Comment by hamdingers
2 days ago
They decided to make it a prequel for fear of not living up to the name, the decision was made much earlier. If you're at all familiar with the contents of Alyx and the Half-Life franchise it wouldn't have made any sense to call it HL3.
In a narrow sense, it did move along the story point at the end of HL2 (I won’t explain how because there’s no way to do so without massive spoilers). But yeah, it would be weird to call in HL3 just because of that.
Ah, haven't gotten the chance to play it yet. But the same implication - we'll need someone at Valve with a big enough ego to take up the mantle.
I don't think that's how the people at Valve think. These people usually have lifetime dreams to work at Valve well before they do because they admired those early games so much, which if you know the story were held up to very high standards internally and repeatedly. They spent their lives being hyper critical of their own craft and admire Valve because they don't a release subpar product as a rule. So collectively they'll have a LOT of collective ego tied up in whatever that product is, but it's not like "I own this", that would be highly anathema.
I think that fits with how they think. HL3 has mythical status. We've already seen Valve devs make a major game in the HL universe and intentionally avoid "making HL3" due to this mythos. It takes a lot of confidence to say "Hey guys, I'm putting together the team to make Sistine Chapel 2."
(To be clear, I'm not saying it's a matter of ownership and personal brand. But someone needs to start the project and form a team around it. I don't think they're worried about personal brand, it's more an issue of reverence for the franchise.)