In March 2017, website ValveTime released images from a leaked set of files that were made for the Half-Life 2 episodes. Dead end after dead end after dead end.” He suggested that Valve is now fed up of being asked about it. Game Informer’s executive editor Andrew Reiner said on the podcast “I reached out to ten to 15 people who worked for the company and they just didn’t want to talk about it all. According to the Game Informer podcast, one was an RTS, while another was a riff on adventure games, done with live-action actors.īut those projects appear to be a thing of the past now. Over the years there have been some Half-Life 3 prototypes, and the source says they have been more inventive than you’d imagine. “Every time a Half-Life project gets some gravity and then collapses, it becomes harder for the next one to start up,” said the informant. Game Informer’s source seems to suggest that Newell is not interested in making Half-Life 3. Among them is company co-founder and president Gabe Newell. Valve has a ‘flat’ structure, meaning there’s no real management, just a few influencing personalities. By this point in the story you won’t be too surprised to read the words “ There is no such thing as Half-Life 3,” but that’s exactly what was said by GI’s informant.Įvery time a Half-Life project collapses, it becomes harder for the next one to start up In the opening month of 2017, Game Informer recorded a podcast and published an article containing some revealing information from a single, anonymous source within Valve. Valve says that the process of creating a VR game, has urged the studio to “explore new ways to tell stories with these characters and this world, and we’ve discovered a lot of new gameplay experiences that go beyond what we’ve been able to do before.” A report from ValveTime explains that the company felt the episode couldn’t introduce anything new due to the setting constraints, this could be why Valve eventually chose VR as the platform for Half-Life: Alyx a decade later.
Entitled ‘Return to Ravenholm’, it was to put the player in control of a new character and revisit the zombie-infested titular town during a period before Episode Two’s conclusion.
Between 20 Arkane, the studio behind Dishonored 2, was developing Half-Life 2: Episode Four. While the concept art leak helps keep the candle of hope burning, the story of Return to Ravenholm offers an opposite viewpoint. Half-Life 2: Episode Four – Return to Ravenholm Concept art is generally part of the pre-production process however, so it’s not an indication that the third episode ever even reached a greybox build. The art was acquired by the fan website ValveTime, who claimed the images were from a 2008 project. Among them were various drawings of Alyx Vance, men wearing cold weather gear, and a return to Xen.
Valve couldn’t possibly release a four-hour episode to an audience that’s spent almost a decade in waiting, could it?Ģ012 saw the leak of a series of concept art images reportedly drawn for Half-Life 2: Episode Three. If Valve has been working on a Half-Life 3 game all this time, it’s logical to presume that Episode Three is no more, and a full-size Half-Life 3 game is now what to expect. Episode Two promptly arrived the following year in 2007.ĭuring that time the general opinion on Episode Three has changed. Half-Life 2: Episode One suffered a delay, but released just two years after Half-Life 2’s 2004 debut. Let’s take what we would ordinarily do and break it up into piecesĪnd the format worked, almost. Here’s the story of Half-Life 3 so far, leading up to the release of Half-Life: Alyx. So, what is Half-Life 3, especially now Half-Life: Alyx has been released? Over the years there have been two quite different answers – it’s either a collection of three short, episodic games – two of which have already been released – or it’s a full-length sequel to both Half-Life 2 and its expansions.
Although it’s still unclear on what this means for Half-Life 3 (or if this is even Half-Life 3) and PC players, Half-life: Alyx launched in March, 2020, and will hopefully open the doors for more Half-Life in the not too distant future. The Half-Life hiatus has finally ended, after a rumour that a VR Half-Life game is in the works, we have confirmation of Valve’s third full-length entry in the series, Half-Life: Alyx.
More intriguing than the actual magic that makes your GPU work, and more elusive than a good movie tie-in game, so what is the current state of Half-Life 3? Half-Life 3 is the greatest mystery in PC gaming.