Wikipedia is not a reliable source, especially when it comes to general public opinion. It has the habit of magnifying minority/fringe opinions, or making tiny issues seem like they were a huge deal. According to the edit history of that page, that section did not exist on the page until 2023. Coincidentally, one of the 3 sources cited in that section was published in 2023. They also decided to add two Opinion Editorial articles, one from 2015, and the other from, take a guess, 2023. OpEds have no requirement to be factually correct, and therefore are in general, an awful source of actual information. Including these kinds of articles does not present an extension of good faith, and makes it look like the person adding them is doing it only to present a source, regardless of its credibility, so they can include whatever they are trying to add. All of those edits, including adding that section, were from the same person. That user never made an edit to that page until 2023. And they never made an edit to that page since. Since 2023, there have been 3 edits. One of them was apparently yesterday, which was instantly reverted. The second edit is interesting because it says "[...]presenting the controversy as being bigger than in reality would lend undue weight to fringe opinions." This edit was, of course, instantly reverted by the same person as before, but they are different from the person that added the Backlash section who was never seen again on this page since 2023. Looking at this new user's edit history on this page, they started editing the page in 2021 with only a single edit, 3 edits in both 2022 and 2023, and 2 edits in 2025. What is interesting about this user is that they only ever reverted changes to the page; they made no other edits except for reverting edits from other users. The point being, some users on Wikipedia will decide that they want a specific thing in a Wikipedia page, and will disregard any changes made to them in order to force what they want to be on that page. Sometimes this is warranted because of vandalism (which did not occur, from what I can tell, until yesterday), but most of the time it is because of personal bias from people who have more "trusted" Wikipedia accounts. Wikipedia listing opinions is of course, incredibly dangerous, as it can lead to the general public (who doesn't actually research something or check sources) believing whatever is on the page when they read it. This is why Wikipedia has a policy that doesnt allow individual/personal reviews of movies to be included in articles, for example. This is what makes Wikipedia such an unreliable source, and anyone quoting it should thoroughly review not only the sources cited but also the edit history of the page they are citing.

Wikipedia doesn't have to list opinions. It just has to magnify certain ideas and opinions from other sources, under the guise of impartiality and "Objective Journalism". “So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here–not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.” ― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

New stuff is for new IPs.... Fans want a G-man that operates within his original concept. It could go either way, the new blood writing for an old IP might be too scared to expand it in any meaningful way - see the newest starwars trilogy for the perfect example. Fans dont want more of the same, they want to be even more immersed with expanding lore, and they want it to be meaningful and worthwhile. Investors that want to milk an IP dont care if the property is expanded upon, they dilute the IP in search of profits. I hope HL3 gives us something worthwhile. I believe GabeN will make sure that happens.

Can I just ask what people expect from a half life story? Like it's always been pretty thin on the ground, right? What was the first game? Experiment goes wrong, aliens notice us and invade, we kill a bunch of them, there's the occasional macguffin, travel to their planet, beat the big bad enemy, boom, mysterious gman puts us in the fridge. The two expansions seem like the same story from another POV, I have no memory of any important events from either one. Second game, gman drops us mysteriously back like 20 years later. We kill a bunch of enemies, there's some more macguffin, the vortigaunts were enslaved now they're on our side. There's a bit of intrigue, we beat the local bad guy, the vortigaunts save us. The following two chapters, apart from having to rescue people, I couldn't tell you what even happens. The world is implied to be so big that you are an insignificant player and you could never hope to grasp what's really gping on, and we never get more than glimpses of what's really happening. It seems more like the idea of a world that leaves open the possibility of more or less anything happening and within which to set games, than a coherent story with structure and tension and stakes, beyond "world in peril" or "friend in peril", which is pretty bog standard stuff. Like sure we might be a bit invested in Alyx & her dad's stories, but I always assumed people were hyped for sequels because the games play well and have an interesting backdrop. What exactly is the special sauce that mark laidlaw brings? Yes the environmental storytelling was novel and well done, but it's always been so vague because they're so committed to never leaving the players POV, and they spend so little time explaining the actual world.

Can I just ask what people expect from a half life story? Like it's always been pretty thin on the ground, right? What was the first game? Experiment goes wrong, aliens notice us and invade, we kill a bunch of them, there's the occasional macguffin, travel to their planet, beat the big bad enemy, boom, mysterious gman puts us in the fridge. The two expansions seem like the same story from another POV, I have no memory of any important events from either one. Second game, gman drops us mysteriously back like 20 years later. We kill a bunch of enemies, there's some more macguffin, the vortigaunts were enslaved now they're on our side. There's a bit of intrigue, we beat the local bad guy, the vortigaunts save us. The following two chapters, apart from having to rescue people, I couldn't tell you what even happens. The world is implied to be so big that you are an insignificant player and you could never hope to grasp what's really gping on, and we never get more than glimpses of what's really happening. It seems more like the idea of a world that leaves open the possibility of more or less anything happening and within which to set games, than a coherent story with structure and tension and stakes, beyond "world in peril" or "friend in peril", which is pretty bog standard stuff. Like sure we might be a bit invested in Alyx & her dad's stories, but I always assumed people were hyped for sequels because the games play well and have an interesting backdrop. What exactly is the special sauce that mark laidlaw brings? Yes the environmental storytelling was novel and well done, but it's always been so vague because they're so committed to never leaving the players POV, and they spend so little time explaining the actual world.

They might have just cracked a new mechanic. Let's not get too hasty - especially considering the reports of non-VR HL3 being beta-tested end to end, with such a mechanic: supposedly it has actually good procedural generation.

