Half-Life 2: Epistle 3 Reveals Huge Milestone, More Footage

The team behind the impassioned fan project Half-Life 2: Epistle 3 to carry on the vision left off [...]

By Liana 'LiLi' Ruppert

The team behind the impassioned fan project Half-Life 2: Epistle 3 to carry on the vision left off from Marc Laidlaw's Epistle 3 script has just provided a brand new update for their ambitious venture.

Project Borealis has just announced a pretty big milestone achievement regarding their project, stating that the first story draft is officially completed! On top of that, we've got some new footage to feast our eyes on to see that in-engine progress first-hand! Additionally, if you're like us and are impressed with the progress made so far - the team has announced that they have a few new positions they are looking to fill! It's great experience, especially for those looking to get into this line of work.

As far as gameplay progression goes, the team mentioned, "Steady progress continues to be made on the gameplay front, with Gordon now having access to several of his weapons complete with near-finished animations in-game. When animating our new weapon models, it was important for us to retain the timings of the originals while also introducing some subtle flair of our own. The end result are animations which match their Source counterparts in gameplay feel and general style, while also taking the opportunity to improve on those we felt could use a little more work. Special shoutout to our lead animator, RockingChair, who's been doing a great job tackling all these iconic animations! Check out the video below for a WIP preview of the animations in action! Please note, final visual effects have yet to be implemented for any of the weapon fire modes."

"On the technology and coding side of creating the gameplay, our programming team have been keeping optimisation in mind, experimenting with new rendering techniques such as Vulkan to ensure that the game will run on a wide range of hardware. Since the last update the game has also seen physics updates, stability and performance enhancements, an initial graphics settings menu, and of course numerous bug fixes! We've also begun work on a new sound system with a wide range of audio effects, and have developed a good base AI system."

So what about the story? The team explains, "The writing team has taken the plot points outlined in Marc Laidlaw's Epistle 3 and fleshed out the details and gameplay elements into a full and engaging script. Since finishing this first draft, the rest of the team have had the opportunity to give constructive feedback, and the writing team is now working on incorporating some of those suggestions into a second draft. It's important for an ambitious project such as this to have realistic expectations for what can and cannot be included for either pacing, thematic, or technical reasons."

As far as positions go, "Update 3 represents a sizable step forward in our team's ongoing efforts to bring Marc Laidlaw's story to life." commented Project Borealis Project Manager Michael Dunaway, "we are proud of our team's steady progress and can't wait to see the community's reactions to our efforts showcased in this update."

These are some of the open positions they are currently hiring for:

Interested in learning more? Good, because there is TONS of information here with their latest update! All of which you can see right here courtesy of their official website!

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