 2 soundtrack really added to the vibe here.
Interesting stuff. I've always been a fan of alternative management structures and employers that seek to benefit their employees... Tho is seems that experiment went wrong at valve. I'm not a valve fanboy to the degree some may be but back around 2008-9 Valve was this dominant powerhouse of quality. Those source 2 engine leaks would literally be mind blowing ten years ago. Now they hold up but are not really anything special, especially with the possibilities of the new PS4 workflow and unreal 5.
I think Valve shit the bed in a way. They still have a certain level of quality when they ship, much like Blizzard or other triple A devs. It's fascinating that valve didn't fall behind because of over management or discounected business suits but by being too unrestricted. It is truly sad to think what could have been.
I have stronger sentiments towards Bungie who totally ruined Destiny in what it could of been. A similiar story of an engine that just wasn't ready, but they shipped anyway. Though for them there was more internal management problems going on with 2 principal designers, their principal writer, and the solo musical lead all leaving before the project shipped.
Crazy stuff, I guess nothing lasts forever.
He's to the best for valve.
I think it's just an issue that the company grew too large for that kind of flat structure, since it seamed to work alright up to the mid-2000s when they were only really working on 1 or 2 projects at once and were a much smaller company in general. There's a theory known as Dunbar's number that people are only really capable of maintaining stable, meaningful relationships with around 150 people at most - above that and the relationships become much less stable and people no longer know each other on a first name basis. Seeing as Valve is now well above that with over 350 employees it's easy to see how a management structure relying on casual social relationships rather then a defined hierarchy started to break down.
valve is only alive because they managed to pioneer cosmetic lootboxes and selling games digitally. Valve could afford to hire the best coders in the industry and let them work on whatever they wanted without direction because they had a constant stream of money coming in. Honestly, they are a bit like amazon, invest in R+D because they have AWS. If even one of those side projects became the next big thing, they wouldnt care.
@@checker297 Thats what I was saying, Valves creative downfall wasnt from other management structures demanding ship dates and sales numbers, it was from the lack of hierarchy in the company which is kind of the opposite of what most people think when video game companies fail tp produce meaningful content or fall behind. Bungie failed because of Microsoft/activision, Blizzard is failing because of chinese money and interests. Im not saying I think that but thats what the narrative always seems to be. For valve it was entirely different.
Its funny, the only reason I came across this very visual novel yesterday is because Geoff himself was reading it on stream. Glad he did and I got to save it
Great Video due to GREAT RESEARCH! Thank you! Preparing this quality of information must have been a lot of work. So thumbs up!
and now recall the years of thinking about valve, what they are doing. Knowing now that they got such a stupid problem is sobering.
I call it 3drealms syndrome. Early success and overambition
@Chinese Sparrows Luckily they fixed that syndrome before they made a HL-Forever.
@@chinesesparrows Early success and overambition? Valve was making critically acclaimed games for over a decade and they were pushing gaming technologies, HL2 was revolutionary when it released and now they're pushing the boundaries of VR experiences. I'm not sure what you call early success and overambition when most of their titles are critically acclaimed just because they spent a couple years trying to figure out what to do next. 3drealms is a whole different story
@@3htthexy Exactly! The main problem Valve had was what they now call "The wilderness", they saw that they could give some developers free reign to try anything they wanted and great projects came out of it, so they took it to the extreme.
That 'citadel' wall at 1:22 is sick.
13:37 leet vid man! I mean neat!
l33t
D4nk
420
69
666
21
9:32 you can't hide that upscale from me
i love how the 3d scan of the valve office is both normal looking and extremely chaotic at the same time
1:21 We finally know a new reason Episode 3 could have got cancelled: Source 2. Valve must have finished Source 2 waaay too late and people started making half life 3 memes by that time.
So strange to me that after all this time period of cancelled projects and experiments, the one that people stuck with and completed first was *Artifact*
It's probably the first one that a single team could finish in less time than it takes them to get bored.
probably since they already have a framework with it and had many fgc creators involved.
"hmm yes this card thing seems easy enough"
Artifact had Richard Garfield as head of this project. Artifact is not bad game, it's good card game but its just come in the wrong time.
yea
Wow. I was worried Valve had basically given up on game development because they thought focusing on running Steam would be more profitable. It's really exciting to know that they've been actually trying to make games all this time. Their work on those projects hasn't gone completely to waste, either! They could still salvage their unfinished projects and complete them or recycle their content.
I hipe they try making l4d3 again, this time with the complete source 2 engine
@catz64 Why is that sadly? None-VR games coming from Valve now would be lame knowing the actual potential they have with VR.
