If Half-Life 3 Was Made, It Would’ve Had a Cliffhanger, According To Main Writer

Fans of Valve's games have been wishing – and, in some cases, persistently bugging – for a sequel to Half-Life 2, hoping that Gabe Newell and company would've someday considered counting to the number three. But while we wait for a sequel that probably would never come, the game series' main writer has confirmed that it probably wouldn't have brought much closure anyway.

Speaking with Arcade Attack, former Valve staffer Marc Laidlaw, who did a lot of work on the Half-Life series, noted that if the game was in fact made, it wouldn't have resolved everything that the fans would've wanted. In fact, it would've ended with a cliffhanger itself – leaving them hungry for the even less-fathomable Half-Life 4.

When asked about the game, he simply noted, "No idea. And I have no interest in going back. I had ideas for Episode 3. They were all supposed to take the series to a point where I could step away from it and leave it to the next generation. I had hoped for a reset between HL2 and HL3 that was as dramatic as the shift between HL1 and HL2. I honestly don't know if anyone else shared this goal, but it seemed important to me to give ultimate freedom to whoever inherited the series, with my own personal set of loose ends tied up to my satisfaction.

"Unfortunately, I was not able to do that. But I never thought as far ahead as HL3, unless you were to say that HL3 and Episode 3 were the same thing. I will say that I expected every installment would end without resolution, forever and ever…there was some rumor going around that Ep3 or HL3 would end Gordon Freeman's story, and I don't think that was accurate. My intention was that Ep3 would simply tie up the plot threads that were particular to HL2. But it would still end like HL1 and HL2, with Gordon in an indeterminate space, on hold, waiting for the next game to begin. So one cliffhanger after another."

And without Laidlaw – and a few other producers behind the game – on the project, it doesn't look like we'll ever see it at this point. Sigh…at least there's the original games.