Our colleagues from Rock Paper Shotgun publish a interview very interesting from the scriptwriter of Half-Life, which we invite you to read in full. Recall that Marc Laidlaw, who left Valve in 2016, worked on all the installments in the series, with the exception of the last, Half-Life: Alyx (2020). Are you allergic to the language of Shakespeare? Here are the main things to remember.
- Laidlaw regrets releasing the script for Episode 3 in 2017 as fanfiction, in a moment of bewilderment. If he deplores the negative impact that his publication may have had on his former colleagues at Valve, he specifies that it was his vision of the plot at the time, nothing engraved in stone, therefore. He further considers that the final storyline can only emerge during development.
- Merging the universes of Half-Life and Portal was not his basic idea, he had to deal with it.
- The screenwriter emphasizes the importance of teamwork at Valve in his writing process. Designing the story of Half-Life meant, for him, working closely with the level designers, and this since the very first game:
Very good level design tells its own story. No need for NPCs popping up to tell you what to do, if the visual grammar you’ve put together is clear enough. […] Telling a story through architecture [des niveaux] was my obsession. The storytelling had to be integrated into the corridors.
Otherwise, in case you missed it, a fan recently released a mod that brings raytracing to the first game in the series. And finally, it’s a gift, here a little whiff of nostalgia in music.
The complete collection of Half-Life is available on this page Steam, for the modest sum of €32.40. And three times less during sales.