Yesterday, Valve announced three (3) hardware products: a Steam Machine console, a Steam Controller, and the long-rumored Steam Frame VR headset. This hardware, along with the excellent Steam Deck, gives Valve a fairly comprehensive way for people to play games wherever they want, on any type of screen. And, of course, the game is everything. Steam’s catalog is impossibly huge, covering every genre you can imagine – but there’s still one important title missing from the thousands of games available.
I’m, of course, talking about Half-life 3.
I swore in 2017 that I’d stop beating this dead horse, but Valve pulled me back in with a completely unexpected, excellent, VR-only. Half Life: Alex Prequel. At the very least, it was a sign that the Half-Life universe was not dead and buried in Valve’s minds, despite the fact that it had been lying dormant with an unresolved cliffhanger for over a dozen years.
At the time, Valve indicated it was interested in moving forward with more games in the series, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the company dropped things again. But, a big push in hardware that feels significantly more powerful than the Steam Deck one more perfect opportunity to make a half-life 3 Happen.
And there have actually been some more solid bread crumbs to follow over the past year, hinting that Valve may finally be returning to the Half-Life story. It began on the 20th anniversary of half life 2When Valve released a major update to the game. “Every map in Half-Life 2 has been overhauled by Valve’s level designers to fix long-standing bugs, restore content and features lost over time, and improve the quality of certain things like lightmap resolution and fog,” the developer wrote. With the inclusion of some developer commentary, a documentary, and two episodic follow-up games, it was a pretty substantial update to such an old game.
Late last year, YouTuber Gabe Follower provided some details on the potential half life 3 coming soon. Followers had earlier called for its release counter attack 2Provides some credibility to their findings. To make a long story short, the follower claimed that a Valve project internally titled “HLX” had reached the play-testing stage. This didn’t mean launch was imminent, but at least the game was moving forward in development.
Another less consequential but fun piece of news came out around the same time: actor Michael Shapiro (who voiced the infamous G-Man in the Half-Life series) posted a New Year’s message where he spoke in the G-Man’s weird accent and said he’d see audiences in the coming year. It’s not a coincidence that he did this earlier in 2020 Half Life: Alex launch. The game was already announced when he posted that message, but it’s still an interesting teaser.
The timing couldn’t be better than this. The Game Awards are less than a month away, and if you’re announcing a big new title the extravaganza is the biggest stage you could ask for. Not that Valve really needs the platform – they could just drop a trailer on YouTube and the gaming world would take care of the rest.
But as a companion to the company’s renewed hardware ambitions? The coordination will be so good that it cannot be missed. After all, the Valve Index VR headset launched not long ago Half Life: Alex was announced, and anyone who purchased it got the game for free. a theoretical half life 3 Not exactly, as there’s no chance the game will require an official Steam Machine. But it will still serve as a launch title to help drum up interest in the company’s new devices.
As for me, I’m not letting myself get too excited here. I remember in 2013, when Valve introduced the first Steam Machine initiative and their first attempt at a controller, I thought it would be a perfect time to make an announcement. half life 3Obviously this did not happen, But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a little hope this time, There’s enough smoke to make me think the fire is real; Hopefully it’s time to wake up and smell the ashes,