Gabe Newell ponders the future in new Half-Life 2 documentary: 'I think that Half-Life represents a tool we have and promises made to customers'

Gabe Newell in Half-Life 25th Anniversary documentary video

(Image credit: Valve)

To celebrate Half-Life 2's 20th anniversary, Valve dropped a few surprises in our lap on Friday afternoon, like putting together the original dev team to record in-game commentary for the legendary FPS, which is free for the weekend on Steam. Awesome! Valve also posted a two-hour documentary on the making of Half-Life 2 on YouTube. Also awesome—unless you had something else to watch tonight like a ridiculous boxing match.

Personally, I'm less interested in the development of a 20-year-old game I know like the back of my hand as I am in some hints about what might come next for Half-Life. So, I did the thing you do when you just can't wait to find out who done it in a whodunnit: I skipped to the end.

"It was easy to think about VR being a vehicle for Half-Life because that was a big technological innovation and kind of a core reason for that product's existence," said Valve engineer Brian Jacobson. "And I think one of the things we have internally tended to attach to the Half-Life IP is innovation. Gameplay innovation is often enabled by technological innovation. Clearly there was a ton in Half-Life 1 and 2.

TOPICS

PRODUCTS

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.