Dirge for "Prospero" by Valve
Lately I've been thinking a lot about Prospero. It was one of the first projects Valve started to develop, along with the first Half-Life game, which at the time was called Quiver. I first read about Prospero in "Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar" and I was immediately fascinated by it. It wound up being dropped as Valve focused all of its energy on HL, and parts of its storyline and game concept were recycled later on. So maybe it's unlikely it will ever resurface, but I can dream. One day.
The game emphasized exploration, an intricate storyline, and combat via "psionic" powers. Influences would have included the video game Myst and the works of Jorge Luis Borges.[1] The protagonist of Prospero (known as "The Librarian" or "Aleph") underwent a series of design changes during the early development of the game. One iteration relied heavily on the use of psionic amplifiers to augment her innate abilities.
As the design of Quiver started to take over some of Prospero's initial goals, Prospero evolved into a massively multiplayer game. It was also intended to be distributed with a mix of official and user-created worlds that could be accessed through an in-game library, and each game would be running on its own server. Online distribution, server browser, a friend finder, user-created content and other concepts initially conceived for Prospero would eventually find their way into the Half-Life series, Steam, and Valve's support of fan-made modifications.
Who wouldn't want to play a game where the heroine was called "The Librarian"? Really. It just sounds so trippy and weird and different.
The game emphasized exploration, an intricate storyline, and combat via "psionic" powers. Influences would have included the video game Myst and the works of Jorge Luis Borges.[1] The protagonist of Prospero (known as "The Librarian" or "Aleph") underwent a series of design changes during the early development of the game. One iteration relied heavily on the use of psionic amplifiers to augment her innate abilities.
As the design of Quiver started to take over some of Prospero's initial goals, Prospero evolved into a massively multiplayer game. It was also intended to be distributed with a mix of official and user-created worlds that could be accessed through an in-game library, and each game would be running on its own server. Online distribution, server browser, a friend finder, user-created content and other concepts initially conceived for Prospero would eventually find their way into the Half-Life series, Steam, and Valve's support of fan-made modifications.
Who wouldn't want to play a game where the heroine was called "The Librarian"? Really. It just sounds so trippy and weird and different.