Summary
- The new Deadlock update included a few new references to “HLX”, which is believed to be Half-Life 3.
- Valve appears to have implemented FSR3 support in HLX, indicating that it’s in the late stage of development.
- Given Mike Shapiro’s cryptic New Year’s Tease of “unexpected surprises” coming in 2025 re: Half-Life and Valve, it’s possible that HL3 might finally be announced this year.
Valve just rolled out a major Deadlock update, completely overhauling the map to focus on three lanes rather than four. But that’s not the headline. Nestled within the update are strings of code referencing the elusive “HLX”, which is strongly believed to be Half-Life 3.
What sets this discovery apart from all the other HLX references over the last few years is that it specifically relates to FSR3, which is AMD’s alternative to DLSS, the upscaling technology designed by Nvidia to boost performance. That means a couple of things: a) Half-Life 3 made it through the recent round of playtests reported by Gabe Follower, and b) it appears to be in the optimisation stage.
FSR3 was implemented in the Deadlock update, so it looks likely that “during its implementation,” Valve “accidentally included the HLX-specific code.”
These references, which is just scratching the surface of what has been found over the last 24 hours, indicates that HLX is in “late stage development”, as noted by u/Stannis_Loyalist, who shared their findings on the Half-Life subreddit.
This Might Explain Mike Shapiro’s Recent Tease
On New Year’s Eve, G-Man and Barney Calhoun actor Mike Shapiro posted a cryptic video on Twitter with the hashtags #Valve and #Halflife, teasing “unexpected surprises” for 2025. Many took this to be the beginnings of an ARG, scouring through Shapiro’s music library in hopes of finding any clues about what he might be referencing. While this was a complete dead end, the video clearly teases something Half-Life-related for this year.
As HLX appears to be in the polishing stage, we could see an announcement this year. While it’s worth taking that assumption with a grain of salt — Valve could always delay the project — there are a few key things to consider here that set apart HLX from all the other leaked and cancelled Half-Life 3s.
HLX does not appear to be a VR game.
Following the release of Alyx (which similarly leaked under a codename: HLVR), Valve stated that it’s “not afraid of Half-Life no more”. Gabe Newell also said in 2020 that “Alyx got everybody excited and the […] team has actually been very productive. Rather than them being like, ‘Oh, we need to take a break,’ they’ve actually been incredibly fired up about development within the Half-Life franchise and VR.”
HLX is the furthest that a Half-Life 3 project has made it in development, and it appears to be helmed by a team that Newell said is “fired up” about the future of the franchise. Has Gordon’s hour come again? Hopefully, we’ll find out this year.
Half-Life
- Released
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November 19, 1998
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language
- Publisher(s)
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Sierra Studios