What Ever Happened to Project Borealis? Should We Be Concerned?
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2024
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Project Borealis: projectboreali...
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.
Contact Me: tylernewsnetwork@gmail.com
#HalfLife #ProjectBorealis #Valve
What community project are you most anticipating?
This little project called Half Life 3 would be great to see
Hunt Down the Freeman looks promising
Dark Interval and Inhuman.
Looking forward to the next division of RTB: Redux. I really enjoyed the first 2 divisions and RTB: Salvation. I prefer to wait for the full release of division 3 instead of playing the demo.
Black Mesa: Blue Shift
4 years is fuckshit in valvetime
titanic
4 years of silent not 4 years of development
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.
+1111
"turbulence on the team"
TURBULENCE MENTIONED????? SAXXY AWARD WINNER 2015???? THAT YOU WORKED ON!?!?!?!??!?!?! 🔥🔥🗣🗣
@@augustIaceyWill the sfm be finished? It's as clear as the fate of Half-Life 3
Good stuff man. Whatchu doin with sony?
What sounds do you make at Respawn? Is it for Apex?
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!
Heh, very "cool" indeed! Nice design for the level btw. I like the differing paths and play-styles it includes.
@@Axodus Yeah, that approach was a little controversial as some felt it strayed too far away from the older Half-Life strictly linear structure, but I expected players would want a little more in the current year.
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
false
false
not really the trailer looked mediocre not gonna lie for an unreal engine project
88
The project is still here, there’s nothing to abandoned just yet. Glad they’re still alive.
After Black Mesa, I think the community has slightly more tolerance for loooooooOOOOOOooong development times
Saying there’s nothing to abandon implies there has been zero work done on the project.
@@veteran_dinopretty sure we learned that in 2004
If it hasn't been abandoned, Valve will likely send a cease and desist.
This was a triumph
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: "Pfffff, *_ONLY_* 7 years?"
Also missed opportunity to put the Arthur dancing gif in the background at the end with that kind of song.
It's been 7 years since they first started forming the team, real progress wasn't probably made until the end of the first year. So that's 3 years of visible dev then 4 years of silence. Not 4 + 7.
@@89supraok
My mistake for misunderstanding, but my point still stands; if you lose confidence in fan projects after just 7 years, then you're not in the right corner of the internet.
>free
>made by volunteers
>taking a long time
not sure there's anything here to worry about
not just 'taking a long time', but having very little to show for it. Sure, stuff like Black Mesa took just as long - but y'know that at least those developers released several demos as they went along, yeah? This one hasn't.
@@DanielFerreira-ez8qd You are not entitled to anything they made
@@DanielFerreira-ez8qdWhat demos? Black Mesa never released any demos. What’s this fake news?
@@_nbcake they're not entitled to my confidence, either. If they got nothing to show I got nothing to measure - meaning the project might as well not exist.
@@TV-jf7nl maybe not 'demos', but they've released the game incomplete quite a few times before it was considered complete. I remember I first learned of Black Mesa in like 2016, long before the Xen update.
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.
I really hope they will eventually get the game finished as promised, and should not rush things like most "AAA" corporations usually do.
The team working on this game is very large for a fan project.
Alright
Yeah, like Starfield.
@@Leee275 How is that a bad thing? I'd be shocked it wasn't as big as it was for a HL3 remake, lol
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.
guess you could say we have a real MISSING INFORMATION problem
Too soon
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.
Unreal engine is way more usable and modern than source (1). Sure you have to make new models and stuff but considering it's in a completely different setting than the other HL games you would have to make new models anyways
@@stormhought Sure but from what I understand a lot of work done on this project went into effectively recreating the Half-Life 2 gameplay feel, physics, mechanics etc in Unreal Engine which is a lot of work for a fan project considering that fan projects have a lot of "built-in" uncertainty.
my sweet summer child, it may be like that at first but unreal engine is a LOT easier long term than what black mesa had to go through for xen
At least with Unreal you have blueprints, so everyone can contribute to code instead of just people who know C++. It's a feature I hope Source 2 implements someday, some kind of visual scripting.
From what I remember from their Discord FAQs when the project started, most of the devs were familiar with it and didn't really want to switch up that and there was another sister project that was running on source (Though alas that has been shut down).
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.
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.
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
I'm still sad boreal alyph got cancelled, it looked great too! All that work to modify the source engine wasted
Me too, after it got canned there was at least one former member who said it wasn’t going anywhere despite it looking like they were making progress. There was one person putting extra work on the enemy AI. His work didn’t go to waste, he reused it for a new mod that is a mix of HL and F.E.A.R.
