Season 11, Episode 33

We’re doing that PAX thing at the following link.

Yes, another PAX is upon us and we won’t be here next week so please enjoy the sounds from our music episode from a few weeks back while we take in the sights and sounds of PAX. We’ll be back with a new episode the week after next. Still, there’s this episode to enjoy until then.

So, it’s out there now. Probably. Pretty sure. Does it satisfy you? Are you happy with it? I wasn’t as heavily invested as some were for the next Half-Life. I wasn’t there at the beginning to know what this was like. I can relate it to like…television shows or movies, but I don’t think it’s the same. But it’s out there now supposedly. Not the game itself but apparently the story of how it all would have gone. Does it disappoint you because you never got to play it? Do you feel better now knowing how it would have ended? The thing of it is, at this point, if it were to come out, I don’t think anyone would actually be happy about it. Maybe as some kind of closure that it’s just done, regardless, may satisfy some people. I think in the end, however, it might actually be more like when Duke Nukem was finally released. The proverbial whimper instead of a bang. Maybe not to the extent of DN but something like it. I think there’s a timeline for a series. A path of longevity where there are certain points of no return. At some point along the line you really can’t go back and your options of continuation turn into a reboot, a la Tomb Raider. Maybe around that same point on the timeline could be the option of “spiritual successor”, a la Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls or System Shock 2 and Bioshock.

Either way, I hope this finally puts to rest a long national nightmare in the video game world of speculation and ghost hunting. Trying to make sense out of random statements and updates and store games and goose chases. Because you’re never going to get what you always wanted and even if somehow you do, it’ll probably never be what it could have been or, even, good enough.

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