For a lot of gamers and game developers, working on Half-Life 3 probably sounds like a dream project. It is one of the most anticipated games of all time, and you could have a hand in bringing it to life. Chet Faliszek is not one of those developers, though, as the former Valve writer explained that dealing the deep lore, developed over decades, sounds like his personal idea of hell.
"When people ask me, 'Oh man, don't you wish you could?' No! No, I almost never want to touch something that already has some kind of lore, or some kind of back history about it, not even like Left 4 Dead or anything. I don't want to touch anything old. I don't have to have people who remember stuff better than I do yelling at me about changing some history of lore from 50 years ago at this point," Faliszek explained in a video caught by PC Gamer.
<social>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFcri936k-w</social>
Faliszek said that he's much less interested in the idea of big worlds and years of lore than other writers. For Half-Life 2, the writing staff apparently all cobbled together the lore of the game and world, so that they'd all be on the same page. This experience led Faliszek to realise what he'd be stepping into if he worked on Half-Life again. "Any sequel to me is just a disaster nightmare that I never want to do. So I'm not going to," he said.
"I don't want to touch [Half-Life 3] with a 10-foot pole. Or even a grav gun separating me from that 10-foot pole. A grav gun to a 10-foot pole, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it with Dog's arms," Faliszek concluded. The challenge of getting everything right is one Valve has struggled with for years, which is why they've been unable to release the game for so long. Well, that and they're making tonnes on CS skins and Dota 2 still.