The Project Borealis Team – the fan project developing a third Half-Life 2 episode based on the Epistle 3 script published by Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw – have released their fifth development update. The update features information on the team’s level design process, including a first look at maps from the game, as well as the latest progress on core gameplay.
As the press release reads, the process of developing one of the game’s levels, set in an ice cave, is detailed, alongside a fresh look at the game’s core gameplay. The team highlight the progress made on gameplay, including a deep-dive into the game’s physics and audio technologies, including brand new mechanics.
Project Manager Florian Häsler said:
“This update is the result of a significant evolution in the team over the last year. We refined our development workflows and adopted a new approach to structuring the work ahead of us. This has brought about great work, some of which we’re showcasing in this update; the team is developing some exciting tech, using modern technology to explore our gameplay options. We can’t wait to hear what the community thinks about our progress and direction.”
The team has also unveiled the first gameplay footage, featuring basic AI enemies.
Project Borealis is using Unreal Engine 4 and promises to offer the best Half Life fan game to date, though as you’ll see it’s still in a very early stage. Nevertheless, we are certain that Half Life fans will appreciate so go ahead and take a look!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Kinda looks lika a crossover betwen HL and Team Fortress 2 with the lack of textures in buildings.
It’s still in beta. That’s why it lacks textures.
I know.
Aww yis, this is looking good. Hopefully they’ll be able to get the original voice actors
The effort is remarkable and they have all my sympathy but they’re wasting their time. Community made stuff, no matter how good, will never be able to replace original contents and original stories. Somehow it seems like some of these groups of indie devs tend to forget it.
It honestly looks incredibly amateurish to be honest, like really extremely amateurish. That town or what ever its supposed to be around 1:10 is outright first year map making building placement.
These guys need to pack it up and go home.
Looks ok keep in mind they had to redo everything in UE4, but it’s not going to be any incredibile success, even cause for the time it’ll be over, another half life will come out probably.
lol
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i doubt the next half life will be 3 or episode 3, HLVR is still a rumor
Doesn’t look bad at all, it’s faithful and doesn’t lack ambition, especially with the physics, lvl design seems good, the AI and shooting need more work but it dont even need to be noticed as it’s an early alpha, and last it’s based on Laidlaw’s script, why just spit on hard work like that
I’m not spitting on hard work, it just doesn’t look good at all and I’m very honest with my opinions.
For all epistle 3 was, its substandard garbage to be honest; a really poor idea for a thrown away Half-Life 3 Script summary fans desperately are clinging to because Valve is finding ways to make Half-Life 3 viable and offer something new in terms of gameplay to actually change it, and I’d rather wait even if it takes another 20 years to play their vision of it than a bunch of people who threw a game together out of desperation rather than true creative output of a new world, idea, genre, etc.
To you this might be good, but it’s not that amazing. I don’t like works of desperation.
You’re talking about like you’ve been to the future and played it, the game is in a really early state, i don’t know how you can tell it’s garbage in that context, but anyway, if Valve is making a sequel for 2040 that’s good, if we’re still alive sure it’s better than fan work, but for now there’s nothing, absolutely nothing and i appreciate that fans are trying something, if you look at Black Mesa you’ll see that fan work doesn’t always mean garbage, not to mention that if we wait for Project Borealis, that doesn’t prevent us from waiting for a true sequel
No I’m not talking about it like that, I’m talking about what I’ve seen and all of it seems like a work of desperate Half Life 3 fanboys clinging to an awfully written throw away script.
It’s still a semi official script since it’s written by the guy who wrote the entire saga, that’s not the fans fault lol, sometimes great games/movies/shows get horrible endings, and it’s often coming from a “true creative output” anyway, i understand your point, and i think you understand mine too, the only thing important to think about, is that “desperate fan work” is likely the only thing that remains for the series as Valve doesn’t seems to give a sh*t about HL anymore
It’s a garbage throw away script outline that’s a throw away idea at best, that was safe to release to people because its nothing like what the actual game is, and if you really think Laidlaw would risk being potentially sued by the company for actually leaking a real plot ending, thatbwas remotely anything like what actually will come out if it does, boy do I have news for you.
It reads like trash cringy fanfic tier writing, if you are remotely satisfied with that being even a remote idea that isn’t beyond s first draft rough outline, by all means think that but bot are your standards low. As well as everybody else clinging to it.
Stop saying it’s a script, its not a script. It’s a roughbdraft at best, Marc Laidlaw himself said that afterwards but apparently all you people clinging to it as if it’s the proper end to HL series missed that part. He stated the fact that it was basically a rough draft to an evolving storyline that would not end io remotely the same.
No surprise though, but choose to ignore what you want when want.
This mod is still a work of desperation, by desperate fanboys, who desperately think Valve doesn’t care about the series. Which is laughable idea at best despite them stalling so long on making the game.
If you really think that the last of the Half Life series, then by all mean continue to do so.
I’ll choose to live in reality where the story never ended, especially not like that garbage, and wait for the game to either release or not release should Valve choose to actually make one.
Rather that then a bunch of horsesh*t mods trying to recreate elementary level plots filled with so many cliches that it would make a rom com embarrassed.
Still better than nothing i guess, i think every HL fan want to “play” the Laidlaw EP3 script, and at that level of quality, it’s almost a gift…
No honestly, i’m a pretty die hard fan of hl and i think laidlaw’s script sucks a*5, it’s very predictable and flat, and also doesn’t really explain anything but confuses even more the story. That level of quality? Which one? It looks like another generic FPS and nothing like a Half life game
It explain things, not all things but it was never intended to be the last HL, some other facts are surely kept for other sequels, but anyway you’re right, it doesn’t fly high but it’s a chance that we have the original author’s script and vision that we can consider canon, rather than some rookie fan writing
UE4 has a pretty weird feeling for an HL game, the headbob, jumping, and characters physics seems out of place, but it has room for improvement, on th other hand, combat feels really like HL2, the team are really aware of the combat pacing and philosophy of the game, as a die hard fan, you should at least notice that, if you think the combat is worse, than you just didn’t played HL2 for a long time
Better or worse doesn’t matter, hl2 didn’t have the best combat there is, the important thing is it needs to feel like a hl and not every part of it do, combat could be acceptable as of now, but the rest?
You do remember what happened to Black Mesa right?! Though it was a remake, it was so good that Valve officially funded them to make a priced product.
That being said, I do not have that level of excitement/anticipation that I once had, but I really appreciate the hard work and support these talented community members fully!
A completely different thing from this, besides i never knew valve funded it, that’s new…Are you sure about this?
Looks good, i hope they get to finish