I am only human, and thus I am not immune to hype. I cannot wait to play Grand Theft Auto 6. In fact, there’s no announced game I’m as excited to play as Rockstar’s open-world sequel. But if we’re including unannounced games, Half-Life 3 has to take the cake (which I feel increasingly confident is not a lie and is in fact in the oven as we speak).
The last five years have been an amazing time to become a Half-Life fan. I didn’t own a gaming PC until 2019 but, almost immediately after getting one, the long-dormant FPS series woke up from its decade-plus nap. Half-Life: Alyx was announced that November, and I spent late 2019 and early 2020 digging deep into the first two games and their expansions to catch up.
Half-Life Has An Uncanny Ability To Make Me Spend Money
More importantly, I spent money on an Oculus Quest with the plan of using a Link Cable to play the game. That became moot when Valve reached out about sending an Index over for the review. But no matter how I intended to play Alyx, I had to upgrade my computer because the gaming laptop I was using didn’t have a mini HDMI port. So, with a great deal of spending and several trips to Best Buy, I secured everything I needed. When Alyx arrived in March of 2020 — alongside something of even greater significance that we don’t need to talk about — I was ready.
There are very few games I would go to those lengths for. A new Zelda? Yes. The next Naughty Dog game? Sure. But I’ve been playing Zelda and Uncharted since I was a kid. There’s history there. Though I came to Half-Life late, the series hooked me during that initial tram ride into Black Mesa and never let go. Since then, there has been a just-frequent-enough drip feed of new Half-Life content that I never stop thinking about it. It really feels like Valve is building up to something.
The Slow, But Steady Drip Of New Half-Life Information
Geoff Keighley’s The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx arrived on Steam in July 2020, just a few months after the game’s launch, and gave a breakdown of everything Valve had been up to in the time between single-player entries, that saw players waiting from Portal 2’s launch in 2011 until Alyx arrived nine years later. In 2022, Valve launched Aperture Desk Job, which was set in the world of Portal/Half-Life, as a free experience for Steam Deck players.
Then, in 2023, in honor of the 25th anniversary of Half-Life, Valve partnered with Danny O’Dwyer’s Secret Tape for an official behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of the original game. This month, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, the company put out another documentary, plus an update that added new developer commentary to the game, made it free to keep for a limited time, and folded in Episodes 1 and 2 for the first time ever.
Related
Half-Life 2: Episode Three Wouldn’t Have Been Worth The Wait
Valve has confirmed why Half-Life 2 went silent all those years ago.
As that slow drumbeat of official information from Valve has continued on, unofficial information about a new Half-Life game has begun to leak out, and this year it’s hit a fever pitch. Not only are leaks pointing to Half-Life 3 being a real game that is in development, reliable leakers also point to it making use of procedural generation, a temperature system, the inclusion of a grenade launcher, an upgradeable HEV suit, a return to Xen, day/night and weather cycles, and an emphasis on gravity.
Bigger And Better Isn’t The Half-Life Way
Valve has always conceived of Half-Life as a series that represents it taking a technological and artistic leap forward, which makes every new release exciting. The first Half-Life was one of the original first-person shooters with an emphasis on storytelling in a realistic space. Half-Life 2 took the rudimentary physics from the first game to the next level, with puzzles revolving around weight distribution, breakable environments, and a Gravity Gun which allowed players to turn any item into a weapon. Half-Life: Alyx took the series into VR, and found new levels of player freedom and expressivity as a result.
I love Rockstar, but this is why Half-Life remains the ultimate event series. With each new GTA and Red Dead, we basically know what we will get on a gameplay level. It will be bigger and better, but it probably won’t be that surprising. But Valve combines top-tier storytelling with a Nintendo-like focus on finding new fun ways to interact with the world, each time it returns to Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance. The laundry list of leaks boast some story details, but they’re a Cambrian explosion of gameplay ideas. Whatever Half-Life 3 ends up being, it won’t just be a bigger, better Half-Life 2 and that makes it the most compelling event on the gaming horizon, whether Valve is willing to admit it’s on the horizon or not.
Next
20 Years Ago, Half-Life 2 Staked Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines never stood a chance against Half-Life 2