@@protocetidwhat's the mod called?
@@NToniiiiiInhuman
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.
4 years for a 10 minute demo that’s not even part of the main game is crazy
Not really
For the scale of what they're trrying to accomplish? Not really. this is essentially HL3 they're trying to make, no more or less
@@MagnitudePerson It's still a very short demo regardless. Black Mesa was released as a full mod in just 7 years. Project Borealis has been going on for just as long, but instead of a finished game, they have 10 minutes of something that isn't even related to their game
@@baitreviewBM built their game on pre-existing code, focusing mainly on updating the visuals.
Things like level streaming, AI navigation and behaviour, UI code, movement, etc. The list goes on and on regarding things that are just baked into Source 1 as a baseline out of the box HL2 experience.
It's not pretty work but it is work that needs to be done. I think RH really represents those elements all coming together in an environment we're people can say "yeah this feels familiar" and thus the whole game can echo that feeling.
Yeah it’s weird for them to make a demo that they can’t reuse as a level later
This whole team is just so wildly inefficient. The weird demo, the 4 years of absolute silence, the choice to make the game in UE4 instead of Source. Every decision they make is just so odd
Black Mesa took 10 plus years and was worth the wait. Be patient
I love the project, but waiting for 7 years for a TEASER of a TEASER is.... disappointing...
My problem with project borealis isn't the long time they've been taking, but the absolute silence in between updates. Seriously, before their resurgence, the was LITERALLY no info bout the project at all.
Did anyone feel this was overly negative? Like, this isn't Valve, not by any stretch of the imagination, and if I were someone working on this game and saw thia video from THE Tyler, it would not be very encouraging, but I know he's just sharing his honest opinions, idk, it just seems counter to the reaction I had to hearing they weren't dead.
“Go bother the developers on this free project”
Scrapping everything to upgrade the UE5 does not sound like a...reasonable thing? Assuming they actually had a lot done in the UE4. The kindest assumption I can make is the project went on long enough that they wanted to move onto more modern tools that would be more applicable to future projects or more relevant experience at other studios, but scrapping so much just for that? Especially because my understanding from everything was that the project was an Episode 3, not a full Half Life 3. Inherently smaller scope and inherently fine if it's not on the newest engine possible because you're making a 5~ hour experience to cap things off based on a short letter and elaborating on ideas already present in the canon. Hell that's half of why Valve's leadership psyched themselves out on doing anything for a decade: Not being satisfied just capping off with a short episode with a moderate increase in tech and then letting the series rest. I definitely have no experience on the matter but I just cannot imagine UE4 was that much less capable than UE5 at providing a reasonable representation of the Source engine (with new tech) for a 5~ hour game.
This is job application for whatever valve is doing with HL rn. You gotta shout out before you die in the shadows of the next actual HL game that will invalidate all your work.
0:09 I am more interested in that remaster project than another abandoned hl3 project though😄
Man, I miss Boreal Alyph.
I have more hope for infinite finality. Project borealis is a distant hope and dream
Rumour has it that the outro song of this vid was actually written by Tyler himself
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.
Why Are You Typing Like This?
@@youdonegoofed Cause I Like It Lol
All source game related projects are required to use valvetime. If they're silent for 4 years, don't worry, that's like 2 weeks in valvetime.
you should have asked them for an interview
I urge everyone to check out the ARG, lot of effort put into it and it reinforces how the devs are moving forward from a position of strength ♥
This man speaks facts!
Is there some mysteries/lore details included ? Because the arg in itself doesn't interest me that much
Remaking all assets for UE5? I'm not an expert on UE4/UE5 but I am rather sure that isn't a thing you have to do porting from 4 to 5. sm
its probly mostly lightning
They definitely didn't need to remake all assets, but porting a game to a new engine always comes with lots of incompatibilities that need to be sorted out, which could take months.
I do hope that this is a sign they have things down now to get development really moving.
We will have to see in the near future what the roadmap is looking like.
It’s really ironic that this project has this sort of silence and uncertainty about it when it’s a mod attempting to create episode 3, which had similar silence and uncertainty
Making Half-Life Gameplay in UE5 from scratch is just dumb for a mod team.
They could put all this time to make good maps in Source Engine but instead they wasted it for Unreal Engine just to have nice graphics.
