On October 10, 2007, Valve released Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the continuation of Gordon Freeman's story as he and his friends fought to free the human race from the oppression of the alien Combine. The ending provided very little closure, establishing a series of plot points for Half-Life 3, a sequel that never came.
With the exception of Portal 2 of 2011, the Half-Life universe has been completely inactive for almost ten years, which is a shame when Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are generally considered to be two of the best games that have been made. .
Valve has remained silent about the future of the franchise, which has led to the popular & apos; Half-Life 3 confirmed & apos; meme, where any small hint of the sequel's existence is quickly disproportionate.
Having said that, the company has not been completely silent. So we have put together everything we know about Half_Life 3 in this practical guide.
Cut to pursuit
- What is it? The prolonged and expected continuation of the Half-Life saga
- When can I play it? With nothing officially announced, it will not be soon
Half-Life 3 or Episode 3?
When Valve announced that Half Life 2 would have episodic sequels, he revealed that there were plans to launch three of them over the next few years. Together they would form what was essentially a third game of Half Life. The idea was that the development of an episode would not take as long as a full sequel, so fans could continue the Gordon Freeman adventure before, albeit in smaller quantities.
Half Life 2: Episode 3 was never released, and over time the folks at the end, I started referring to him as Half-Life 3, assuming Valve was working on a full sequel instead of a new episode. This is tenuously corroborated by leaks and a statement by Gabe Newell stating that the developer was
But as an anonymous source, there is no Half Life 3. Not according to Valve. The company announced three additional episodes, two of which were launched and nothing more. The source referred to the constant talk of & # 39; Half Life 3 & # 39; as a fantasy and an illusion.
Whether it's known as Episode 3 or Half Life 3, people are talking about the same thing: a sequel to Episode 2 that will continue the story and resolve the end of the danger they left us.
What Valve has told us
While Valve has been very quiet in recent years, in the years before (and just after) the release of Episode 2, it was closer with information. It is not clear how much of this is still relevant, but Gabe Newell did confirm it. He later stated that Gordon, so "to a large extent would remain an arm and a lever." Newell also confirmed that he will never speak, since his colleagues are "a more fruitful avenue to explore".
Doug Lombardi, vice president of marketing for Valve, said that history would not return to city 17 and that developers put a lot of work to "create a natural progress of topography and climate."
Newell also confirmed that Episode 3, as it was known at the time, would end the arc of the story that began in Half Life 2. While talking about the possibility of a fourth installment of episodes, it confirmed that it would be independent and developed outside of Valve. It was later revealed that it was in development at the developers Arkane and Dishonored. Unfortunately, it was canceled.
Former franchise writer Marc Laidlaw also said that Episode 3 would not have had a definitive conclusion, such as Half Life and Half Life 2. The summary of the plot that later published seemed to confirm it.
Instead, the game would keep things open for a new team to develop sequels. Laidlaw also stated that he "had no idea" of whether the game would be launched or not.
A possible summary of the plot
In August 2017, Marc Laidlaw, a long-time Half-Life writer, published a short story entitled "Epistle 3 & apos"; in your personal blog.
Although the writer referred to the post as an & apos; fanfic & apos; It is quite clear that the post is a summary of a barely veiled plot of what would have been Half-Life 2: Episode 3, although with most of the names changed and the gender of all the men inverted.
If you would like to read the publication with the name & apos; s and gender & apos; If you're correct, you can do it on GitHub, where someone has transcribed the entire story.
Although it is worth reading the post in its entirety, it seems that the plot of the game would have followed Gordon and Alyx as they traveled to the borealis, which would have been discovered to be disappearing and disappearing. After a protracted struggle, they would have eventually rigged the ship to travel to the heart of the Combine empire and explode, thus liberating the human race from its bondage.
As in the previous Half-Life games, Gordon would have stayed in limbo, saved from the explosion of the Vortigaunts.
Filtered conceptual art
Despite the fact that Valve has rarely talked about Half Life 3, let alone launched game material, we have had some conceptual art on the web during the last decade. While it is not exactly the same as the presentations of a trailer in the game, it is still something. Normally, you can give us some advice on what to expect, but given the time since the art first appeared, the nature of the game could have changed drastically.
The first pieces came online in 2007 and 2008, showing some of the possible settings:
Some more conceptual art arrived in 2012, and if it's legitimate it shows a wide variety of environments that players can explore. Valve has not yet commented on its validity, and as it is usually quick enough to rule out fakes, this has led some to speculate that this is the real deal.
