Half-Life, the father of all FPS games, is perhaps one of the very first of its genre to have come with in-game story telling. Half-Life has the perfect balance between hardcore, fast paced shooting experience and nail-biting story which would compel you ask several questions as you play the game.
The pleasure of shooting aliens enslaved by Nihilanth, an alien warlord who has appeared from the depths of Xen(a borderworld, a plane of existence connecting two or more dimensions) to take over earth while listening to the conservation of numerous scientists, guards and other personnel of the Black Mesa facility to figure out the story was indeed, a very unique way of keeping the players engaged with the game for long.
But sadly enough, the game which has over fifty PC GOTY awards has not managed to arrive to a conclusion yet. If you are an avid gamer and have played all of the Half Life games, you would know that every one of them end with peculiar cliff hangers. Half-Life 2 Episode 2 was one such instalment which ended with yet another huge question mark which was never answered. Ever since then, people have been going psycho to figure out what the actual mystery behind the Half-Life lore is.
Yesterday, Marc Laidlaw, the writer of the Half-Life games answered the inevitable question which people have asked for long.
In an interview with Arcade Attack a popular gaming blog, he was asked:
‘Do you have any idea whether Half-Life 3 will ever be released and would you be willing to work on this title?’
To which he replied:
“No idea. And I have no interest in going back. I had ideas for Episode 3. They were all supposed to take the series to a point where I could step away from it and leave it to the next generation. I had hoped for a reset between HL2 and HL3 that was as dramatic as the shift between HL1 and HL2. I honestly don’t know if anyone else shared this goal, but it seemed important to me to give ultimate freedom to whoever inherited the series, with my own personal set of loose ends tied up to my satisfaction. Unfortunately, I was not able to do that. But I never thought as far ahead as HL3, unless you were to say that HL3 and Episode 3 were the same thing. I will say that I expected every installment would end without resolution, forever and ever…there was some rumor going around that Ep3 or HL3 would end Gordon Freeman’s story, and I don’t think that was accurate. My intention was that Ep3 would simply tie up the plot threads that were particular to HL2. But it would still end like HL1 and HL2, with Gordon in an indeterminate space, on hold, waiting for the next game to begin. So one cliffhanger after another.”
So, Even if Valve made another Half-Life game it would have probably ended with yet another conundrum to which there would be no solution. With the passage of time, there would be demand for another Half-Life game and after that another. Perhaps, it is safe to say that the Half-Life franchise is better off left without a final conclusion, for it would certainly never reach an end and keep on inflating till the time comes when people decide to abandon it.