Marc Laidlaw, Lead Writer for Half-Life Franchise, Retires

[qwertywarrior]

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Marc Laidlaw is an author of science fiction, who wrote much of the story of Half-Life, its expansions, and Half-Life 2. Valve's flat corporate structure (at least at the time) makes it difficult to find out who did what. All employees are listed alphabetically in the credits. He hasn't been given a lot of public credit since Half-Life 2, though.

 

 

Whatever he's been working on, he has since retired from the company after eighteen years. On his way out, he emailed a Reddit user with opinions regarding his departure, because that's a Valve thing to do I guess. Gamasutra confirmed it's true. It's a relatively short, interview format letter. The Reddit user apparently initiated contact and didn't realize Marc had just retired.

 

half life 3 ..... denied 

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Marc-Laidlaw-Lead-Writer-Half-Life-Franchise-Retires

[zacRupnow]

So Half-Life 3 script is finished?

[Albatross]

lol

 

 

It is never gonna happen.

[Bouzoo]

According to some sources he said he won't be writing HL3, which, if you wanna play semantics, could mean someone else will. For those who want it to see the light od day. 

[alexyy]

I want it to happen and suck so everyone shuts up over it.

[Zah]

Damn, 18 years.  That is a long time to be writing games in one company.  And he arrived older than most people.

 

At least Wolpaw is still on board, that guy is great.

[Ekpyrosis]

Valve released their last game with a plot in 2011, so I figure they don't need writers that badly.

[MoonSpot]

 

Still waiting.

[Misanthrope]

*gets ready for the flames* So the writer for a mostly open ended, exploring game with a silent protagonist retires....oh wow what a fucking loss this is to the franchise.

[HalGameGuru]

When people were first mentioning it it sounded a lot more like he left Valve and was heading out to work somewhere else. Retiring, I hope, is a less contentious course of events. Power to him though, maybe some future novel or story he gets to ideate for will have some obvious VG influence.

[Timmy-P]

*gets ready for the flames* So the writer for a mostly open ended, exploring game with a silent protagonist retires....oh wow what a fucking loss this is to the franchise.

With all due respect, that's not the best way to look at it.  Although the protagonist was silent, there is still a great deal of lore and backstory that's given through the dialogue of others, how the game plays out, etc. that he can be held responsible for.  Half-Life can have an arguably good story if you know where to look.

 

But yeah, I agree that they won't be needing him for a while.  I'm starting to wonder if he'll continue in his line of work for other companies, which can spice things up in terms of the plot of some games that need it, and can even be a selling point for said games (eg, From the same writers of the Half-Life franchise...).

[Misanthrope]

With all due respect, that's not the best way to look at it.  Although the protagonist was silent, there is still a great deal of lore and backstory that's given through the dialogue of others, how the game plays out, etc. that he can be held responsible for.  Half-Life can have an arguably good story if you know where to look.

 

But yeah, I agree that they won't be needing him for a while.  I'm starting to wonder if he'll continue in his line of work for other companies, which can spice things up in terms of the plot of some games that need it, and can even be a selling point for said games (eg, From the same writers of the Half-Life franchise...).

 

How you tell a story can be pretty important, even more than the narrative itself in fact and HL1 and 2 the how is what made it unique: before HL1 most shooters had levels, objectives, they were just purposeless mazes for you to shoot the fuck out of people. Half life told most of its story through the "stages" instead of just arbitrarily deciding "Ok, time for the ice level! done with that? Well sewer level now!" We take that for granted now but it started on games like HL1

 

Certainly not something a "writer" just does: it uniquely utilizes the interactivity of the game itself to tell the story.

[marldorthegreat]

lol

 

 

It is never gonna happen.

It was never going to happen, atleast for the last 10 years because we have it. half life 1  half life 2, and then half life chapter 1 is half life 3. A joke.