What Ever Happened to Project Borealis? Should We Be Concerned?

In this video, I dive into the latest updates on Project Borealis, the fan-made continuation of Half-Life 2: Episode 3, based on Marc Laidlaw's Epistle 3. After four years of silence, the team has released a teaser for Project Borealis Prologue, but is this small demo enough to reignite confidence in the project? I explore the tech demo, concerns about the team's progress, and what this means for the future of the game. Let’s discuss whether this ambitious project can deliver on its promises.

Links to Project Borealis social media and more are in the description.

Valve News Network (VNN) is now Tyler McVicker.

#HalfLife #ProjectBorealis #Valve

[TylerMcVicker]

What community project are you most anticipating?

[pumodi]

I was on the team for a long time, basically until the end of 2021. I was the sound design lead, we had like 4 sound designers and 2-3 composers at any given time. I would have kept working with them but I decided I had to focus on my career, I'd just finished a contract with Respawn and was moving to a new job at Sony.

That team is a great group of people but there was definitely some turbulence when I was on the team. From what I've heard from the people still working on it, things have gotten much better. I was hoping that this demo would have been released back in 2021 before I left, we had already been working on it for a while at that point. Another big factor in my decision to leave was I couldn't justify putting in all that time without something to show and my career was picking up quite a bit. All in all, I trust the team there and I think it's going to be awesome, better late than never in my opinion.

[SeanNoonan]

Hey, I was the level designer of the snow level featured in update 5, and I'd like to thank you for drawing my attention to that issue of Game Informer! I had no idea my level made it to a magazine!

I should mention that I left the team shortly after due to some creative differences and issues around time commitments. Wrote about it in my blog for those interested.

Anyway, thanks again... now, to ebay!

[luigivoncheeseburgerjenkinsiv]

The truth is that they are remaining quiet about it to make it feel like a genuine episode 3



edit: people got the joke wrong what i meant to say is that they are keeping themselves quiet like how valve is quiet about their games to make it feel like a real valve title

[andresbravo]

The project is still here, there’s nothing to abandoned just yet. Glad they’re still alive.

[joshuadav]

>free
>made by volunteers
>taking a long time

not sure there's anything here to worry about

[zackquillan]

My biggest regret was leaving the dev team for this project lmao. I was like a junior in high school when I responded to the initial open call and got onboarded as a writer. Let myself get too busy with "having a social life" and left the project after 6 months or so.

I will say, the development pace was crazy and early playable map demos were very fun to play.

The main priorities tech wise when I was involved was obviously on the baseline tech and making the physics engine match Source, but assets were being produced at a pretty impressive alongside this for being an unpaid team. I can't remember if it's been discussed or shown, but they were working on a vertical slice alongside the tech implementation fully remaking the opening sections of Ravenholm, and it looked pretty slick but I never got the chance to try a build. Might be able to answer some questions about the early months of the project if anyone is interested.

[averyemerous]

Having the game release anything publicly is a pretty good sign, even if it is so small. Having able to release *anything* sufficiently good enough by their standards means a lot. I'd like to believe that they have the same standards as us.
After this, I'd expect there to be at least some soft of larger release at least in the coming year or two, since the very heavy lifting is now done - the infrastructure is complete and content creation can continue.
I don't have direct contact with the community but seems like it could yield something cool.

[Qabra-]

As much as I like the concept of epistle 3, idk how you can implement it fully. Laidlaw himself has said that's just what he had in his mind and making a game is a team effort. So even if valve had decided to go for ep3 we would probably have had something very different to the epistle 3 narrative.
Still, I want to believe in Project Borealis and I look forward to see what they do.

[timothymckane]

I really hope they will eventually get the game finished as promised, and should not rush things like most "AAA" corporations usually do.

[electricindigoball]

The choice of using Unreal Engine instead of Source was always strange to me especially considering that it drastically increases the amount of work required and it seems like it would decrease the chances of this project getting approved by Valve like Black Mesa was.

[BrownP]

Tyler: "Everyone wants to play Project Borealis, but disappearing for 4 out of 7 development years does not fill me with confidence."
Sonic Robo Blast 2 community: *_ONLY_* 7 years?"

Also missed opportunity to put the Arthur dancing gif in the background at the end with that kind of song.

[taylorcordell]

It's a free game being development slowly by fans/volunteers and so far it seems like no ones done anything in the development team to crash it. So whenever it comes out it comes out. Hoping for the best for them though, don't see a reason to be mad at them for releasing a fan-made game nor are we entitled to it lol

[NotRandomHero]

Could it be that they didn't quite anticipate the amount of attention a fan made Episode Three would garner?

I mean, that may sound utterly stupid to suggest, simply due to the scope of such a thing (Half-Life: Episode 3 or Half-Life 3 captivating the world for decades without really ever appearing) but really though, could it be?

Not to mention, the amount of polish, scrapping and redoing the physics to make sure "it's just right" or "feels" correct?

There's lots of issues here I could see holding this thing up.

Not to mention making entirely new, from scratch art assets, and finding the team members for this, people coming and going after they are done with tasks or not being able to invest as much time as they thought, new jobs, new life scenarios, etc.

If Fallout: London taught me anything, there's a massive shit load of things that work behind the scenes of innocent ideas.

[frankrowbar]

I'm still sad boreal alyph got cancelled, it looked great too! All that work to modify the source engine wasted

[Chad_Wick]

guess you could say we have a real MISSING INFORMATION problem

[At_Amsterdam]

remember no one’s getting paid to make this. and they’re trying to avoid the same pitfalls that valve must’ve fallen into when developing iterations of HL3… and valve employees were getting paid for this.

[cluckendip]

So basically, this is the "RE7: Beginning Hour" type of demo where it's a different experience that still provides a glimpse at what the main game will be like without actually being a level from the main game.

[budad]

Rumour has it they had a massive team at the start but a couple of creative leads butted heads and things fell apart, beyond that IDK whats beeen going on

[CookiemanYO]

Big Projects Take Long Time To Create, Choices Movement It Doesn't Matter In The Long Run.We Will Get The Game Eventually, I Waited A Few Years For Some Projects And They Eventualy Released.