Will We Ever See Half-Life 3?

Now that it’s nearly Christmas, and we already have Fallout 4, GTA V and the imminent arrival of Star Wars: Battlefront, I think it’s high time to discuss whether we’ll actually get Half-Life 3 any time soon.

The short answer to that question, though, is most definitely a no. However, just from trawling the internet, you can see that there have certainly been references and hints dropped about the next instalment of the Gordon Freeman, alien-killer, series. But, and when talking about Half-Life 3 there’ll probably be a lot of ‘but’s, there has been little in the way of hard fact as to whether HL3 will be here any time soon.

There have, however, been several references made to HL3 that have not escaped the media’s attention; lots of people went a little bit mad when Valve pushed a file to DOTA 2: Reborn, aptly named ‘hl3.txt’, with the website Destructoid giving a short and sweet overview of what may have been Valve’s cunning hint that HL3 is drawing ever closer. I do wonder, though, why Valve would do this in the first place. Why be so cloak and dagger about it? Was it all just a marketing ploy? All they had to do was say, “Half-Life 3 will be here soon,” but perhaps for Valve, this way is much more fun. Maybe it was just meant to mess with us mere mortals, and make us think that one of the most eagerly anticipated games was closer to release than we had previously thought.

Destructoid also posted some other news about HL3 (over two years ago I might add), in regards to what projects Valve were currently working on and listed none other than HL3, along with Left 4 Dead 3 among others. Now, I know that this news is old, but to me this clearly shows that at least the game is in development and is no doubt being ramped up in, what should be, the final stages of testing and production. To me, this brings about a bit more certainty as to whether HL3 will be turning up any time soon, and I came to this conclusion because of how obvious Valve are being when showing the world that, yes, HL3 is being made. It doesn’t make sense to me to do things like put a HL3 file in another game or file for a trademark in Europe if that weren’t the case. Of course, this could all just be part of their strategy to get us talking about the game again, even though we’ve actually seen very little of it in the flesh.

My final piece of HL3 related hysteria/news comes from PC Gamer, and it regards a talk about Virtual Reality (VR) by Valve’s Chet Faliszek. When Chet was asked whether HL3 would be a virtual reality game he replied in the negative and that is really that. He neither confirmed nor denied the existence of HL3. He merely told us that HL3 would not be a VR game. As with all these pieces of ‘news’ it leaves a lot of room for interpretation. We could very well see HL3 come to our PC screens in the next 6 months or the next 6 years. Knowing Valve, it will probably be the latter. But it’s difficult to see, from my perspective, as to why Valve would continue to say nothing about HL3 being confirmed but equally say nothing about HL3 being dropped or delayed. Like I mentioned earlier, though, this may all just be a plot to get us talking about HL3, and look what happened, we’re doing exactly that.

I know as a youngster you’re taught that patience is a virtue, but things are getting just a bit silly now, and I would hope that after all this waiting and speculation that the game is actually worth it. There has been a Gordon Freeman shaped hole left in many a gamer’s heart since the ending of Half-Life Episode 2, and although we got another glimpse into the world so lovingly created by Valve in Half Life: Lost Coast that has really been it. It’s no wonder then that more and more people jump on the hysteria train when another snippet of HL3 news appears. Be it putting in for a trademark in Europe, a text document in DOTA 2, or simply a question asked at a VR discussion, these are all things we cling to because there really isn’t that much else.

If we were ever to get any more concrete evidence as to the fate or release date of HL3, then one would hope it would be now. It’d certainly make my Christmas, along with Mike Ashley selling Newcastle United to someone who actually cares about Football. However, with the choice between HL3 coming out and Ashley selling up, I know that Valve would probably win hands down every time. It’s fair to say that HL3 will likely not be seen any time soon, we’ve already been given hints before now as to its existence.

So, to answer my own question, will we be seeing HL3 any time soon? No, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t be seeing it at all.