Yout thoughts on how ep3 would go..

[Narvi]

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=611372

Why are you assuming they're making a dynamic climate system? That just shows they are paying attention to the realism in their level design.

Source already is capable of climate effects.

 

[phenomx93]

I dont think alyx will be as happy as she was in ep2, her old man jus died

 

[poppy]

We'll be given the choice on either saving Alyx or blowing up Borealis. Oh yes.

 

[Kon]

Does anyone else think dr. kliener would be a more suitable companion in ep3?

 

[ShadowX]

Does anyone else think dr. kliener would be a more suitable companion in ep3?

Just like he was in Half Life 1 right?

 

[Iron_cube]

Scis were actually useful in hl1

They healed you when you had less than 50 hit points

 

[jimmyjam]

Breen For Sidekick '08

 

[dogboy73]

I think it would be good to see lots of new stuff in EP3 but I don't think we will. There has not been a great deal of new stuff since HL2. Valve just add a couple of things here & there. A couple of enemies in each new episode & nothing in the way of weapons other than the Strider buster.

I think Valve will save all the new stuff for Half Life 3, if they do infact work on a HL3 (there's some confusion that the Episodes are infact HL3 but I don't think this is the case. The episodes are just that - further Episodes of HL2). HL3 could be the leap that HL2 was from the original. So maybe we'll see lots of new enemies, it will be set in a future time (as HL2 was from HL) ..... but the weapons will be the same!! Actually, I'd hope to see at least a few new weapons for any future HL games

I think it would be cool to get to use the Apeture gun in EP3 but this would mean Vave would have to break tradition & allow us to see Freeman. I don't think that's anywhere near likely unless Valve use it as a way to reveal some startling revelation about Freeman. There was a train of thought suggesting that the G-Man was infact Gordon Freeman. Could this still be possible? He's been guiding us, like some irresitible force, througout the whole series so far. We also learnt in EP2 that he rescued Gordon's love interest & sidekick, Alyx, from Black Mesa. Is this further to his own interest?

Some people seem a bit concerned that EP3 will centre on the Borealis & getting there. I think it will centre on the latter but I don't think this means we will see a repetative environment (i.e. artic tundra) by any stretch of the imagination. Valve have never let us down in the department & the continually come up with interesting new environments to set the game in. Even if it's all set up North & everything's a bit on the white side, we could still have a huge range of environments - forests, towns & villages, frozen tundra, secret underground research facilities & bases, ice caves etc, etc. And we will of course get to explore the Borealis.

 

[Shift]

There was a train of thought suggesting that the G-Man was infact Gordon Freeman. Could this still be possible? He's been guiding us, like some irresitible force, througout the whole series so far. We also learnt in EP2 that he rescued Gordon's love interest & sidekick, Alyx, from Black Mesa. Is this further to his own interest?

G-Man is not Gordon. Whoever came up with the idea in first place needs to be hunted down for crying out loud. A monkey could find a better plot twist than that.

 

[phenomx93]

how can gordon be gman, he is saving himself, locking himself for later use, and watching himself?! Nah, gman has a bttr chance of being an advisor in tht, but he isnt

 

[Gray Fox]

Maybe they find a working teleporter in the borealis and gordon and alyx use a teleporter in white forest to get to the borealis.

 

[Absinthe]

I'm pretty sure they have already planned this out. A different team has been working on Episode 3 alongside Episode 2, and in all likeliness they've made their ends meets already.

You will probably start off right where Ep2 left off. Some grieving, some exposition, blah blah blah. But you will indeed be taking a chopper flight. My guess is something will happen early on to black you out. And there are quite a few plausible ways of making that happen. Maybe you get hit by something during an attack on the chopper. Maybe G-Man has one of his space/time warping interludes. Whatever it is, I'm sure Valve will not disappoint us.

 

[Irksome]

I'm pretty sure they have already planned this out. A different team has been working on Episode 3 alongside Episode 2, and in all likeliness they've made their ends meets already.

