The Half-Life franchise has inspired many PC gamers since it started in 1998, but the writer behind most of the plot has expressed regrets about the story and how he shared the story of Episode 3. Many Half-Life fans have anticipated the release of Half-Life 3, while others still hope for Episode 3, and details about the franchise's development continue to emerge several years later.

Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw was recently interviewed by Rock Paper Shotgun, and he gave his perspective on the storytelling of the Half-Life series and how Episode 3 was handled. Although it didn't scratch the itch of all the Half-Life fans hoping for a new game when it was released in 2020, Half-Life: Alyx roughly continued the series' plot and introduced it to virtual reality. For the Half-Life players that felt Alyx wasn't enough, Marc Laidlaw has posted the Episode 3 story to his website which is something he now finds "deranged."

RELATED: Half-Life Mod Shows What the Game Looks Like With Ray Tracing

Marc Laidlaw only imagined the Half-Life series going until Half-Life 2: Episode 3, but the third part never came out which inspired him to post an outline of the story online shortly into his retirement. Laidlaw speculated that this public drop of the Half-Life 2: Episode 3 story caused friends in the industry some trouble and "made their lives harder," but it also tied together a lot of loose threads for fans of the franchise as well. Though some fans walked away from the Episode 3 outline shared by Laidlaw with satisfaction, the writer also stated that "what people got wasn’t Episode 3 at all" because it was detached from the full game development process.

half-life-gordon-freeman

Because Marc Laidlaw had already left Valve before posting the Episode 3 outline to his website, there was little recourse for the Half-Life development studio. Laidlaw also reflects on some issues in the earlier games, stating that he was "appalled" at himself when he went back later to discover that he drew so much inspiration for the Half-Life Karras broadcasts from Thief. One of the reasons that the writer left the studio in 2016 was because he grew tired of the FPS genre's limitations, and he suggested that his interest in solving narrative problems that are "inherent in a Half-Life style" story faded.

Based on Marc Laidlaw's take on the Half-Life 2: Episode 3 story controversy, it seems that he'd do things differently if it were today as he was left feeling "embarrassed." Considering Half-Life: Alyx renewed the franchise with a modern audience, the fans wishing for Half-Life 3 may still have something to hold onto with what's left of the story to be told based on the Episode 3 outline from Laidlaw.

MORE: How Valve’s Early Success Impacts The Company Today

Source: Rock Paper Shotgun