Future of the Half-Life series

	Warning! This article contains spoilers.
	It might spoil your gaming experience when first playing the related game(s). Read at your own risk!

Fan-made Half-Life 3 logo.

Since the release of Half-Life 2: Episode Two within the The Orange Box on October 9, 2007, little news regarding the fate of the subsequent third and concluding chapter in the episodic trilogy has been revealed. The following is a timeline of known information pertaining to the next installment in the Half-Life franchise.

Timeline of released information

Combine Advisors following a humanoid figure into the Borealis in the first Episode Three concept art image, released in 2007.

Gordon Freeman face to face with an Advisor in the second Episode Three concept art image, created and released in 2008.

Combine Advisors around the Borealis in the third Episode Three concept art image, created in 2007 and released in 2008.

What follows are the facts that have been revealed by Valve or found by community members over the years about anything relating to the future of the Half-Life franchise.

Before 2006

On June 28, 1999, the domain half-life3.com is registered under the same details as half-life2.com, with Valve cited as the contact. The URL simply redirects to the Orange Box website.

2006

• In May, Episode Three is announced, for a tentative Christmas 2007 release.

• The same month, it is revealed that a new Episode will be released every six to eight months, and will take four to six hours to complete. Two teams inside Valve will develop the series: the first team will work on Episode One and once it has finished work on the game, it will move to develop Episode Three. The second will develop Episode Two concurrently to both projects. An Episode Four, developed outside of Valve and with a stand-alone plot, is also mentioned.

• In June, Gabe Newell refers to the three Half-Life 2 Episodes as Half-Life 3. Episode Two is announced for Q4 2006, and Three for 2007. Newell states that all the episodes are "worked out" and that each release will move farther beyond the Eastern European and City 17 sensibilities. He also states that the G-Man plays a pivotal role in the Episodes: what happens when he loses control of Gordon Freeman, when Gordon is not available to him as a tool, how he responds to that, and what the consequences of that are. Gordon is also confirmed to be the main protagonist of all three episodes. Newell adds that expansions similar to that of Half-Life may also be made at some point.

2007

• In a May interview given by David Speyrer and Doug Lombardi about the development of Episode Three, it is stated that a lot of work has gone into creating a natural progress of topography and climate between Two and Three, and that the player will not head back to City 17, at least not in this game. Furthermore, Speyrer does not want to comment about speculation started by PC Gamer UK on the game's climax being a battle set at an Arctic research station.

• In October, Episode Two is released. At the end of the game, Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance are about to leave to Arctic locations, in search of Judith Mossman and the newly recovered Borealis, the Aperture Science icebreaker, suggesting this is what the sequel to Episode Two will be about.

• In a November interview, David Speyrer explains that an Episode Three teaser at the end of Episode Two was deliberately omitted to avoid ruining the mood the player would have been in after the final scene by having it followed by an high action trailer. Another reason was to give them more creative freedom, and avoid being committed to anything seen in the potential trailer, stating they are trying to do "something pretty ambitious". He also states they did not want to make the same mistake as with the Episode Two trailer featured at the end of Episode One, as it is radically different from the finished game.

• In November as well, the first concept art for Episode Three is released by GamesRadar.

• In December, Episode Three is said to be only the end of the current Half-Life 2 story arc, not the end of the overall Half-Life franchise, nor the episodic releases, with even more episodic games unconnected to the current story arc to be made. This hints at the Episode Four mentioned in 2006.

2008

• In March, Valve artist Andrea Wicklund uploads 32 pieces of concept art she made for Episode Three, on her Picasa account. They will only be discovered by the community over four years later, in June 2012.

• In April, source code for three entities is released in the Source SDK in a folder named "Episode3", before being removed shortly after. They include "npc_combine_armored" (a heavily armored Combine soldier with separate shields for each part of its body), "npc_wpnscanner" (a scanner shooting bolts), and "weapon_proto1" (appearing in the Source Particle Benchmark and Episode Two as a test weapon). However, it is later stated by Valve's Tony Sergi that the code is a leftover of old material.

• In July, the second Episode Three concept art is released through the winner list of the Into the Pixel contest of that year, involving Gordon Freeman and his crowbar face to face with a Combine Advisor, and made by Valve artists Ted Backman, Jeremy Bennett, and Tristan Reidford. The same month, a third piece of concept art is revealed by GamesRadar, although it was created in 2007.

• In an October interview, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi states that news or an announcement of Episode Three might be revealed near the end of the year. In that interview, Lombardi also states that the distance between Episode Two and its sequel will be longer than the distance between the three current Half-Life 2 games.