Meh left 4 dead 2 is ok
@@PersonalAccountIndeed Well, I think it'd be best if they make a L4D3 game with VR support, so people who do and don't can play together.
Seems valve are focusing on vr because lets face it source 2 is probably the worst major game engine right now in terms mass use (unity and unreal) or visuals (unreal and cryengine) or artistic capability
@catz64 lol what? are you trying to say that L4D3 should be a VR only game? do you know how expensive that VR thing on 3rd world country that only small number of people can afford it? do you expect valve to lose half of their audience?
It sort of seems to me like once they completed Portal 2, their magnum opus, it was physically impossible to make anything better, so they got stuck and didn’t know what to do for awhile.
I completely disagree that it is physically impossible to make a game better than portal 2. Portal 2 is a flawed, as incredible as that game is. So is alyx, hl2 and the episodes, lfd2 ect.. They got stuck because of internal politics. Half of the company wanted to develop another game while developing a new engine (ala half life 2), and the other half wanted to wait until source 2 was finished. As well as this a lot of the higher ups at valve still didnt believe in vr and were making it very difficult for the devs to work. It's ironic too because as much as they like to say it source 2 isn't even finished, at least when alyx was shipped. Theyre isnt even functioning water lol
The happiest company With a lot of time and project Without worrying about money
That 3D office looks like if someone crumpled it up, threw it away, then actually needed it, so they did their best to un-crumple it
I can't understand one thing. Normally a game engine made in one or two years why it took fucking almost 7 years to finish it. Instead of working on several projects, they should've focused on finishing the damn engine.
Simple... because there was no pressure to finish it.
They got no shareholders to answer to. They got no deadline to answer to. They got no pressure to answer to.
Valve was a victim to its own "work on what you want" philosophy. Flexibility and creative freedom sounds like a dream work but it needed to have a sense of direction and focus.
TH-cam unsibscribed me recently but this came in my recommended and I'm glad to be back! Hopefully it wasnt many this happened to, cause your content has always kept me entertained! Really sucks that this stuff happens though :c
Who knows, maybe all the time that they lost in "the wilderness" means that they have a lot of interesting concepts and ideas just stored up but now with the right hardware and direction, they can tackle and possibly develop these ideas
crowbar: *tenderly touching bottle*
bottle: *explodes violently*
That time was not lost, I bet they learned a lot from all these projects. It is probably what makes Half-Life Alyx what it is now.
Exactly. Step by step, project by project, even if it goes nowhere specific.
Just as I finished VNN's highligths video on the final hours, I find out that I'm 30 minutes late for this as well, glad people are jumping on top of this so fast.
Imagine TF2 in Source 2
I'm sure it'll happen eventually.
@@randomcatdude It would be a bloody smissmas miracle
@@thatnongayfurry5063 Indeed. It'd actually run at a decent framerate!
It may be possible, but some say that it would look a LONG ASS TIME AND EFFORT to port a game to another engine. Anyways, TF2's current source engine is still decent, not great nor bad, just decent.
I appreciate the video length. 👌
11:23 "So his friend says "Only one key" so he takes out a comically large key, honestly, some hilarous shit man"
did anyone else notice that at 3:45 .. "HL3 Developement" tab, proves that they were starting to make a HL3 a some point, i guess that's when it got put on the backburner till ALYX was developed.
Valve starting lots of projects with excitement but never finishing them, that sounds a lot like me.
It's so heartbreaking to see so many projects cancelled
Truthfully, I care more about getting more Source 2 SDK tools into the hands of modders than I do about HL3 at this point. A second renaissance of Sourcemodding this time with VR support sounds way more enticing to me than a sequel I am now waiting more than 12 years for, I'm glad Alyx has more than demonstrated how fucking _good_ source 2 can look.
1:08 I love the black abyss in the office. That's were all the abandend project are thrown
Alyx is for Valve what Doom 2016 was for ID software, the return of a gaming powerhouse that went dark for a long time.
That was great and actually bitterly needed.
Thank you for that summary of very solid reasons we may still have no HL3, but also could get one that´s better than one could hope, great work !
A realy sad thing is that valve once did a official statement that Left for dead 3 was never in development and they flamed on Valve News network for saying so.
And now when they admit it, damage is done and nobody says otherwise.
Well, at least now we will be getting new games from Valve, possibly even L4D3
Seeing that timeline was insane. Tyler has been talking about all this stuff the whole time and no one believed him. I feel sorry for him.
they simply stated that it 'isn't in development at the time, but was for a brief period of time' which is more likely true, but doesn't mean that they cannot continue it later or even already did
VNN is dyslexic and from what i can tell his reading and understanding of article is somewhat strange
@@tochka832 That's because VNN reads what he wants to see. He can be a little intense when he doesn't get his way.....
