One section, however, was especially interesting:
Do you have any idea whether Half-Life 3 will ever be released and would you be willing to work on this title?
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.
If you are of a sound mind, then that section should be further proof of what you have known for a long time: the adventures of Gordon Freeman are over.
The Half-Life fandom, however, is not a community of sound minds.
Since Episode 2's release in October 2007, this community has been patiently waiting for the continuation of the bespectacled crowbar enthusiast's story, and has recieved nothing but radio silence in return. Ten years of absolutely no word on the status of their promised conclusion. Ten years of Valve drifting completely away from single-player narritive driven games and toward competitive multiplayer games (with, surprise surprise, plenty of microtransactions to go around), and then moving away from games completely, to work on VR hardware and of selling other people's games on Steam.
Oh yeah, and paid mods. Let's not forget that debacle.
So, it really begs the question: why are people holding on? Why can this community not give up Gordon Freeman's ghost?
Many of the faithful point to the various leaks that have come our way over the years, but with the exception of some 2008-era pieces of concept art, these almost always come in the form of small orphaned files code snippets found in updates to Valve's games, from previously unseen animations for Dr. Magnusson being found in Portal 2, to various bits of code in their various VR demos mentioning HL3. However, all these confirm is that HL3 was indeed in development at some point. It indicates nothing pertaining to its current status. We have no idea how long these pieces of software have been in development, we have no idea when those files or bits of code date to, and we have no idea if they even still have any internal use at Valve. As someone who has worked on small personal game projects, let me just say that legacy files from scrapped ideas or mechanics are a bitch to clean up. There will almost always be something falling through the cracks. Hell, to this day, TF2 contains code and an unused sound clip from a scrapped Escort gamemode. The gamemode may have been scrapped, but those tiny artifacts from its development went unnoticed and undeleted, all the way up to release. If a bit unused project code (and a whole lot of other stuff, as this page stands testament to) can go unnoticed and accidentally released in the full retail release of one of the most anticipated games of all time, then it's completely probable that a bit of code referring to "crowbar ziplines" with the hl3 prefix can sneak their way into a free VR demo
This is, of course, assuming that these 'leaks' are accidental, which seems highly unlikely. Valve surely generates web traffic every time an HL3 buzz comes around, so it would make sense to plant the occasional model or code snippet to get the hype going. They get an instant blast of free publicity, and all they needed to do was drag a .SMD file in their update files.
Even ignoring any monetary motivations, it's important that Valve employees are still human beings. Human beings who, in many cases, grew up soaked in internet culture, including trolling. So it's not hard to imagine that certain HL3 references popping up "accidentally" in files are the results of bored developers who want to have a little fun with their audience. In fact, don't imagine, read Gabe Newell himself saying that this happens.
This, combined with every head writer and all but two minor writers having left the company, should present a clear situation: not only is HL3 not coming, but any story-based games aren't coming either. DotA-based card games that nobody asked for? Maybe. VR demos? Maybe. But single player, narrative-driven games? No. What's the point in them for Valve if they can't monitize it afterwards with skinner box microtransactions? Let's face it: the glorified gambling machines that are presented to us as lootboxes or crates make far more money and require much less effort than building an entire game. Building maps and writing scripts takes a lot of time. Using photoshop to make a wolf skin for an AK-47 doesn't.
Believe me, I want to be proven wrong. But somehow I doubt I will.
Wake up and smell the ashes.
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