2009

• While the community is expecting an announcement on the future of the Half-Life franchise on June 1, Left 4 Dead 2 is announced instead, instantly leading to the creation of the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott Steam group. Following that pattern, on June 4, a petition named Message to Valve is created on the Steam forums by user Surfrock22, requesting more communication between Valve and the Half-Life fanbase (referred to in the thread as Valve's "oldest and longest running fanbase"), thus publicly release some information about the future of the Half-Life franchise.

• In an August video involving Gabe Newell and two interpreters discussing deafness and video games with a small audience of hearing-impaired people, the inclusion of an unidentified deaf character in a future game set in the Half-Life and Portal universe is said to be tested by Valve, as a new gameplay and Source engine feature aimed at providing better support for hearing-impaired players. Newell suggests that before Alyx met Gordon, she had a crush on a hearing impaired Resistance member, so she programmed Dog with knowledge of sign language so she could practice and easily communicate with him. Then this person went away from Alyx to fight the Combine someplace else, and Alyx and Dog started signing with each other when they wanted to communicate without making noise or without other people knowing.

• The same month, Newell explains in an interview that Valve is experimenting many techniques on their games, including Episode Three. He adds he has currently nothing to say about the game, and that the community will be notified as soon as they have material they are ready to share.

2010

List of the hint nodes found in the Alien Swarm SDK.

• In a March interview, Newell hints that Valve intends to return the Half-Life franchise to its psychological horror roots by exploiting the fans' deepest fears, which he sums up as "the death of their children" and "the fading of their own abilities".

• The same month, the Portal ARG is launched. At the beginning, the community starts to speculate it is related to Episode Three, until it is revealed the ARG is promoting the upcoming Portal 2.

• In an April interview, Gabe Newell states that Gordon Freeman will go unchanged in the next Half-Life game - he wants him to "largely remain an arm and a crowbar." There also are no plans to make him a talking character, as Newell considers making the player's companions more interesting and compelling seems a more fruitful avenue to explore.

• Shortly after Alien Swarm is released in July, unused hint nodes are found in its SDK, under the names "Ep3 Blob Shake Position", "Ep3 Fire Cover Position", "Ep3 Brain Cover Position", "Ep3 Brain Regenerate Position", "Ep3 Spit Position", "Ep3 Spawn Generator Position", and "Aperture: Nest". Given the prefix "Ep3" and the use of the name "Aperture", these may be leftovers of the sequel to Episode Two.

• In an August interview, Doug Lombardi states they hate to make the community wait, but that they have no announcements regarding Gordon Freeman or his ongoing adventures at this time.

2011

The two Half-Life fans picketing outside of Valve met by Gabe Newell in August 2011.

The Half-Life 3 T-shirt as photographed by Chandana Ekanayake on December 1, 2011.

• In February, Chet Faliszek states that Valve is "not prepared to talk about [Episode Three] at the moment".

• When asked about the future of the Half-Life series in a March interview, Doug Lombardi states that they are not done with Gordon Freeman's adventures, and advises the community to "hang in there" with them, without further detail.

• On April 19, Portal 2 is released. The same day, The Final Hours of Portal 2 is released. In it, author Geoff Keighley states that Portal 2 is probably Valve's last game with an isolated single-player experience. This is construed by many members of the community to mean the end of single-player games made by Valve. Gabe Newell refutes this idea in a May interview, stating that Valve is not done with single-player games, but rather wants to transform them into "single-player plus" games, thus single-player games with social components added to them. He remarks that entertainment is inherently increased in value by having it be social, letting people play with their friends and recognizing that they are connected with other people, a concept they wish to add to their single-player games.

• In another May interview, Newell states that Valve is done with the episodic model as we know it, now rather updating the same game as much as they want through Steam, which was introduced with Team Fortress 2.

• The same month, the Portal 2 SDK is released. In the files, code for an NPC named "Combine Advisor - Roaming" is found by users, and is shortly removed in a subsequent update.

• In May again, several .vcd choreography files labeled "magnuss" are found in Portal 2's VPK cache. They are named "magnuss_get_going.vcd", "magnuss_idle.vcd", "magnuss_nopoint.vcd", "magnuss_shakehead.vcd", and "magnuss_wave.vcd", and appear to be for the model "magnusson.mdl", Arne Magnusson's model. They don't exist in the Episode Two files, where Magnusson's animations are prefixed "mag", suggesting they may be either old discarded animations, or animations set to appear in the next Half-Life game.

• In June, at the Games for Change festival in New York, Gabe Newell delivers a keynote focusing largely on the educational benefits of games. When Newell asks the audience for any questions, someone asks when Episode Three is going to be released. Newell's answers "If you know enough to ask the question, you know enough what the answer is."