Exil Desert VNN is basically a hack, tyler literally “reports” whatever he wants to, with little regard as to whether or not it’s actually true
I really hope HLA was indeed a starting step and that in future games they will properly introduce more VR features like body tracking, physics, melee, sprinting, jumping, etc.
Somehow that information makes me feel bad, so many years criticizing that they did nothing, when the jobs really were done, but they did not reach something satisfactory.
Which was better for them to let launch than launch to get more money, somehow, this gives me another perspective, although I may still be complaining, at least now because Valve's AntiCheat is still not very strict.
This is wonderful news. It sure was a sign when they released Alyx, but knowing why makes a world of difference, especially for the future. Can't wait to see their next announcement, whenever it may be.
Yeah, Half-Life Alyx was incredibly good, but I totally agree. It makes me excited to see what more Valve can do with VR. Or if this title has even given them fresh ideas for more flat-screen based video games. It definitely has seemed to help them get over the hurdle that Episode three left them at. Kinda seemed like they were fumbling around, like they didn't know exactly what they were doing. That all seems like a bad dream in the past now, hopefully Valve can keep this up.
I have to commend Valve for trying to give creative types freedom and have them spread their wings
honestly, it's something that's sorely needed in many parts of our modern industry (not just game development, but perhaps the entire working world as a whole)
the problem is that it's like Philip said:
creativity is good for starting something, but not always good for actually finishing it. Having a few of my hobbies consist of creative endeavors, this really speaks to me on an uncomfortably close level. It's so easy to start a new project after another, to shine in the afterglow of having realized an idea, this high that you get when you see the individual parts get together and you think to yourself "yes, this is it, this I can do something with" but when it actually becomes time to realize this dream, it often becomes a nightmare.
I'm glad Valve learned their lesson and I hope they'll stay with the philosophy that the golden middle is always the best path to take.
Looks like they were working on CS2!
Back 4 Blood: now im left 4 dead
Source 2: Are you sure about that
11:50
Better choice for melee in Alyx would have been to give her... Manhack with a handle. Basically a saw. Already coded in, has model and damage/hit detection don't depend on player swings so much.
And that point was made already by thousands of people before me... I guess? Maybe? At least I was mentioning it since seing the game, surely others also suggested it.
Or is there hidden technical difficulty with this approach?
They probably playtested it and didn't think it fit. Valve knows what they're doing when it comes to the stuff they cut and the stuff they leave in. everyone always thinks the cut content is better, but there's a reason they cut it in the first place. They extensively playtest and discover these things. It probably just wasn't as fun or detracted from the rest of the gameplay
@@3htthexy "detracted from the rest of the gameplay" most likely this one. ALyx is known for it's difficulty coming mostly from resource management and the item spawn adjusting items for players. Hence why people, who barely use shotgun to use it as emergency power boost barely find ammo for it, but people, who go with guns constantly empty are swimming in it. Having effective melee weapon ruins that balance by allowing player to skip it. Not to mention the whole emergent "teleporting psycho with a saw" gameplay that would have ruined the mood of the game by not suiting the character.
However I was speaking about solution to the problem, not why Valve decided against it. You don't have to calculate the speed and angle to make out damage of melee weapon, don't need to limit player so that they won't hit their hands with controllers on the wall or ceiling while bashing like madman and don't have to explain how Alyx does anything at all to heavily armored soldiers without using exosuit equipped HEV like Gordon does. Saw answers all of those questions. The fact that Valve didn't use it, is different question.
the worst part about manhacks is if you kill a combine soldier before he deploys it, he still has an undeployed manhack. You can't pick it up, you can just knock it off of its corpse and kinda push it around with your hand models.
Valve is like: Lets make something...
World of hardware and software: I don't think thats physically possible.
That's pretty interesting life lesson learned. Modern times are about "having the freedom to do whatever you want" but it only leads to loss of motivation. You won't live a good life if you just follow your whims. Making commitments and sticking with them through adversity is needed to achieve things.
Look at the the smoothenes of the picture while he showcases the source 1 and 2 engine. Worlds between those
WOAH WOAH WOAH. So does that mean that now that Source 2 is functional, Left 4 Dead 3 is in the foreseeable future??
Edit: AND HALF LIFE 3??