Valve also don't like when people use their IPs in other engines.
They said the demo will be on Steam, so apparantly valve dont care
To be fair, Source Engine is already considered outdated at that point. And it's also not an industry standard either unlike Unreal Engine.
Also the timing is unfortunate as Source 2 is already around the corner as S&box is almost finished. You can even make stuff using S&box too but you're unable to export it as a standalone game yet.
"They could have just done this and that on source and be done with it". Yes because making out door environments in source is soooo easy.
@@Leonard_Wolf_2056 It's easier than making the whole half-life mechanics including AI and all systems around it from scratch.
I can't believe that it seems more likely that I'll see HL-3 from Valve before one of the HL-3 community projects!
I still follow their RUclips channel and just the other day I got a notification for that trailer. Crazy times.
*insert the Woolie VS clip*
I still can't believe it's been 7 years already, I still remember back in 2018 how I thinking in my mind that the project will take at least 10 years, we are 3 years short and we are finally gonna see some of this dream.
I wish Boreal Alyph team did not quit
I say btter late than never, 10 minutes? Maybe, but at least it's a start, let's just see what the team have to say for the long silence
Thank you Tyler McChicken
It’s so frustrating that they decided to do this in Unreal engine with their own custom physics and whatnot. Some team out there easily could’ve had this thing out in a couple years if they’d just keep things relatively simple instead of trying to reinvent the damn wheel.
The fluffy headcrabs are so cute🤗
Man what an unfortunate timing, they just uploaded a brand new video to show that they're still working on it. Great vid tho
I just hope they don't get too ambitious for their own good.
"This exists but I don't have a lot of faith in it" was not a video I expected
this reminds me of when Raising the Bar Redux devs suddenly switched from the beta to making some weird ravenholm mod that nobody asked for 😂
the still making rtbr tho
Did you not see the vids theyre uploading again?
Watch the vid
People from here and below who didn't watch the video
he's answering the question, not asking it
I watched them all hahahhahahahahaha rewatched them all...
what vids? the last one was 4 years ago and the recent one is a teaser for that vertical slice.
Here's a good idea: ChatGPT rating HL character haircuts.
The thing that bothers me, is why are there furry headcrabs? There’s no way they could evolve like that, and what is the benefit to them being bio-engineered like that?
for the cold? probably? either a) being parasites they evolve quickly, or b) the Combine engineered them so they could survive in cold environments and therefore be a more effective weapon
Oh I thought it was snow
So there was little point on being on their effing discord server for the last 4 effing years
Why is it being made in Unreal Engine? It seems like it'd just be better to use Source considering that's what the rest of the games were made in, and it'd allow the game to feel more like an HL2: Episode 3.
they started back before Source 2 was available at all, and unreal is easier despite how jank it is without tons of R&D
Unreal's source code is available and anyone can modify it to suit their needs - It's a decent foundation and they can add any extra engine features they need on top.
Do you know how old source is?
i never thought it looked too great but i'll have to see when it's done
1:42 Unreal Engine 5 is not a "new engine" though. It's the same as Unreal Engine 4. The engine is fully compatible. It takes a second to transfer a game from U4 to U5.
U5 is basically U4 with new features. You can update the engine and leave it unchanged.
But U5 offers better materials, lighting, RT, etc. probably felt needed to master the assets in a way that fits the new illuminaton (lighting) and genral texture handling (eg. materials) and rendering.
Even a switch between minor versions of Unreal Engine 4, e.g. 4.17 to 4.18, was frequently pretty annoying due to a plethora of small differences in the C++ code that were adding up. It's not a second at all if your project is more complicated than one of the templates.
@@vitalsignscritical If you have a game running on U5 without using any of the U5 exclusive features like nanite and lumen, it's basically a U4 game. Nothing really change in a port like that. By the video it's obvious they are not using any of U5 features.. they are barely even pushing the U4.
Just like every other beta/ep3 mod, stop getting your hopes up. It'll never be finished.
Nvidia is fronting HL2 RTX quite a few of us are "behind" it, lets not forget the money for the project primarily went to the "leads"
Very sigma from project borealis
I feel like getting a video that sceptical by a - probably the only - relevant Half-Life youtuber - isn't exactly motivating for what is essentially a team of volunteers. The team behind Black Mesa barely communicated with the fanbase between the announcement of Black Mesa and the first release. Was several years of basically silence as well. I don't think the team being silent really is that much of an issue. Iirc nobody paid them, they didn't sell anything. Even if they had nothing to show now and the thing was cancelled secretely, I wouldn't be mad.