• On August 11 and 12, three fans picket outside of the Valve headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, requesting information about Episode Three / Half-Life 3. Gabe Newell in person comes out to speak with them, they go for lunch together, and are also given a tour of the offices by Erik Johnson, as well as pizza, playtesting of Dota 2, and some goodies. However upon being asked when a new Half-Life was coming out, Newell merely answered "I can't tell you.". The first day counts two fans only, and they are joined with a third one on the second day. The texts on their signs include "CANADA 4 THE RELEASE OF HALF LIFE 3", "HALF LIFE 3... IS IT LEFT 4 DEAD?", "HOW DID JUDITH GET TO THE ARCTIC SO QUICKLY? (rest unseen)" "I COULDN'T THINK OF A NEW SIGN... BUT YOU KNOW WHAT WE WANT (HL 3)", among others. As a Microsoft building is located nearby, presumably a Valve employee gave the picketers four humorous small signs to show, such as one asking Microsoft to bring back the former MS Office mascot "Clippy". The protesters claim that their picketing is not meant to be a serious protest but rather a joke; they just had free time on their hands, and felt like "chillin', maxin' relaxin' all cool" outside of Valve. Following the "protest", Kotaku also asked Newell if he had anything to say about a new game, to which he simply replied "I got nothing for you.".

• Around September 19th, a Vietnamese beta tester leaks Dota 2’s entire game client, as well as all of its files, to the Internet. Among the various files can be found code referring to a folder named "ep3", pointing at what appears to be weapons: "weapon_icegun", "weaponizer_concrete", "weaponizer_liquid", "weaponizer_metal", and "weapon_flamethrower". However, around September 23, Chet Faliszek states that the code doesn't mean anything and shouldn't be taken as fact.

• December 2011 sees several rumors about a Half-Life ARG, and that Gabe Newell has given the go-ahead to those in the know to drop Half-Life hints. Fans see what may be hints in Wheatley's "Character of the Year" award acceptance video for the Spike TV 2011 Video Game Awards, several fake official e-mails are shared, cryptic information is revealed through an unofficial Twitter account for Doug Rattmann, and an unofficial website, Black-Aperture.com, reveals other cryptic messages. All is debunked by Valve through Gabe Newell, Marc Laidlaw and Chet Faliszek.

• On December 1, Chandana Ekanayake, part of Seattle-based game developer Uber Entertainment, sees what he believes to be a Valve employee wearing what appears to be a Half-Life 3 T-shirt at a local developer event and asks his permission to take a photo of the T-shirt as he is a huge fan of the series. Upon being asked if he knows anything about Half-Life 3, he appears to know nothing. On December 1, a fan named Alexei asks series' writer Marc Laidlaw about the validity of the T-shirt; he confirms its existence but has nothing else to elaborate on.

• On December 9, an anonymous US-based voice actor reveals that Valve has recorded lines for "Half Life: Episode 3" (sic). This leads to rumors that the next Half-Life game will be unveiled at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards on December 10. However, this doesn't occur.

• During the Steam Holiday Sale, Valve drops several Half-Life references in their sale artwork. In the comic Randolph the Red-Nosed Turret released December 22, three socks are hanged to the mantelpiece, for Gordon, Alyx and Dog. Above is the landscape seen by Chell when she reaches the outside at the end of Portal 2, with three clouds in the sky. Furthermore, in the image placed at the end of the slideshow of day five of the Holiday Sale (December 23) showing the Steam mascots riding with Santa Claus in his sleigh, one of the mascots is holding a golden Lambda necklace with three specks of light on it, among other things. This further fed rumors and speculation among the fanbase about imminent news regarding a new Half-Life game.

• On December 23, voice actor John Patrick Lowrie debunks on his personal blog the words of the anonymous voice actor from December 9. He states in the comments on a post about his wife Ellen McLain being nominated for a VGA award that he hasn't heard anything yet about a new Half-Life game, and thus has not recorded anything yet. He states, among other things: "No Half Life 3 stuff yet. Haven’t heard anything." and "Ellen and I haven’t heard anything about a new Half Life episode.

• On December 26, the petition launched in 2009 on the Steam Users' Forums, having amassed more than 1,000 signatures in a year, evolves to a Steam group named "A Call for Communication (Half-Life)".

2012

Advisor cornering an individual in Xen.

• On January 9, several references to the Half-Life series are found in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta files, namely being several whiteboard texture files for the map "Office", containing the names of several Half-Life 2 main characters, among other things.

• On January 5, "Operation Crowbar" is launched on the Steam Users' Forums, as another form of protest against Valve's silence on the future of the Half-Life franchise (the operation also has its dedicated Steam group). It involves buying crowbars and mailing them to Valve, or, as a cheaper alternative, spamming Valve's e-mail accounts and social networking pages with pictures of crowbars or crowbar-related puns.

