Summary
- Valve re-released de_train for CS2 back in November, renaming a hallway to Longdog.
- In Mike Shapiro’s cryptic New Years’ Eve video, he uses visuals from his song, Best Long Dog.
- The long dog graffiti on de_train is even wearing a crown, making it the ‘best’ long dog.
- There are a lot of other clues to dig into, adding credence to the idea that we’re currently in the thick of a Half-Life 3 ARG.
More proof of a possible Half-Life 3 ARG may have been found in Counter-Strike 2. Reddit user orthodonticjake noticed that the Popdog hallway on de_train was renamed to “Longdog” when Valve re-released the map back in November.
If you’re out of the loop and wondering why that’s significant, here’s a brief rundown of the entire situation: Mike Shapiro tweeted a strange video fluctuating between the unsettling voice of G-Man and the dulcet tones of Barney Calhoun, teasing “unexpected surprises”. He ended the video by saying that “time is fluid like music”, and captioned the tweet with the hashtags Half-Life and 2025.
Many believe that this was the beginning of an ARG in the build-up to Half-Life 3’s announcement. There’s even an entire document collating all the evidence found so far which you can view here. The biggest breakthrough was when fans found that the visuals in the video were lifted from Shapiro’s new song, Best Long Dog.
Either the CS2 update is a bizarre coincidence, or another crucial clue to this mystery.
De_Train, Longdog, Clocks, And Crowns
The name ‘Longdog’ itself isn’t the only piece of the puzzle. You can find a Russian calendar open to January nearby. Whether it has any significance, we’ll find out in the next few weeks. You can even find an electrical box marked ‘3’, and the graffiti of the long dog is wearing a crown, which might denote it as the best long dog.
But what’s especially interesting is a direct connection that commenter BillyCornetino found to Shapiro’s music.
Every clock on de_train is set to 2:23, and this isn’t the first time that the number has cropped up. Shapiro released another song called Steeplechase 223 days before Best Long Dog, which is 223 seconds long. Best Long Dog is even played in a 223hz key. What the number means isn’t exactly clear — maybe it’s as obvious as February 23 — but it’s clearly an important clue.
Aside from cryptic numbers, crowns, and calendars, there’s a direct nod to the Half-Life universe hiding out of bounds on de_train. As discovered by Ok_Objective_1285, the office area is hiding a graph that mentions Aperture Labs Products, a nod to Portal.
Valve even ran a similar ARG ahead of Portal 2, and fans found a lot of clues hidden in updates for the first game. So, we might even be missing something from Half-Life 2’s recent anniversary update. With a community that has thrived on sleuthing thanks to over a decade of silence, we’ll no doubt find out soon enough.
