I interpreted this more like a reference to the original developer of God of War who was pretty vocal about not being happy with the new games.

Is the G-man the main villain? I thought it was always a little unclear. In HL it's the Nialinth snd and HL2 it's the Combine. G-man seems like he's not clear on what side he is on, and it always felt that vagueness was intentional.

They were talking about Wallace Breen. That should speak for itself.

I think the principal is the white bearded guy. I don’t see the G-man being the enemy, because it’s him who wake up Freeman in HL2. “Wake up, Mr Freeman, wake up and smell the ashes.” In HL1 I’ve always seen him as the corporate fucker who is trying to save the company.

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.

To be fair to Star Wars, the suits at Disney changed tactics because of negative fan reaction to the first sequel so we don't actually *know* how good they could have turned out if we had just let the creatives in charge finish their vision that started in 7. 8 and 9 were weird specifically because Disney suits were afraid of pissing off fans and changed direction *twice* instead of committing to the original vision. Fans complained about the prequels as well but Lucas committed to his vision and now so many years later the prequels are viewed far more favorably.

It's weird, Breen is so... forgettable to me.

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."

we could do something crazy like create new IPs

I'm glad for Laidlaw not getting stuck on Half-Life. It's been a long time, people grow and move on. Imagine him feeling like this about Half-Life but writing for the sequel anyway out of a sense of duty, completion or other silly reason. It would be a total disaster. Half-Life: Alyx was fantastic, and felt like just another entry, a natural fit, in the Half-Life universe. This is not in spite of, nor because of, Laidlaw being absent from its development. There are simply a bunch of amazing people putting their heart and soul into these games. I do hope the next Half-Life entry will be a regular PC game though. I wouldn't wish it upon people who don't own VR to miss out on another excellent game. On a sidenote its crazy we got a Love Death & Robots episode based on Laidlaw's first book. Definitely gonna watch that.

There's so many great book series out there. Ian Banks' Culture Series, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Ruin series, could re-do Altered Carbon *properly* and base it on the second book more faithfully; which was actually quite interesting. Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series. Terry Pratchett's last contribution in The Long Earth series. What happened to the supposed adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars series? Neal Asher's Polity series. Dan Simmon's Hyperion, anyone? And that's just a small fraction of more modern SciFi. None of these series really get a look in because we're still busy repeating the same formula ad nauseam until the fan base literally can't take ingesting another two hours of recycled dross. Let's try something new.

I enjoyed altered Carson's first season but was out I'm.ediately after s1e1. Wasnt aware of it being an interpretation of a book. Is the first season more accurate, or is season 2 shit for some other reason?

The first season does the detective noir thing pretty well, and doesn't deviate too far from the novel. They tried rolling the second book (Broken Angels) and the third book (Woken Furies) into one season, it didn't work out at all. Now I want to make an ai slop Altered Carson poster.

This is a great write-up. 8 puzzles me because I don't think Rian Johnson is a terrible writer or filmmaker. Knives Out was good, albeit maybe a bit smug at times with its own cleverness.

Thanks for the info! The aesthetics, acting, and writing seemed to take an immense dive; I was half convinced I wasn't even watching the same show. By the time I started s2e2 I had already googled and found out that it wasn't just me and that it doesnt get better (I tend not to search ahead of time to avoid spoilers). What a disappointment. I really liked the detective noir thing. I might have to check out the novels.

The same author did another similar novel called Thin Air, which you might like - it maintains that tech noir theming.

Which episode was that?

Eh, I think there's just as many examples of burned out creatives not wanting to make a sequel, being forced to make a sequel, and it turning out poorly. A recent example would be Matrix 4. I agree that continuity is important, but I think inspiration is the most important thing. If somebody doesn't have a good story to tell in a universe, it doesn't matter if they have perfect attention to continuity, they're telling a bad story.

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.

> Rey being too good at everything from the get-go with absolutely no character development to support that I don't know where you seem to feel like this was just a lukewarm response to that. Male fans were absolutely unhinged with hatred over this point. The Wikipedia entry for Force Awakens literally has a portion dedicated to fan backlash, which also included backlash against Boyega with bullshit crybaby screams of "white genocide" and "cultural marxism." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens#Fan_backlash