As an avid pre-Disney SW fan myself, fans weren't _that_ pissed at 7. Outside of it being ~~ANH again~~ very safe and Rey being too good at everything from the get-go with absolutely no character development to support that, 7 was met with mostly lukewarm reception. Not awful, but not great either. It played it safe and everyone could tell. Then Rian entered the picture. The individual that is [documented on video](https://youtu.be/K6qaclJf2GM) saying he wanted to make a movie that at least half of viewers hated. Well, mission accomplished, buddy. Tied up every loose end from 7 and tied up its own loose ends leaving absolutely no meaningful questions for 9. Not to mention half the movie could have been deleted with no consequence (seriously, what on earth was going on with the Canto arc?), multiple character assassinations, killed off a character with lots of potential to be a decent BBEG in the most unceremonious way ever, and introduced a _major_ canon-breaking scene. I feel bad for JJ on 9 honestly. How do you even follow up on 8? 7 was such a soft-ball lay-up for anyone to write a sequel to, and Disney thought the best guy for the job was Mr. I Want To Make A Movie That Passionate Fans Hate? Its almost like Rian was spiteful and wrote 8 to be bad on purpose because he didn't like that Abrams had written 7. Why they did not have JJ just write the whole trilogy is beyond me. Would definitely have been better than what we got, at least it would have been more coherent. At the very least, mid is better than awful. Maybe Rose Tico could have been a real character with actual development and purpose instead of a useless character with an entirely unnecessary death. The prequels are only viewed better now because 7, 8, and 9 proved something could be worse. As Qui-Gon Jinn said, "There is always a bigger fish."

Which episode was that?

Speaking entirely personally, I thought at least Half Life Alyx's story worked on two levels. It was about freeing the gman as Alyx but gman sorta represented... Oh man, now I'm worried I can't remember the game well enough to communicate my original thoughts. I remember playing it and feeling like the gman represented the writers or creativity, a bigger picture concept or something that went meta. And if that was the case it felt like Valve creating a piece of art that said Alyx and VR have revitalized our desire to tell stories and GMAN is free again. The moment they drop their new headset I'll buy it and play again just to relive the experience but I'd say I'm excited about Half Life because Valve makes A) good games B) they make solid diegetic games which I find to be kinda rare C) their games often feel like they came from a team of artists than just a team of coders. Maybe that's the polish or maybe that's the massive amount of testing I'm led to believe they do but when valve makes a new game it often feels like the guy who made Stanley Parable just made a new game - easy to recognize art because it's so good.

I think this is why I always loved System Shock and System Shock 2 so much more as the narrative building was so much bigger than any game I've played before I since. I wish someone would sort the licensing out for that game and bring us a System Shock 3.

I agree the diegetic storytelling is very well done and that did push the craft of game storytelling forwards, but the actual world itself is a lot of texture with very little substance. Loads of cool ideas, but almost no decisions, like they want the freedom to add anything at any time without ever restricting themselves by saying "here is how this concept actually works", or even "this is who this person is". We never really meet the aliens or the antagonists, ever. The gman is an alien in a skin-suit, and Breen is just a collaborator. They are both essentially puppets. Like, what was the nihilanth? We killed it, then... what? I guess the vortigaunts were freed, but how does that tie into the slug beings, the human cyborg slavery, any of it? The vortigaunts could easily explain at least some of the world, What does any of it mean? I get the idea of being deep in and unable to see the forest for the trees, and that is definitely a style of story that you can do, but it's unsatisfying long term. Eventually you have to get at least a glimpse of the broader picture or nothing has any meaning. The world has no rules, which doesn't make good science fiction. I say this as someone who regularly replays HL2 because I enjoy the texture so much, I just acknowledge it's very limited.

I mean, I guess you're right as far as I'm willing to debate the point. Does that change anything? I don't feel like the franchise has done the Lost thing where every episode (in this case game) only asks more questions and never answers them. I also don't feel like I'm dying to learn more about the world or that the small scope of their answers takes me out of the experience. Like, it's perfectly encapsulated to what I need to enjoy the "movie" that is this game. I completely agree that this has costs, and that it probably can't go on for forever. Like one of the costs is I don't super care about this world, it's not a world I want to run a TTRPG in, or could envision a hundred spin-offs. I want the end of this story and I'd be okay if it stopped. Idk, that's a fine thing to make imo. And again, it's been top of it's class in execution since it's inception (never played the smaller games like Blue something or other) so idk - hard for me to nitpick the world or the game. Now Valve please release your new VR set so I can buy it or the Big Picture 2 and get back into VR.

Episode 4 if I remember correctly. He is credited as writer on the Wikipedia list of episodes. I can recommend the rest of the season as well, less than two hours

I think this is partially discounting the people that do genuinely try their best to keep Wikipedia factual. There are certainly many people that contribute to Wikipedia and do an excellent job trying to maintain factually correct articles all across the site. AFAIK, they are not paid for this. In particular, math related pages tend to be the most pure pages since there is little room for opinion in such a topic. The problem is that even just 1 user abusing their "control" over a Wikipedia page will throw the entire site's credibility into question. People like that, unfortunately, are often ones that seek out places where they can have "power." Controlling information, or globally accessible pages that document events in history, no matter how small, is incredibly alluring for this kind of person. It is an issue inherent to the Open-Source style approach of Wikipedia. Anyone can make an edit, but any edit can also be reverted. For topics where opinion is introduced, this often leads to Edit Wars, fighting in Talks, and the eventual locking of the page so no further edits can be made.