• On January 13, Marc Laidlaw confirms the rumor that a fourth and canceled Half-Life 2 Episode, Return to Ravenholm, was developed by Arkane Studios from 2006 to 2009.

• As of January 19, the Steam group "A Call for Communication (Half-Life)" has been covered by over 27 gaming publications.

• On February 4, the Steam group "A Call for Communication" organizes their first activity, "A Red Letter Day", a group event which involves playing Half-Life 2, aimed at putting the franchise back in the spotlight, drawing more people to their cause and simply "be a huge group of Half-Life fans playing one of the best games ever made". Though hopes also are that Half-Life 2 would reach the top ten games played for that day, it only reaches #11, with a maximum of 13,216 concurrent players. A website is also launched the previous day to mark the event and coordinate the future ones. On March 12, the group proposed another activity, titled "Mosaic for Valve", asking fans to create and submit a Half-Life-related image. This plan failed to reach fruition.

• On February 19, Gabe Newell states in an interview that Valve is aware of how much they annoy the fanbase with their lack of communication about the future of their several series, and that is frustrating to them to put the fanbase in that situation. He adds they don't want to happen again what happened for Half-Life 2, i.e. delaying the game after promoting it and giving a precise release date, to avoid exciting gamers then disappointing them. He concludes that they now prefer to be sure of themselves before officially announcing anything.

• On April 23, as part of an online audio interview, Gabe Newell discusses Valve's total silence concerning the next Half-Life game yet again, this time using the codeword "Ricochet 2" to talk about it more covertly. He states that the game's development has undergone many changes, twists and turns since it first began, and thus it is fairer and more reasonable to the fanbase to maintain radio silence, rather than having to put them through the many changes, transformations, twists and turns as well, which would probably make things worse. As said in earlier interviews, they prefer to wait so that they can be as sure as possible about how the project will manifest before making any formal announcement or reveal. In their story on the subject, Develop Magazine reveals that in 2011, they were "reliably informed that 'unexpected concept changes' were central to the delay to the Half-Life 3 project".

• On June 27, the 32 pieces of concept art for Episode Three uploaded by Andrea Wicklund on her Picasa account in 2008 are discovered by the community. The images depict an Arctic setting and include several redesigned outfit variants for Alyx Vance (two depicting her wearing her father's jacket, one her father's Harvard sweater), several outfit variants of additional unknown characters, several renditions of the Mil Mi-8 crashed into the ice, and several images of a reimagined Xen (clearly identified as "ep3_xen#.jpg" by Wicklund herself), including an unknown entity, redesigned islands, and a Combine Advisor cornering someone. The next day, Wicklund's portfolio was deleted.

2013

• On June 18, several internal Valve projects are discovered from a mailing list found within the company's project management and bug tracking software, Jira. This list includes mentions of Half-Life 3, Left 4 Dead 3, and Source 2. The Half-Life 3 mailing group contains 42 employees, which is known to have been updated fairly recently as it includes Paul Pepera who had only joined Valve in March of the same year. However, it is noted that only one group pertained to Half-Life 3 while the similarly unannounced Left 4 Dead 3 already had multiple groups dedicated to it, indicating it was at a more active development stage than the former.

Concept art gallery

2007

• 

  Combine Advisors following a humanoid figure into the Borealis.

• 

  Combine Advisors around the Borealis.

2008

• 

  Gordon Freeman face-to-face with an Advisor.

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  Bust of Alyx.

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  Bust of Alyx wearing a reused Soviet army officer ushanka, with "hammer and sickle" cap badge.

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  Bust of Alyx wearing a chullo and her father's Harvard sweater.

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  Bust of Alyx wearing her father's jacket.

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  Bust of Alyx with her ears protected.

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  Ditto.

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  Full-size Alyx in a weapon holding position.

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  Ditto (with long hair).

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Full-size Alyx with goggles and jacket.

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  Full-size Alyx with goggles and vest.

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  Full-size Alyx, with a "pirate"-ish style.

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  Full-size Alyx with ushanka.

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  Full-size Alyx wearing her father's jacket and a sweater similar to that of Mossman.

• 

  Unknown character.

• 

  Ditto.

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  Unknown character with goggles and ice axe.

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  Ditto.

• 

  Unknown character.

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Character in a suit.

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  The crashed Mil Mi-8 with unidentified structures in the background.

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  Ditto, with a large installation in the background.

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  Ditto, with two figures overlooking the horizon.

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  Xen islands.

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  Advisor cornering an individual in Xen.

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  Unknown entity in Xen with a figure trapped in a bubble of some sort.

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Unknown entity.

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Ditto.

References