Another thing worth to note is that Valve did not like what Microsoft was doing in Windows 8 days, making them to move away from Microsoft's DirectX and rely on cross-platform open source ones instead such as SDL2, Vulkan/OpenGL (Mainly Vulkan) along with their own developed Steam Input, Steam Audio, SteamVR which are cross-platform and open source which definetly affected the development of Source 2 Engine in order to cover all 3 major OS on PC which are Windows, Mac and Linux.
Of course as a bonus. Apple kept shooting themselves in the foot with their questionable decisions which made Valve to drop SteamVR and Proton support on Mac, plus they had to buy out and make MoltenVK (Vulkan To Metal wrapper for Mac) FOSS (Free [as in freedom] and Open Source).
How did you get that rendered valve office to walk in? Where do i download that?
I know but I refuse to tell you
@@hdfheudjdjrheh1852 It's in the subreddit
@@hdfheudjdjrheh1852 aw man
@@mycelia_ow What subreddit?
Its the Half Life Alyx the final hours in steam, i am sure it was made clear in the video.
Gaben wearing that 3D-Eye puzzle polo is so '90s.
TF2: It truly is the final hours
Surrounded on all sides by hackers and Valve is no where to be seen
well whoever the one or two people working at TF2 is listening and there actually have been updates that helped with both hackers (kick) and bots (kick, chat restrictions, exploits), so I'd say that gives a glimmer of hope for TF2. plus they said it was postponed, but not outright cancelled, so there's still a chance!
@@alexpiggy this aged.. like a glass of milk that my dad bought 20 years ago.
That office scan wow
Source 2 has been cucking us for over a decade... and when it comes out I'm only gonna get 20 fps anyways :c
This was a really interesting look into Valve, and what they have been up to. Their "stay quiet until we release a game for certain" strategy of communication was seriously starting to get annoying. The only devs that has been different in Valve were the Steam Link and Steam Controller ones, they were on the boards chatting away - explaining difficulties and solutions, all while constantly asking for feedback and testing. It was so refreshing to see. Kudos for those devs leading the way to a more open Valve, and I really think they did.
The biggest questions is:
Of all the games that could have been, why was Artifact the one they released?
Quick buck.
From what they stated after its failure, it seems like in the flat structure some of the artifact members had enough charisma to hold the team together long ejough to release the game, but didnt actually have the proficiency to make the game any good
@@luminomancer5992 its actually fun but to niche to ever be as good as the casual card game in how complicated it is and also many Card game creators were involved in the production right off the start which made many of the original dev team to not leave before any groundwork was done.
the main reason is it could be run on phones. That's why they also immediately started pushing Dota Underlords: multiplatform can run on phones.
Valve wants to get into the mobile gaming market because it sells even more microtransactions. MTX is the main source of revenue for valve after Steam game sales. They make hundreds of millions off of CSGO and Dota 2 a year.
how that 3D scan looks gives me nightmare vibes
2:52 did u freakin AI upscaled the games thumbnails?
The biggest oversight Geoff made in this book was claiming that Lazslo appeared in Episode 2, and not just the main game. I also think one sentence in there missed an 'and' between words.
But since the book shows a v.1.0 when it's launched, I hope he's able to fix the Laszlo mistake, CS:GO gloves mistake, and maybe even polish up the 3D valve office thing.
I have a theory on what the end of Half-Life Alyx means for the narrative (spoiler warning):
My theory surmises that Gordon’s true obligation by the end was to get Alyx to White Forest to guarantee Alyx’s hiring within G-Man’s restrictions. G-Man used Gordon for the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 but knew all along he would be betrayed by Gordon, so he invested in Alyx as well by saving her from Black Mesa. He only continued his investment in Gordon during Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and 2 because Gordon could protect Alyx. The possible future that includes Eli’s death would happen if G-Man doesn’t take Alyx. I’ll call it the “original future”, even though it’s not the future that came to be. Since Alyx chose to protect Eli, she basically chose a different outcome, preventing the “original” future from happening. Think of it like Gordon’s choice in HL1 between living in stasis or dying against Grunts. She chose which outcome would happen.
The reason G-Man didn’t just change everything and forcibly take Alyx into stasis whenever he wanted is because he has to “abide by certain restrictions”. I think he can see possible futures, but he can’t change a past that has already happened. Basically, I think he’s required to operate in the same present day as everybody else has to, and he can’t nudge stuff from their past. I think that swapping Eli and Alyx was required for G-Man’s plan to work. In both possible futures, Eli and Alyx are the only two people directly impacted, so one has to swap with the other to be able to change the outcome. Instead of Eli dying and Alyx living, Alyx is taken and Eli lives. It’s the cleanest way to differentiate the futures.
