A new episode of Netflix's Love, Death and Robots is based on a short story written back in the 80s by former Valve writer and now professional retiree Marc Laidlaw. Laidlaw left Valve in 2016 but, in a new interview with IGN, wonders whether "I retired too hard."
Last year saw the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, as part of which Valve commissioned an official documentary from NoClip, in which Laidlaw featured. At the time Laidlaw also dug up an old development video on his own YouTube channel. "I'm like, I'm in the wrong business!" jokes Laidlaw. "I should just be leaking information about my old employer."
Anytime Marc. The Half-Life 2 documentary "was good for me to just kind of process and put a bow on that stuff, see a bunch of old friends, think about that, the whole thing," says Laidlaw. "I hadn't talked to or seen a lot of those people for a long time. I still stay in touch with a few folks, but they're also not really there anymore. I don't know what's going on there right now, but it was fun to hang out with people and talk it over and it was therapeutic."
Laidlaw is clear about the fact he has little to do with contemporary Valve, but does execute one amusing industry drive-by. "When Death Stranding came out, I just was grinding my teeth," says Laidlaw. "Like, does [Kojima] know I'm available? I'd be happy to help do the last polish of dialogue on your script and not wreck anything, but just make it lines that actors would sound better coming out of their mouth."
As a Hideo Kojima fanboy, I can say with 100% conviction that a Laidlaw script pass would be a huge boon to any Kojima game. But the fact is that, since he "retired really hard" and left Valve, Laidlaw hasn't done anything of note in the industry.
"I did kind of expect more interesting offers of stuff to do afterward and was kind of like, 'this is weird: somebody wants me to write their synopsis for their mobile phone laser tag game.' It's like, they don't know what I do.
"I haven't really heard any interesting game offers that seemed right for me. People think of me as, you can come in and write a bunch of stuff for a game. I'm like, 'do you notice how little writing there was in Half-Life?' Sort of the point of it was I hated reading in games."
The interview inevitably circles back round to Half-Life, the mythical number three, and whether Laidlaw would answer the hypothetical call.
"I would not do that," says Laidlaw. "I can definitely say I would not do that. Even when I was there, I started to feel like, 'Oh, now I'm the old guy shooting stuff down.' I think at some point you need to let the people who are the fans and the creators who've come in because of what they learned from you maybe, and let them have that. We need new stuff. We didn't need me going, 'Well, the G-Man wouldn't do that in my day.' And I found I had to restrain myself. People would get enthusiastic about stuff, and I felt like it was becoming a negative force on some of the creative process."
Laidlaw adds that he hasn't even played Half-Life: Alyx, and re-emphasises that he really doesn't know what Valve's cooking up over there (if anything).
"I haven't played the VR Half-Life: Alyx, so I don't really feel like I can [go back to Half-Life]," says Laidlaw. "I don't know what's going on with anything. And it is not really my place. God knows what it's doing in terms of creative process of how to get a great experience that will surprise people. And you have to be right at the edge of what you can do in a moment. And I'm not on that edge anymore. That's not what's interesting to me at this point. So I don't think I'd be good."
Plus making videogames is just "so much work." Laidlaw says he's "pretty much done. I mean, maybe not done with games altogether, but definitely the Half-Life part of my life is way behind me."
I wouldn't ever tempt fate by saying momentum is gathering around the Half-Life series, but the last few years have at least shown Valve being much more comfortable about (and acknowledging) its outstanding legacy. The Half-Life 2 documentary came alongside a polished-up version of the game, and more transparency than ever before about why the planned Half-Life 2: Episode 3 never happened.
"My personal failure was being stumped," said Gabe Newell, adding that to finish Episode 3 just to conclude the story would've been "copping out of [Valve's] obligation to gamers."
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