Although fans have been staying tuned in with hopeful expressions that Valve will eventually come up with "Half-Life 3," recent reports allegedly claim that long-awaited sequel have gone through numerous iterations only to be scrapped numerous times. It's unlikely that we'll ever see the sequel come into the light.
According to a recent interview with Game Informer, a Valve insider (still unnamed; while the source is likely trustworthy, it could not verify their claims with another Valve employee) claimed that "there is no such thing as Half-Life 3. Valve has never announced a Half-Life 3."
The unnamed source reportedly from Valve explains that the groups of developers in the company have begun their own projects that would eventually become a new "Half-Life" title. Each of these projects, however, never came into fruition. The source also pointed out that Valve's approach creativity allowed these groups to come up with three distinct versions of "Half-Life 2" back then until one final version eventually emerged to the one we know today.
"Over the years," the source continued. "You've probably had many dozens of people within the studio as early as probably 2005 working on things that they would imagine from themselves as Half-Life 3 or Half-Life: Episode 3."
As for the progress for the potential "Half-Life 2" sequel, the source explained that a few groups - each with varying number of people working on it - had trouble coming up with innovative ways to deliver the project.
"I've heard that some teams have had two to three people working on it, and they eventually ran into a wall," said the source. "And some teams may have gotten up to 30 or 40 people before it was scrapped." However, it's unclear which project the source is really referring to, or if he meant both.
Previous reports mentioned speculations on "Half-Life 3" having VR compatibility or even having the feature of recruiting AI squad members.
"Some are all over the place, from one end of the spectrum being what you would expect - a single-player narrative-focused game - to completely different entertainment ideas that are as wild as they are weird. [...] Some were bizarre, like turning Half-Life into an RTS, or a live-action, choice-driven game," explained the source.
However, Valve eventually had to shelve working on the series for the time being, with the source stressing that "Half-Life 3" reportedly "isn't sitting right with [Valve president Gabe Newell] and other people at Valve. Ultimately it just starves to death. What you have left is nothing going on with Half-Life."
"I don't think there will be any more", says the source. "Every time a Half-Life project gets some gravity and then collapses, it becomes harder for the next one to start up."
Let's just hope that this will not be the case since a lot of fans will be more than disappointed to see a franchise just end abruptly like that.
