The Half-Life video game series is one of the most influential PC video game series of all time. I am not saying this as an opinion, it is a well-accepted fact at this point. The original Half-Life, released in 1998, revolutionized the first person shooter (FPS) genre, advancing the genre from arena shooters with minimal story to the cohesive story-based games we see today. Computer Gaming World called it “not just one of the best games of the [year, it’s] one of the best games of any year.” IGN stated that Half-Life is “the definitive single player game in a first-person shooter.”
Six years later, the developers of Half-Life, Valve, did it again, releasing Half-Life 2 to the shelves in 2004. This second installment debuted a new engine that was years ahead of the competition in both graphics and physics. Across the board it received near-perfect or perfect remarks, with claims such as Maximum PC’s “the best game ever made” being common. It won 39 game-of-the-year awards according to Wikipedia. Many later games would build off its engine, either directly or indirectly, such as Portal, Garry’s Mod, Left 4 Dead, Postal III, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Fistful of Frags, just to name a few.
Two more smaller installments to the series would drop over the following years, but following Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Valve went silent on the Half-Life series. Jokes about Half-Life 3 circulated the internet as the years piled up, which then turned into ‘Valve can’t count to 3’ jokes as they failed to reach a third major installment for any of their games. In 2020, Half-Life: Alyx dropped, a Virtual Reality (VR) title. While Alyx is a great game and still unmatched in many areas within the VR gaming space, it wasn’t the Half-Life 3 everyone was waiting for, and Valve knew this.
All of this introduction was not just me nerding out about one of my favorite games of all time, but hopefully it also serves to explain just how important a Half-Life 3 would be. It is easily on the level of Grand Theft Auto VI, The Elder Scrolls VI, or a hypothetical Minecraft 2 in terms of anticipation and potential gaming impact, if not higher. And the last few months have been the juiciest in terms of rumors and evidence for a new installment in the Half-Life series.
Valve develops all of their intellectual properties on the same game engine. In the era of Half-Life 2, that was the acclaimed Source engine. With Half-Life: Alyx debuted Source 2. As various Valve teams develop their games, especially in the early stages, they create new codes and modules within the engine itself, and all games would use this slightly revised engine. This was especially obvious as Valve developed Dota 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Both are live service games, and received updates for years after their release. What was interesting is that sometimes you could get glimpses of future updates to a different game when datamining a particular game. An update to Counter Strike: Global Offensive would include engine code not only from the previous update of Dota 2, but also potentially any internal new code for the next update of Dota 2.
This remains true in the new Source 2 engine. The three current games on the engine, Counter Strike 2, Dota 2, and the still-in-beta Deadlock still trade code that offer glimpses into the next update for the reciprocal games. However, about a year ago, new code that couldn’t be tied to any of the games started popping up. Some of it eventually ended up in Deadlock, which is Valve’s current and latest project that released to semi-public beta in September 2024, but some of the code couldn’t be identified. Mentions of enemies and content from prior Half-Life games kept popping up, and new features such as procedural generation, local gravity, and robust temperature systems were clearly being developed behind the scenes. Some code was even prefixed with the tag “HLX”, which many believe to be an acronym for Half-Life X, with the X being a possible placeholder for the number 3.
If it stopped here, I wouldn’t be writing an article. In fact, die hard Valve fans know this cycle all too well. Valve is infamous for developing code for a new Half-Life game, only to abandon within a few weeks or months. But it doesn’t. Late last year was also busy for the structure of Valve. The company hired many talented developers and artists across the video game industry. For example, developers from the highly-acclaimed Risk of Rain series, a procedurally generated roguelite, announced their departure on X (formerly Twitter) from Hoopoo Games to Valve in early September. Likewise, new voice talent was listing a new project known as “Project Whitesands” at Valve on their portfolios. Whitesands isn’t a currently named property at Valve, and no code matches the name Whitesands, leading fans to speculate that this might be a cover up title for a project.
The biggest drop of all came on the eve of New Years. Mike Shapiro, the voice actor for two major characters in the Half-Life universe, posted on X (formerly Twitter) for the first time in years. His last tweets came just before and after the release of Half-Life: Alyx. The New Year’s Eve tweet is a 28 second voice over. Starting in the voice of a close ally of the protagonist of the Half-Life series, Barney Calhoun, he reads “Another year already. Good to see and hear from so many of you.” A clock ticks in the background. Shapiro continues, his voice slowly twisting, “May the next quarter century deliver as many, unexpected surprised, hmm? As did the millenniums first.” The voice is no longer that of Barney Calhoun, but rather the “GMan,” a mysterious character within the Half-Life universe that is the subject of much speculation and the driver of alot of the narrative. The tweet ends with Shapiro stating “And again, time is fluid like music. See you in the new years” as a low string crescendos. The allusions to time are also not lost on fans, as the game deals with time travel a fair bit.
And as of writing, that’s where the Half-Life 3 rumors stand today. Continued leaked code, a sudden hiring of new talent, and an ominous post from a lead voice actor in the voice of the franchise’s most recognizable voices. It doesn’t sound like a lot when stated like that, but it is more than Valve fans have had since 2008. I would be remiss not to credit the many people who have datamined and compiled this information. Gabe Follower and Tyler McVicker on YouTube are both incredibly knowledgeable individuals on the matter, and follow this kind of speculation as their jobs, and have compiled information from across the community in an easily digestible format. If you, like myself, are captivated by all of this, I highly recommend you check them out. As for me, I will remain on guard. If an announcement for Half-Life 3 drops, you can bet I will be fangirling, with an article following not too soon after if it happens this semester.