Half Life is not the first series to die (it might as well be dead since it has been ten years now since HL2) but I cannot think of any other example where such a major game didn't get a sequel. Half Life was huge! HL2 was my favorite FPS for a long time and is still a contender for that. To not make a sequel seems crazy! Sure HL3 might be under development but the fact that is hasn't been released yet seems absurd.
I know that Valve makes a lot of money on Steam, probably a lot more than their own games combined, getting a cut of all games sold. But HL3 would have bring in a lot of money if it had come out. It's not like they stopped making games. I cannot imagine that no matter how succesfull Portal 2 was they would not have made more money with HL3. You might say that they wanted to work with something new and not make a sequel but Portal 2 and Team Fortress 2 are both sequels.
So back to the question, can you think of anything as big as Half Life where they stopped making games. And Tony Hawk and such doesn't count because that has to do with dwindling interest. No one was tired of Half Life. No one said "I wish they would take a break from making Half Life games". They just stopped, at the peak and I cannot imagine that whenever HL3 does come out it will be as big of a deal as it would have been 5 or 6 years ago when people still remembered Half Life. When it comes out we will be fathers and grand father talking about how Half Life was cool when we were their age,
Halo, Gears of War or Call of Duty need a break, Half Life never needed a break. It would be like CoD taking a ten year break after the first Modern Warfare.
Sorry for the long rant but listening to the bombcast mentioning HL3 just made me pissed again that Valve ignored their roots. Half Life was Valve and Valve was Half Life. I don't even know how I would react to an announcement of HL3 at this point. It would be like my girl friend from when I was 15 came back and asked to be together again. I would say she had her chance and I am with someone else now. It would have to be the best FPS ever for me to even care.
Log in to comment