It’s time for that age-old question: will Half-Life 3 ever see the light of day? Maybe we’ll get closer to the answer, because Valve once again hung the carrot he’s been holding for the last 14 years.
In an interview with TheGamer, Valve developer Robin Walker shared some little things that could become an exciting read for Half-Life fans, and Walker revealed that the respected series could be far from over.
The interview mainly covered the Half-Life: Alyx development process and the development team’s feelings that they could finally work on a new game in a significant first-person shooter franchise. Walker touched on a very prominent point, stating, “All the skepticism towards Valve working at Half-Life was equally alive in the company itself, and you just come to terms with the thought that we will never do it. ”
Walker’s comments seem to suggest that even members of the team at Valve couldn’t quite believe they were really making another Half-Life game in the form of the 2020 VR hit Half-Life: Alyx.
Walker also pointed out that Valve did not ignore the fans of ‘narrative limbo’ left over from the second episode of Half-Life 2 in 2007: “We also knew that Half-Life fans had long been stuck in a kind of narrative limbo. now, and we wanted that to change. “
New Half-Life lease
Touching on the retelling of Half-Life without spoilers: Alyx’s ending, Walker left a potentially exciting note for fans of the series, stating: “We wanted to be excited again about the opportunity […] did we [you] a red herring that you think you know will end up with a completely probable ending, and we then planted that, which were all really important elements that needed a lot of repetition and that came together towards the end. “
From Walker’s interview, it’s easy to conclude that Valve’s days of leaving Half-Life fans in a permanent state of hope could be over. Looking at Half-Life: Alyxa’s sales figures could further support this, over two million copies have been sold to date. This is especially impressive for the Steam exclusive VR title, which may still be something of a target audience.
Walker, of course, didn’t mention Half-Life 3. It’s not what we expect from him, but it makes us wonder what the future Half-Life project might be like. Will Valve stick to the VR format, exploring the lives of other popular Half-Life characters (we’d love Dr. Kleiner Science Experiment Simulator) or could we finally see the return of the legendary Gordon Freeman himself?
Whatever happens next, it’s easy to see that Valve certainly hasn’t forgotten about Half-Life, and with a new line of state-of-the-art GPUs like the Nvidia RTX 3080 and a new generation of consoles underway with the PS5 and Xbox X series, has there ever been a better time to expand the Half-Life universe?
We also spoke with Robin Walker in a recent interview, where we learned a fascinating story about how GLaDOS was almost non-existent on the Portal.