Star Trek director teaming up with Valve co-founder Gabe Newell for unannounced game project; possible Half-Life and Portal films also being investigated.
LAS VEGAS--In their opening keynote address at the annual D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas today, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell and Star Trek director J.J. Abrams announced they are working on an unannounced game project together.
Abrams and Newell spoke at length about the differences between film and games and the challenges for each medium in telling a good story. After critiquing and praising each other's work through various clips from films like Cloverfield and Star Trek and games like Portal, Half-Life, and Half-Life 2, Abrams and Newell announced they have been speaking at length about joining forces to make a game.
Newell also announced that he is investigating the possibility of working with Abrams on a Portal or Half-Life film.
No more details about the projects were revealed.
Abrams' latest film, Star Trek: Into Darkness, will be released in May. He has also been lined up to direct the next Star Wars film.
Newell will also host a keynote address on Thursday titled "A View on Next Steps," which will detail the Valve mastermind's thoughts on where the games industry is heading and the kinds of advances Valve is making. The company recently announced a partnership with PC maker Xi3 to develop its own take on the long-rumoured Steam Box.
The D.I.C.E. Summit will run from February 5 to 8 in Las Vegas.
Laura Parker is the Associate Editor of GameSpot Australia. She loves adventure games, sparkly stuff, Trivial Pursuit, cake, Master Chief, earthworms, and rhetorical questions. She once stole a sandwich from Peter Molyneux.
Why, do you have to make a video if you're just going to read out what's already in the article? And why write an article if you're making a video? Why would I want to read/watch both if I don't get any additional value out of the video or the text? This was bugging me forever with the reviews (although some reviews were more off-the-cuff and interesting) but this just seems like the last straw :X
I'm not happy about this choice at all. JJ Abrams??? Great, so we aren't going to see the G-Man at all during the movie, we will only catch glimpses of him walking away. He will finally reveal himself at the very end of the movie as a human-sized cockroach/fly/beetle monster.
If they make a Half-Life movie then they need Charlie Sheen as he looked in The Arrival to play Gordon Freeman, looks just like him in that movie
2 Like Sure, let's make a movie. Let's make a TV Series. Let's make a comic book.
Let's make anything BUT a Half Life game.
As much as I like Newell's work, I just don't see this working.
JJ Abrams trashed Star Trek and Super 8 was an overly cliche'ed piece of shit. As long as Valve keeps making great games, I'll keep buying'em via my Steam account. But I really think I'm gonna end up passing on this Gabe-JJ project.
2 Like Please be half life 3 having J.J. Abrams do the story linking HL with Portal would be epic!
Let me guess, a STAR TREK game powered by the SOURCE ENGINE. It would be really AWESOME!!!
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1 Like I have this vague memory from way back, something involving Valve and a 3rd episode to something...but I just cant seem to remember.
@Barrakas21 i agree i really don't want valve to turn half life into a duke nukem. Make us wait another 10 years and give us a garbage game. However i will not be surprised if does, rumors already started stating the impossible "making HL3 into an rpg", as it was with duke rumors. Even though just rumors, one way or another they are a bad sign.
Prequel to HL2? Beginning of the Combines? Maybe a drama of Black Mesa vs Aperture Science!? Seven hour war? Meh that's predictable. The possibilities are so exciting! As for Portal, maybe a drama of Caroline and Johnson? I didn't play portal for the story sorry lol
At the very least, it's good to know that he WANTS to do this, and isn't just makin "a stupid, silly video game movie" like another, shittier director might say. He still isn't right at all for a Half-life movie, because a guy like JJ Abrams will just do what some studio tells him to do and make a movie that tries to tell an overly condensed version of the game's story and have it star Gordon Freeman. You would need a truly brilliant director to create a new story with new characters in that world to make a good Half-Life movie.
Or they could just bring in Michael Bay to make the whole movie about, and starring, the military forces that come in to cover it all up, and have 400 million dollars worth of tank and helicopter and camo glory shots. That would be BITCHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN'!!!!!
2 Like Screw it. Why don't they just give him the last two hobbit films, Doom 4 and the Batman reboot. What else can he ruin?
OHHH NOOOSS, a half life film? Is Half Life 2 EP. 3 gonna be a movie instead of a game? LOL just kidding. But.....
3 Like I am a huge Star Trek fan, and J.J. adtrams absolutely ruined Star Trek. for that I despise the man. But valve is one of my favorite game companies So I am having really mixed fellings on this. As for J.J. directing Star Wars that seems right because the new Star Trek films are alot more like Star Wars than Star Trek. Anyways I can't wait until Valve reveals Source Engine 2 with videos of Half-Life 3 and Hopefully details about Left 4 Dead 3 and/or Portal 3. I agree with Davet666 what the heck happen to HL2-Episode 3.
@nukem235 I assume you haven't seen the Red Letter Media reviews of the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies? I recommend you watch them, where you'll learn that in fact the cast and crew of TNG already ruined Star Trek long ago.
1 Like @Dessicator @nukem235 Screw that, First Contact was the best Star Trek movie ever made. I like some of the films with the original cast (I, II, and VI come to mind), but TNG towards the end really captured the vision of what a humanist society would actually look like. Plus, no one beats Picard as captain.
Sure Star Trek isn't for everyone, but I couldn't even finish the J.J. Adams version - it scares me that people thought it was good. Romulans with tribal tattoos? Seriously? This guy is a hack in my opinion.
OH~ I got such conflicting feelings~ Love Valve, but don't really care for JJ Abrams.... Why!? Why can't they find someone else~~
1 Like Between this, the new Star Trek and Star Wars movies I think we are being bombarded with too much JJ. Hope they all dont star looking the same.
uggh there's already too much lens flare everywhere in gaming, this does not bode well for those of us who still have our natural sight I guess :(
@severius Yeah, I was watching my sister's BF play Battlefield 3, I was seriously wondering how the heck he could play it with all the lens flare.
How the heck does Abrams keep getting work so fast? Anyways, I hope his lens flare obsession was just a phase.
I don't understand why we would NEED a Half-Life movie, whether it turns out good or not. HL is already like a movie anyway. The opening train sequence for example is entirely visual, constructing the story from images, rather than expositional dialogue. What benefit would it be to put that scene into a cinema? Portal wouldn't work at all. Its a game designed around the player's thinking and experimentation. The puzzles have to be there and who wants to watch someone else solve them?
@biggest_loser Agree with your point on Portal. As for Half-Life already looking like a movie and as to what benefit would there be in making it a film, I would imagine that non gamers could greatly benefit from having such a great story available on film by such a talented filmmaker.
@lex_in_the_moon @biggest_loser But the strength of the HL games is that the story unfolds visually around the player as they explore new areas and worlds. Its not deep as in having great depth of character. It would also cheapen the work put into the silent protagonist.
I dislike the idea of a Half Life film, Gordon is meant to be a silent protagonist to help with player immersion, once you have some actor playing Gordon, the entire series is ruined for me.
Kevin VanOrd travels to the city in the sky to bring you this video review for BioShock Infinite. (This video may contain spoilers. If you want to experience this game yourself, please come back later.)
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