Is Half-Life 3 really happening? It seems like there’s a real chance of that. But why is that such a big deal? If you’re on the younger side or relatively new to gaming, you may not understand the gravity of Half-Life. Valve’s debut game was Half-Life, a sci-fi action game released in 1998 that was praised for its seamless storytelling, immersive gameplay, and much more. The bar was raised once more with Half-Life 2 six years later as it made massive innovations in physics, packed a great story, and was generally a ton of fun to play. The game received two episodic follow-ups in 2006 and 2007 respectively, but the last episode had a severe cliffhanger.
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It was expected that Half-Life 2: Episode 3 would follow in the late 2000s, but as time went on, Valve’s response to questions about a follow-up grew increasingly vague. Eventually, Valve just stopped talking about it altogether, and it was assumed that it was outright cancelled or at the very least, it evolved into a brand new game altogether. Over the last two decades, there have been a lot of rumors about Half-Life 3, but things started to really heat up in 2020.
Evidence of Half-Life 3‘s Existence
In 2020, Valve released Half-Life: Alyx, a VR prequel to Half-Life 2. It was the first new Half-Life game in well over a decade, and it did something quite dramatic. At the end of the game, Alyx encounters the G-Man for the first time. He shows her the future where her father dies at the end of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and offers to change it for her in exchange for her help. However, he then traps her in stasis, noting that he plans to make use of her.
The player wakes up in Gordon Freeman’s body right where we left him at the end of Episode 2. Eli is alive, but Alyx is gone, upsetting her father. He vows to track down and kill G-Man before handing Gordon his crowbar. This is very obviously a set-up for another game. It seems like the team at Valve may have come up with a compelling idea for a new Half-Life game, but first, they had to rewrite history to do it and Alyx was the vehicle to do so.
Still, Valve has never come out and said Half-Life 3 is in the works… but there are a LOT of clues that it is. For starters, in the early 2020s, Valve began hiring quite a lot of developers from legendary studios like Rockstar Games and Naughty Dog. These were highly experienced designers, physics programmers, and much more. It was a team you’d need to make a big new game, something Valve hasn’t really done in a while. Sure, there’s Deadlock, but the people they were hiring seemed to suggest they were building something pretty advanced.
And that’s a big piece of the puzzle here. Valve’s game development efforts were sort of reduced after Dota 2 in 2013. There were a handful of smaller-scale games like Artifact and some tech demo-y products, but nothing on the scale of a new Half-Life, Portal, or Left 4 Dead game. A lot of projects were spun up in the 2010s, but nothing major made its way across the finish line. Things would just kind of die out. However, Half-Life: Alyx reignited a fire in a lot of the key creatives at Valve, not just for making a great, new, innovative game, but a new Half-Life game. They had fun making it and it wasn’t just trying to make a new Half-Life because it’s what was expected.
With the release of Half-Life: Alyx, Valve started suggesting there was a new future for Half-Life. Team members like designer Robin Walker and programmer Kerry Davis joked in an interview with VGC that they don’t expect another Half-Life game to take 13 years like Alyx did. Writer Erik Wolpaw also noted there were “plans” for the Combine collaborator who is referenced but otherwise unseen in Alyx. Wolpaw had stated in 2020 that the ending for the VR game was a “promise of more to come” and he was lobbying a creative team to make that happen.
In the making-of book for the game, The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, author Geoff Keighley noted that developers were hopeful that their next big game would be a proper Half-Life game made for all gaming platforms, not VR. However, there were concerns that Valve wouldn’t support the scale needed to make such a thing. That said, designer Phil Co made a bold comment in that book: “We’re not afraid of Half-Life anymore.”
In 2021, IGN asked Valve CEO Gabe Newell about his reaction to the ending of Alyx, and he noted that it “worked perfectly” for where the company was headed. All in all, it definitely seems like everyone involved intends to make Half-Life 3. But is it actually happening? It seems so! In 2022, Valve’s Greg Coomer stated there were multiple “exciting” games in the works at Valve. We know about Deadlock and Counter-Strike 2 also came out, but… nothing else has been announced.
Over the last few years, there has been a lot of smoke. Dedicated fans have been datamining any piece of Valve content they can and to their credit, they have found all kinds of references to a new project codenamed HLX. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out HL stands for Half-Life, so naturally, everyone assumes it’s Half-Life 3. These references began popping up in October 2020, about seven months after the release of Alyx.
These references have allowed some fans to begin speculating about features in the game, such as new weather effects, changes to AI, and much, much more. Some of them seem to even suggest locations players will visit, however, one seems pretty spoiler-y, so we won’t go into the details. I’d be lying if I said I completely understood how all of it worked, but much of the data that has been found isn’t being used in other Valve games.
Rumors from trusted community personalities like GabeFollower also indicate that Half-Life 3 entered playtesting at the end of 2024, suggesting Half-Life 3 is in the late stages of development. These rumors were then quickly followed by a vague, ominous post from G-Man actor Mike Shapiro, who used the character’s creepy voice to celebrate New Years Eve and seemed to tease that an “unexpected surprise” was happening in 2025.
When Will Half-Life 3 Be Announced?
So, where does all of this leave us? Well, there has been a lot of speculation that Half-Life 3 will be revealed this month. Valve just announced its new Steam Machine and said it will release in early 2026. Many suspect that Valve would launch it with a new piece of software, similar to how the Valve Index had Half-Life: Alyx released in its first year. It’s believed that if an announcement is going to happen, it will come during The Game Awards on December 11th.
Host Geoff Keighley has a long standing history with Valve. He visited the studio during the final weeks of Half-Life‘s development and did a behind-the-scenes feature on the studio. This relationship has given him some exclusive access to the company over the years, eventually getting the opportunity to quietly produce a making-of book about Half-Life: Alyx that was released in conjunction with the game. Alyx was also initially planned to be shown at The Game Awards, but Valve pulled out at the last minute.
With that said, it seems like Keighley would move Heaven and Earth to get a Half-Life 3 reveal at his show. Valve kind of owes him since they pulled Alyx and the relationship is there for him to be able to make it happen. A bunch of insiders, such as Mike Straw from Insider Gaming, have claimed there is another big announcement coming from Valve this year beyond its hardware. This would suggest that if they’re right, Half-Life 3 will be announced this year. There’s a lot of conflicting information about when this might be, with some believing that Valve is telling employees different dates to find leakers.
Tyler McVicker, a prominent Valve content creator, also stated that he heard a rumor that a trailer for Half-Life 3 was actively in the works. McVicker expressed optimism that a reveal was imminent, but still urged people to be cautious about getting their hopes up. Video game trailers are sometimes produced externally with the help of a trailer editing company, but it’s unclear if Valve would do that here. Some companies, like Rockstar, produce these things in-house, possibly to keep a tight lid on leaks.
Ultimately, we really have no idea what’s going to happen. Maybe this all amounts to nothing, but it is arguably the most likely Half-Life 3 has felt in a very long time. Even if it’s not announced here, it does seem like the game is in the works and it’s just a matter of time of it happening.
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