Until this week, the latest news on Half-Life 3 was that Valve had canceled several iterations of the game, which was revealed in a news tidbit in the Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary Documentary produced by Valve in November. Now, we have two more clues that seem to give a pretty strong indication that we could see Half-Life 3—or at least, an announcement title—this year.
First up, there’s this video from “Gabe Follower” on YouTube. This fellow keeps a close watch on any Valve-related news, and especially that which relates to Half-Life and the Source engine. He’s dropped a few big leaks in the past, like the existence of Deadlock, Valve’s hero shooter that is currently in early access.
In a bit of a rambling video, Gabe Follower casually throws out the detail that insiders have apparently informed him of ongoing beta testing for what he refers to as “HLX,” which is thought to be an internal codename for an unannounced Half-Life-related project. What exactly is HLX? No one knows, but if it ever comes to light, it will be based on Valve’s actively-evolving Source 2 engine.
Obviously the most hopeful expectation is that “HLX” is Half-Life 3 in some form of another. There are details that support this conclusion; Gabe Follower talks about them a bit in his video, like Valve on a hiring spree for employees both old and new, as well as public engine updates that don’t seem to be relevant to Counter-Strike 2 or Deadlock. Valve itself has, of course, said absolutely nothing on the topic.
This tweet is arguably much more exciting, though. Mike Shapiro is the voice actor for Half-Life‘s enigmatic G-Man, and the message in his tweet, posted late yesterday (the 31st), seems to rather clearly insinuate that we could just be getting a new Half-Life-related announcement this year. If it were something else, Shapiro probably wouldn’t have used the #Halflife #Gman hashtags in his tweet.
Valve founder and honcho Gabe Newell has made statements in the past to the effect that he doesn’t want to ship a Half-Life 3 that isn’t as innovative as the previous two games. The original Half-Life arguably changed the entire path of the gaming industry by proving that FPS games could be immersive and realistic rather than arcadey and cartoonish. Half-Life 2 brought along realistic physics and accurate light modeling so thoroughly mathed-out that GPU vendors had to adjust their hardware designs.
What could Half-Life 3 possibly bring to the table that would be as innovative as the previous two games? It’s a fun thought experiment. Valve has invested heavily into VR development and support; an immersive VR experience makes a sensible follow-on to Half-Life:Alyx, especially given Gordon’s cameo at the end of that game. Of course, VR adoption is a concern, but if any game can move headsets and motion controllers, it would be Half-Life 3.