Responsible for one of the most beloved videogame narratives ever, Marc Laidlaw's impact on the Half-Life series can never be understated. He retired from Valve way back in 2016, but his inclusion in last year's documentary celebrating the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 put a smile on fans' faces. In a new interview, Laidlaw says that while it was nice to "put a bow on that stuff [and] see a bunch of old friends," he would still "definitely" reject an offer to return to Valve to work on Half-Life 3.
In the couple of years after his exit from Valve, Laidlaw made his general fatigue with Half-Life – and writing for Half-Life 3, he would categorically say no.
"I would not do that," he tells IGN. "I can definitely say I would not do that. Even when I was there, I started to feel like, 'Oh, now I'm the old guy shooting stuff down.' I think at some point you need to let the people who are the fans and the creators who've come in because of what they learned from you maybe, and let them have that. We need new stuff. We didn't need me going, 'Well, the G-Man wouldn't do that in my day.' And I found I had to restrain myself. People would get enthusiastic about stuff, and I felt like it was becoming a negative force on some of the creative process."
"I don't know what's going on with anything [at Valve]," Laidlaw adds. "And it is not really my place. God knows what it's doing in of creative process of how to get a great experience that will surprise people. And you have to be right at the edge of what you can do in a moment. And I'm not on that edge anymore."
Laidlaw says he would consider working on a videogame again – he mentions that some of the writing in Death Stranding frustrated him and would've loved to have worked with Hideo Kojima by ing over its script. However, he asserts that "the Half-Life part of my life is way behind me."
It does sound like his contribution to the Half-Life 2 documentary last year was a positive and rewarding experience for him, despite the distance he's kept from Valve and its games. "It was good for me to just kind of process and put a bow on that stuff, see a bunch of old friends, think about that, the whole thing," he says. "I hadn't talked to or seen a lot of those people for a long time. I still stay in touch with a few folks, but they're also not really there anymore. I don't know what's going on there right now, but it was fun to hang out with people and talk it over and it was therapeutic."
Half-Life 3 currently remains one of gaming's biggest mysteries. Despite there being no official word from Valve that it's being worked on, there's been a breadcrumb trail of hints and rumors for a while now. A concept artist that worked with the company recently said keep cropping up in updates to Valve's games.
Until we hear anything official about HL3 (if we ever do, that is) here are some of the PC games.
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