But if money was the only motivating factor, we'd be on Half-Life 7 by now. Thanks to the massive success of Steam (Valve's digital game distribution platform) and multiplayer titles Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, Valve is absolutely rolling in it it's said to be worth around $2.5 billion dollars, not bad for a private company. More money than any game in recorded history. We all have one question for Valve, but to find the answer, we have to consider the question Valve is asking itself: what could they actually hope to achieve by making Half-Life 3? Valve have made no such promises, nor even hints of such promises, continually refusing to talk about it at all. The closest comparison in recent years would be Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but we at least had the luxury of knowing it actually existed and would be physically available.
The fervour of anticipation for Half-Life 3 is unlike anything else in entertainment. Thanks to the Source and Havok engines, Half-Life 2 broke new ground in gameplay, graphics and most notably, in-game physics. From the first time you picked up that can to the moment you got your hands on the Gravity Gun, Valve never wasted an opportunity to show off the world of possibilities they had created within Half-Life 2.Įpisodes One and Two followed, meant to usher in the beginning of a new episodic form of gameplay, with a new instalment supposedly arriving every three months, if this copy of Computer Gaming World is to be believed.Īll the best bits from E3 2021 you missed while you were watching the Euros READ MOREĮveryone is essentially asking the same question: where's Half-Life 3? There are no answers in the video, but it tells us one thing: the hunger is real. Six years later, Valve redefined what was possible in games for a second time with Half-Life 2. Released in 1998, Half-Life built on the work of early genre champions Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem to produce a first-person shooter that was more than blowing aliens to hell it had a compelling story and an immersive world in which to tell it. Few games change the industry, but even fewer change it multiple times. It's remarkable that a franchise as utterly dormant as Half-Life can still whip up such a fuss, but then Half-Life is a remarkable franchise. There's a reason that "Half-Life 3 confirmed" is one of the longest-running jokes on the internet. Avid fans pick apart releases, looking for clues that might suggest a new Half-Life game is on the way, and sometimes they find them file names and game elements that seem to have a link to the vaporous Episode Three, though almost all of them have been denied or written off by Valve. Ultimately Left 4 Dead 2 went on to be massively successful, so you can say that Valve won that round.Įverything Valve does has been scrutinised ever since. Hopes were quickly and dramatically crushed when it turned out to be Left 4 Dead 2, immediately sparking a ludicrous boycott of the game and a demand from fans for better communication from Valve. In 2009 hopes were quickly and dramatically raised when it became clear that Valve were about to make an announcement, expected to be news of the next instalment of Half-Life. Battlefield 2042 Review: the most creative and chaotic yet READ MORE