I had forgotten about that until you mentioned it - the fact that Valve is/was developing EP3 alongside EP2 which had always lead me to believe that EP3 is going to be by far the longest of all three episodes, and probably the fastest released - unless the game is going to be so robust that it takes another 12 months + the time they've been working on it up until now to finish. Regardless I have a strong feeling that EP3 will be epic.

 

[Shift]

I do have a good feeling that EP3 will be out within months, I just think Valve are reluctant to much about it until it does come out.

 

[Irksome]

I do have a good feeling that EP3 will be out within months, I just think Valve are reluctant to much about it until it does come out.

A few months seems too optimistic - I've heard Summer 08' thrown around a lot lately and that seems pretty realistic if your working off the assumption that the game has been under serious development alongside EP2 for some time. If that assumption turns out to be completely unfounded then I'd say we'll be playing EP3 next fall at the earliest, Q1 2009 being the latest.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

"Its not fair. Its just not ****ing fair!" Alyx Vance screams out at the top of voice, cradling her dead father in her arms. Gordon remains to stunned to move. He couldn't believe it. Eli...dead...his long time friend and mentor...gone forever.
In the background, Kliener and Magnusson can be heard arguing over some obscure thing. They enter the room.
"Alyx, we came in to say...MY GOD!"
Kliener, Magnusson and Uriah run over. Despite their demands to know what happened, Alyx continues sobbing. Eventually she looks at Uriah. Through her sobs are barely disernable words - "Uriah..."
"There is nothing we can do" the vorigaunt replies sadly.
"There must be something..." Alyx begs, having long since cried all her tears.
"We will try, but do not trust hope - it has betrayed us"

After that, there is another combine attack on white forest, which alyx fights in fervently. Eventually, after a rushed funeral, Gordon and Alyx take the chopper and begin flying towards the artic.
Cue gman moment, which offers some new expostion, particulary invovling the borealis and whats on-board, some of his plans for it, etc.


After that, who knows?

 

[Hondo]

It's going to show father Grigori lying on the floor shooting GET TO DA CHOPPAAAAA!!!

 

[dogboy73]

I do have a good feeling that EP3 will be out within months.

Months?! Months of Valve time maybe. I reckon this time next year earliest.

 

[Shift]

Just a feeling, probably false hope lol.

 

[scotland1]

stuff

Agree. It should go something along those lines.

 

[leib10]

I'm pretty sure they have already planned this out. A different team has been working on Episode 3 alongside Episode 2, and in all likeliness they've made their ends meets already.

You will probably start off right where Ep2 left off. Some grieving, some exposition, blah blah blah. But you will indeed be taking a chopper flight. My guess is something will happen early on to black you out. And there are quite a few plausible ways of making that happen. Maybe you get hit by something during an attack on the chopper. Maybe G-Man has one of his space/time warping interludes. Whatever it is, I'm sure Valve will not disappoint us.

I'm going to go with this one.

I think that we will fall asleep on the chopper, cue G-Man scene, and at the same time get close enough to the Borealis that even if we do get shot down, we can make it on foot.

 

[Chug a Bug]

Half Life 2 Episode 3: Revenge of the Gnomes.

This will involve the revelation that G-man is in fact working for the Gnomes, a hithero unknown force in the HL universe. The Gnomes that everyone places in their gardens are in fact a Trojan Horse army awaiting the right moment to rise up and begin the final overthrow of mankind, the Combine are merely pawns in the plan to soften up Earth beforehand. The final scene will involve Gordon fighting a boss fight with The Great Goblin, before being knocked down and about to be run through by a two foot high Gnome armed with a deadly fishing rod...

What?

 

[cyk]

I've got a little plan for the game. The intro, mainly.