*oof* no wonder they took so long, restarting from scratch has gotta taken a massive toll, here's hoping for the best!
Let's not talk about how Opposing Force's remake is also fucking dead because of some dumb drama.
Porting to Unreal 5, fucking why? Don't we remember that this thing only causes the passion to die out.
1:17 winter headcrab✨✨✨ I want a plushie of it
Unreal Engine is amazing. It's gonna be lit🔥, i mean cold ❄️
the way you're speaking about this seems like you're not really too in touch with how gamedev actually works
I was never stoked on the engine switch but I will at least give the demo a shot!
I feel as though I have a voice that could make a difference in this subject. I've been following all 7 or those years and then some. However I'm not much good if at all in the technology department. I just want an epic and accessible addition to the half-life series
My 2 year old likes the intro.
I remember there was another epistle project being made in the source engine, but can't remember their names. No idea about the current state of those.
That was boreal alph or smth. It got canceled and then absorbed by project borealis.
Definetly sounds nice but I'm concerned that a vertical slice took potentially 3 years?? Does anyone really need a demo of the tech behind this? What kinda tech is it gonna be?
I love the music you use in your videos so much man. Such a vibe
Breaking news: gamers shocked to find out that video games take a long time to make
What is the song that starts after the first minute of the video?
They put out a teaser trailer 2 days ago.
Also like, Tyler, Covid and the traumatic experience that was 2020-2024 happened. That is like, 2 years in human time
Oh great... prologues always work out so well
2:40
If by "hush hush" you mean in their public discord then yes
Man yall remember Boreal Alyph
What is the music at 4:20?
I believe that it's CMYK by Home.
@@darkychao thanks!
does anyone know the title of the song at the end????
Bro they can't launch this before valve releases "HL3"
BTW who did the Outro, amazing song
what is that first song that plays in every video? 🤔
they literally just dropped a teaser trailer with an announced date of Fall 2024, so its probably just about ready to drop.
did you even watch the video dude
guess they're tryna pull a Black Mesa type thing
They are uploading again.
Project Borealis, whatever happened there
So there is a 10 minute demo coming, not a full game?
Might sound petty but I have no interest in a half life game in the unreal engine
Why not? The engine that a game is made in does not dictate it's content. An engine is simply a toolbox.
@@Mittzys The Stanley Parable was made using Source and the developer decided to remake it in Unity as The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe and some fans noticed the difference between the two, notably the feel and movement of the game.
Playing a Half-Life game without the feeling of a Source engine is like heresy.
You can recreate the game in any engine but you can't emulate the feel of Source engine.
Is this one of those projects that can't be monetised or did they completely rebuild the assets?
Why enreal engine why not source engine 1
so in 7 years they managed to create 1 map that's 10 min long from HL2 with a few new models and snow, u know what, even if they woulda canceled the project I wouldn't have been as disappointed as I am rn, the best thing about this project is the soundtrack they released a while back, those songs were sick
I don’t think this is indicative of that at all. They’ve definitely created more than the one map, this one map though was just created to show off the tech to let people know it’s still being worked on.
@@evelyndawson9491 wow, they got UE5 and made it look like Source engine, again, in 7 years, all that could've been done by 1 person, and moreover there's an actual remaster of HL2 currently developing by Nvidia, u probably already seen those trailers, and there also were shots of Ravenholm, it looked way better than Borealis, so what's the point of this project now? I think everyone who works on Project Borealis(if there is any) should be hired by Nvidia to work on RTX remaster, making new models and stuff
@@alyxbabineaux2412 I reckon the point is to have a game that isn’t HL2. Again the whole point of this is that it’s not HL2, it’s a continuation. Whole new story and areas.
Tyler McVicker I know you work for valve give us half life 3
I‘ll be honest, I was always much more interested in Boreal Alyph… too sad that project is dead :(
People still have hopes for Half Life games? Lol it ain't happening
This is not the AstroBot video you promised
By the way, anyone know what is Crowbar Collective (Black Mesa devs) are up to? They said they want to keep making games in future, but not on a Source engine.
6 months ago they teased a co-op fps, apparently it’s completely unrelated to half life tho, it’s a new thing entirely
Even fans cant make Half Life 3 real damn
Half Life 3 is gonna beat Borealis to release at this point it seems like.
They just announced something what is the point of this
Nice outro song!