Everybody talking about Half-Life 3 again Created 3 weeks ago2024-08-26 13:11:58 UTC by Combiner 1P

High-profile events, people started talking about Half-Life 3 again, they say that the Valve are preparing something worthwhile. But after looking through the news, it becomes clear that they are not going to release anything exept Deadlock. What do you think about this?

Valve leaves traces of game prototypes and does other stuff out of practical reasons, which some people misinterpret as them secretly working on something. I honestly really doubt they're working on anything Half-Life-related on a meaningful scale.
(one or two people could be developing some mini prototype at any point, but for it to have any meaning, it needs to be in actual production)

The "White Sands" stuff isn't really telling of anything, the Black Mesa biotech company very much looks like a fan-made thing, and everything else is just a whole bunch of nothingburger, nothing to get excited about, really.

There's also the possibility that Valve is intentionally trolling us. If I worked at Valve, I'd do the same just to spite the community. Waiting for HL3 has been a meme for such a long time, it makes perfect sense to make fun of it and people's never-ending hope for the game. It's almost a bit like, uhh, Minecraft removing Herobrine every update.

Me personally, I couldn't care less at the very moment. If it turned out that I was way too sceptical and Half-Life 3 actually got a trailer one day, great, I'll probably get very excited for a brief moment. If it never happens, no big deal, I never expected it anyway.

Very profound.

To be honest. Valve doesn't deserve to be on top anymore with everything that is happening. Great line of games end all of a sudden? I don't care anymore, less toxicity among people then.

There will always be toxicity among humans. Regardless of something else. But yes, the Valve are not the same as they were 20 years ago.

The whole community is divided, some say that it's in development, other say it's not HL3, or it's a canceled project. Personally, i strongly believe they are developing something, but from the looks of it, it's probably not Half-Life 3. All my money goes to some random test project, maybe some sort of DLC for HL: Alyx.
Deep down, i am really hoping it's HL3, but i am ready to be disappointed.

Personally, i strongly believe they are developing something

I'm sure they're always developing something. I'm guessing that, right now, the gamedev work is mainly distributed across Deadlock (production and testing) and Counter-Strike 2 (maintenance and hopefully content updates), with maybe, maybe just a little bit of wiggle room? For an unannounced game in an early prototyping stage?

But then again, that's just a guess. I might be forgetting to take plenty of things into account.

I think Half-Life 3 wouldn't be successful or even considered good without Marc Laidlaw. Isn't it he that made the game what it is more than Gabe? And the community is possibly too nitpicky with the quality of the game to accept an "At Least Decent" game.

I'm honestly exited for Valve to fail and lose its reputation. This has gone on for too long.

I'm honestly exited for Valve to fail and lose its reputation. This has gone on for too long.

unfortunatly, this is how it will be. It is very difficult to make a sequel so that it is as good as the first game, but with drastic changes, and at the same time not ruin everything.

I think Half-Life 3 wouldn't be successful or even considered good without Marc Laidlaw.

it's true that Mark Laidlaw made the Half-Life storyline something that no one else would have done. This will never happen again, and therefore Gabe, at one of his private conferences, admited that they never once got involved in the development of the third episode, but everything ended in dysmaralia, depression, and eventually they moved away from all this.

I hold a strong belief that Half-Life 3 will appear only once all these fading gaming hype cycles will have been completely exhausted. And yet, even then, people still find stupid ideas to cling to and develop yet the next "best thing" that will register as a small blip of a few months on the gamer's attention radar.
In recent years it feels like the gaming cycles have become more and more compressed. It's like "what's the game of the season?", and feels like it's slowly migrating to bite-sized experiences.
But unfortunately that's what I'm experiencing in my bubble only, because statistics tell us a different story.. Fortnite, Overwatch, LoL etc. have playerbases in the millions or hundreds of millions. I sometimes see kids glued to their phone playing roblox while walking.

Naturally, every major gaming company wants a piece of that pie and then go with the flow: MOBA games (this, after MMMORPGS has been milked to death), Battle Royale (does anyone even remember PUBG?) and different FPSes.... Apex Legends, Fortnite, Overwatch, lately there was a HellDivers 2 trend...

To me Deadlock is yet another game where I'd have to invest way too many resources to learn the style of each champion, strategies and skills. And for what? It's the same old shit and for me it's just a fleeting experience, something to play with my mates 2 or 3 times just to have a taste of it. There simply isn't enough time anymore if you want to have a life outside your house.

Some of us clearly are not in the audience of these companies anymore.

The industry only knows how to milk cows apparently.