It starts with the sound of a helicopter (a throwback to Op4, maybe Sheppard could have an appearance ). Fade in from title to you sitting next to Alyx over churning seas below. Music playing, credits showing, etc. Alyx is sitting, silent, looking at the screens of the helicopter (and of course, out the windshield).

It's not much, but hell, knowing Valve, we'd have a crash within a few minutes to shake everything up (and to create an arbitrary quest to get to the damn boat).

 

[LordPomposity]

What I'd like to see for the start:

We pick up exactly where we left off. Alyx is crying over her father's body, and our weapons lay strewn about us, broken and twisted to the point of uselessness by the Advisors' telekinetic attack (thus giving us a reason to collect them all...again. It would be interesting to get them out of the usual order this time around, e.g. a sequence with just the crossbow and .357 or something to that effect).

After a few seconds, Dr. Kleiner enters to see us off and begins to say something upbeat before noticing Eli's body ("Gordon! Alyx! I wish you the best of--oh my god!"). Before he can say anything else, Magnusson enters alongside Uriah and begins to say something pompous enough to fit the character without reducing the scene to farce. The he, too, noticed that Eli is dead and sounds the alarm, then demands to know exactly what the hell is going on. He, Kleiner, and Uriah get into a rather heated discussion about Eli, Borealis, and pretty much everything else (thereby filling in both players who started Episode 3 without playing Episode 2).

The argument lasts about thirty seconds before another alarm sounds, and we hear an announcement that yet another wave of Combine forces have made it to White Forest--and with the gravity gun just as ruined as the rest of our weapons, there's no holding off the amount of striders these latest attackers have brought with them.

Magnusson and Kleiner make hasty plans to cover our escape so that we can find Borealis1, saying that they'll get as many other people as possible out through the underground passages before detonating one of the nuclear missiles in White Forest's silos (this particular part may be getting a little bit grandiose, but hey, a little nuclear holocaust here and there allows Valve to "showcase the capabilities of the Source engine" ).

The sounds of distant gunfire erupts, mostly MP7s and AR2s, but with the telltale input of strider and gunship weapons. Dog more or less drags Alyx into the helicopter along with Eli's body, while a rebel who entered the hangar following the first alarm comments that Alyx is in no condition to fly and offers to do so for us. We hop in the helicopter, and the hangar doors slide open ahead of us. The guy who "kills Hunters with his bare hands" runs screaming across the field in front of the doors, followed closely by a Hunter. The AR2 instructor runs into view and disintegrates the Hunter with an AR2 energy orb.

We lurch out of the hangar and sweep low over the unfolding battle, which is more of a slaughter than anything else. We take some machine gun fire on the way out, and make an evasive climb as a strider tries to hit us with its main cannon. The maneuver results in our rotors chopping up an Advisor the moment we see it, covering the canopy with an aesthetically pleasing amount of gore. However, the collision kills our pilot, as typically happens to nameless NPCs who try to help Gordon Freeman in a firefight.

The helicopter spirals out of control, but Alyx leaps into the pilot's seat and pulls up just in time. The helicopter briefly turns around, allowing us to see a nuclear fireball consume White Forest and the Combine forces. A dead Combine soldier flies through the canopy, and we black out.

We wake up a few hours later to find the helicopter grounded. We exit the helicopter to find Alyx and Dog in the process of laying Eli into a grave. We get a little commentary as to how we've finally woken up, followed by a brief funeral for Eli. Alyx explains that we took a hit to one of the fuel tanks, and that she had to put down a few hundred miles north of White Forest to find more gas. That little errand takes the next hour or so, and then we're off to find Borealis.

Well, that was a little bit more involved than I planned on. It's a good thing I didn't think out the rest of the episode...

 

[Shift]

Yeh quite enjoyed that, loved the 'guy who can kill hunters with bare hands bit' that would be sweet.

 

[Nitre]

Wait, I forgot about the climate system they are putting in Episode 3. I think they will run into bad weather which will cause the chopper to crash.