Counter Strike co-creator Minh Lee also admitted having seen some conceptual art.
"I do not think I can talk about that, to be honest," he said. "I think it's the kind of public knowledge that people know they're working on, and if I had to say that, yes, I've seen some images, like some artistic concepts of that, that would not be great news to be honest. I could say that I saw something similar in the Half-Life universe.
And I want to say that it would not surprise anyone if they said "apos", they are doing it, they are working on it, yes. So to get out of the situation, I would say that I made a conceptual art for Half-Life 3. "
In March 2008 the launch of what seems to be the conceptual art of Alyx Vance was also launched on the Picasa page that belongs to Valve illustrator Andrea Wicklund. The images were removed quickly, but not before saving them and redistributing them elsewhere.
Richochet 2
The fans have been bothering Gabe Newell and Valve over the years, turning more and more creative as time goes by. An interesting method is remarkable because he actually received a response from Newell. All they had to do was ask about a sequel to Ricochet, a game often considered the worst of Valve.
"As for Ricochet 2, we always have this problem that when we talk about things well in advance, we end up changing our mind as we go along and develop things, so when thinking about the gigantic arch of the story, which is Ricochet 2, it is possible that you reach a point where you are saying that something surprises us in a positive way, and something surprises us in a negative way, and, you know, we would like to be super-transparent about the future of Ricochet 2. The problem is that we believe that the twists and turns that we are going through probably go back to the craziest people who just keep silence about it, until we can be very clear about what will happen next. "
And then he was asked if the project had slowed down:
"No, everyone who has worked on Ricochet 2 continues to work on Ricochet 2 [laughs]." [19659002] While Newell may be speaking candidly about a sequel to Ricochet, everyone assumed he was playing with the joke and was actually talking about Half Life 3.
Reddit AMA
In January of this year to participate in an AMA (Ask Me Anything), that fans used to ask some questions about the future of the Half Life / Portal universe. He answered some of them, although he did not reveal much.
Other rumors and speculations
A great plot point that emerged in the last decade is that Valve was looking to incorporate a deaf person. Character in the series. It was designed as a function to better support hearing impaired players, with Newell suggesting that Alyx Vance might have fallen in love with a deaf resistance member before Half Life 2 and programmed Dog with sign language so he could practice. This character ended up in another place, and suggested that Alyx and Dog continue signing to communicate in secret.
Newell also hinted that the next game of Half Life would return the franchise to its roots of psychological horror, exploiting the darkest fears of the fans in the
Later it was suggested that Half life 3 could incorporate elements of games of several players, after Geoff Keighley revealed that Portal 2 will be the. Newell then clarified this, saying that it did not necessarily mean the end of the Valve games for a single player. It pretends that future games involve something called, that includes social components that Newell believes increase the value of entertainment.
who supposedly worked for Valve at some point does not think there is another Half Life game. They claim that every time a Half Life project starts to gain any momentum, it ends up dying, a process that makes it difficult for something new to take its place. They compared the game to Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace with expectations so high that the inevitable reaction will be a disappointment.
According to them, there are people within Valve who want to use the Half Life IP for several different things, but they were contemplations and they were never seriously considered by Valve as a whole. In any case, it is not part of a great plan, since that is not how Valve works.
Game Informer emphasizes that the information comes from an unverified source, so take that information with a good deal of skepticism. But what they revealed makes some sense, even if it is a pessimistic view of the future of the franchise and the apos.
Half-Life 3 remains unconfirmed
The more time has passed, the more Valve Futuro of the Half Life franchise has remained silent. It's easy to speculate that Valve is perfecting the game and adjusting things as the game hardware progresses, but the reality is that Valve does not really need to make a new Half Life game to succeed. Steam is the most popular digital store in PC games, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2 attract millions of players who in turn buy items from the game with real money .
While many game studios need to continue making games to stay afloat, the Steam market means that, ultimately, Valve does not. What this means for Half Life is not very clear. Video games are canceled all the time and it is rare that the general public is always informed of the news until several years have passed. The best of the cases is that the game remains in active development, but with Valve prioritizing its resources elsewhere. The worst scenario, and apparently most likely at this point, is that he is dead and will never see the light of day.
But more strange things have happened. Maybe we'll see Half Life 3 some day, or maybe not. Like Schrodinger's cat, we exist in a state where either is possible. We just need Valve to open the box and put our minds to rest.
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