This all leads me to think that G-Man isn’t travelling back in time or anything like that. He’s just clairvoyant about what will happen in the future, so he manipulates people in the present to allow him to change stuff later. At this point, the events of Half-Life: Alyx are still technically the present. I think that a new timeline wasn’t created, Alyx just gets to exchange the “original” outcome for a new outcome. All the events leading up to either future would be basically the same, including her visiting the Vault, but they would differ at White Forest, because that’s where the events diverge based on her choice.
That’s why Gordon needs to bring Alyx there regardless of which future she picks. Both futures (the “original” one that was prevented and the one that she chose) involved White Forest. He can only put Alyx in stasis after he saves Eli because he has to keep both timeline the same up until the moment where he nudges. Once G-Man has saved Eli with a nudge, the similarities between futures end, eliminating the other future from happening, and G-Man’s end of the deal is done. Alyx is contractually obligated to hold up her part of the deal, which means she must now be taken.
Here’s a summary: with the events of Half-Life: Alyx as the present day, G-Man offered Alyx a choice between futures. She could choose the outcome of what happens at White Forest. Because these two futures would have the same events up until the Advisor attack, Alyx must inevitably reach White Forest. Both futures hadn’t happened yet, so she could choose which one happens. Since she chose to exchange her life for Eli’s, the “original” future (where G-Man doesn’t save Eli) never happens. An exchange was the preferable way to do the deal because it means the two people affected (Eli and Alyx) can exchange without changing anybody else. As soon as the attack at White Forest happens, G-Man enacts his nudge, closing the timeline into the future she chose. Alyx is taken to close her end of the deal, and there’s no loose ends on the timeline. No time travel or paradoxes involved, just G-Man acting during the present and future.
*So what does this means for the timeline of the Half-Life series?*
-The ending of Half-Life 2: Episode Two didn’t happen. It happened in a potential future that was used by G-Man to manipulate Alyx into giving herself up. The ending to Alyx is what actually happened as she chose that outcome. One future was exchanged for the other.
-It means G-Man knew Gordon would be taken eventually, but may not have known the exact way, since Vortigaunts act out of time and space like he does.
-It also means that there are technically no simultaneous timelines or time paradoxes going on, just two different events at White Forest to choose from. G-Man only changes what happens at White Forest, so either choice wouldn’t affect the preceding events, meaning nothing about Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 was changed.
-Half-Life: Alyx didn’t happen in a new timeline G-Man created. It actually happened before the Half-Life 2 we know. This means even in Half-Life 2, Alyx had already made this deal. They’re probably gonna explain it as G-Man erasing her memory of what she found in the Vault.
I think you're right. In HL2, HL2:E1 and HL2:E2, when Alyx dies you get a message
Assignment: Terminated
Subject: Gordon
Reason: Subject failed to protect mission critical resources
It seems implied that that message is coming from gman. And therefore gman wants or needs Alyx alive, otherwise game could just fade to black and not show this message.
Only point at which Alyx is allowed to 'die' is when vortigons are there to save her, allowing gman to have a chat with you and deliver message to Eli.
I think by this logic all HL2 games were in timeline gman was creating to get Alyx on his side, so I think your theory is right.
Iridium The events of Half-Life 1, 2, Episode 1, and most of Episode 2 still happen the exact same regardless of what future she chooses. The only place the futures differ is during the Advisor attack in White Forest. G-Man told Gordon that Alyx was his investment during his heart to heart in Episode 2, so that has been confirmed.
@@KizaruB you said that gman doesn't travel back in time, but is instead only able to nudge the timeline by being clairvoyant. You also said that Gordon's purpose was just to protect Alyx up until Advisor attack, right?
I said I agree and I pointed the "assignment terminated" as extra proof for this idea that gman planned all along to recruit Alyx.
Iridium You’re right. If I sounded like I was disagreeing, that wasn’t my intent. We agree on the theory, and that’s what matters.
I think that game over message is just a coincidence. That same message appears in Half-Life 1 if you kill important scientists and in Half-Life 2 if Barney dies or you submerge the Scout car. I do agree that it probably represents G-Man like you said.
hahahah lol
now source 2 is ready and we expect a new game in 3 years
People saying "Nice vid" 4 mins ago when the video was uploaded 10 minutes ago and is 14 minutes long :/
Nice Comment
Der Jens nice reply
TheOneEyedGhost nice sentence
12:45 dude sips his whisky during particularly exhausting work I guess :D :D
I can imagine CDPR had similar issues with their game engine for Cyberpunk 2077 development
Thank you for making this. I love Valve and they have made so many great games. I didn't realize the turmoil they had internally and it makes me appreciate Alyx so much more.