I agree with that to an extent. I reckon we'll jump in the choppa and then crash at some point before our destination (possibly resulting in the loss of weapons ) and then we'll have to trek some way to reach the Borealis.

 

[Iron_cube]

Technically we start the hl2 games unarmed, so we have to wake up after something went wrong. Maybe a heli crash.

I dont think there will be any helicopter interaction, you either just sit and wait and then the screen fades black because something bad happens again or wake up in the arctic.

 

[cyk]

Technically we start the hl2 games unarmed, so we have to wake up after something went wrong. Maybe a heli crash.

Maybe the advisor broke your weapons?

 

[leib10]

They seem to be more than capable of that, given what that one did to that 55 gallon drum.

 

[Iron_cube]

I just noticed how the advisors actually break the helicopter blades...

That changes everything :O

 

[cyk]

I just noticed how the advisors actually break the helicopter blades...

That changes everything :O

:O Screenshot?

 

[leib10]

I just noticed how the advisors actually break the helicopter blades...

That changes everything :O

Uh, no they don't. They were always folded back in the storage position, and they don't move from that position throughout the entire scene.

 

[Iron_cube]

Ah, pardon me then.

 

[leib10]

It's cool.

That really would've changed things for Episode Three!

 

[Omnomnick]

I think episode 3 will begin with the good old 'Half Life 2 Episode 3' bit, then fade out to a clear screen in the back of the helicopter. With back door shut you move towards the front, where alyx is piloting, jumper hood up, saying nothing. Then a loud alarm will sound signalling helicopter damage, alyx will then yell about combine in the area, before shouting 'hang on' (as she always does). The heli will then plumit towards the ground, screen fades to black. Alyx will then be infront of you nugging you shoulder whispering 'Gordon, gordon, we've got to get out of here', before standing and exiting out the rear of the copter, soon followed by Gordon. Alyx then explains the situation and explains her plan before pointing to a large glaciar holding the borielis rear end and a section of the dry dock...
Hope you like me vision of how episode 3 will start

 

[Stene]

Emmett Brown gave the timemachine-DeLorean to Gordon when Combine had won everything and so Gordon got back in time and guided himself! In blue suit!

C'mon guys GMan isn't Gordon. It was also confirmed by Valve.

I think that intro to Ep3 would be nice when we hear the "Hello, and welcome to the Black Mesa transit system" then there would be various speeches from both games like "Forget about Freeman, we are pulling out" and "Dr. Freeeman, we meet at lasssst".

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

I think episode 3 will begin with the good old 'Half Life 2 Episode 3' bit, then fade out to a clear screen in the back of the helicopter. With back door shut you move towards the front, where alyx is piloting, jumper hood up, saying nothing. Then a loud alarm will sound signalling helicopter damage, alyx will then yell about combine in the area, before shouting 'hang on' (as she always does). The heli will then plumit towards the ground, screen fades to black. Alyx will then be infront of you nugging you shoulder whispering 'Gordon, gordon, we've got to get out of here', before standing and exiting out the rear of the copter, soon followed by Gordon. Alyx then explains the situation and explains her plan before pointing to a large glaciar holding the borielis rear end and a section of the dry dock...
Hope you like me vision of how episode 3 will start

The problem with that is that A) After seeing Eli die we learn nothing new about the others reactions B) It doesn't lead off from directly where epi two ended, like Epitwo does for EpiOne.

 

[Apocalypse89]

The guy who "kills Hunters with his bare hands" runs screaming across the field in front of the doors, followed closely by a Hunter. The AR2 instructor runs into view and disintegrates the Hunter with an AR2 energy orb.

You win 20 awesome points.

 

[Agent G-Man]

I'm hoping that Barney will join with Gordon and Alyx in their flight to the Borealis. I miss Barney.

 

[LandStander]

Well since ep1 and ep2 begin at the moment the previous entry ended, I hope that it continues in that fashion.