Half-Life 3
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- Walker: "Dave, what was the name of your team again? Did your project have a name in its title?"
- Speyrer: "Yes, that project was called Half-Life 3."
- ― Robin Walker taunting David Speyrer[src]
Half-Life 3 was a planned sequel to Half-Life 2 and its Episodes that was never formally announced and ultimately cancelled. In 2013, following the unsuccessful attempt at completing the conclusion of Half-Life 2's episodic trilogy with Half-Life 2: Episode Three, a small team at Valve set out to prototype a new single-player Half-Life game with a focus on proceduralism to create an open-ended gameplay experience using the fledgling Source 2 engine. However, difficulties working with the in-development engine led this project along with others at the company to come to a halt.
The details surrounding this sequel attempt were revealed to the public in 2020 with the release of The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, although its existence had been hinted at years prior through unintentional leaks.
Development[edit]
Around April of 2013, a small team at Valve led by David Speyrer began work on a new project on the Source 2 engine, Half-Life 3. The team spent more than a year prototyping the title, the first efforts involving porting over 350 code entities from Half-Life 2 over to the new engine. They intended to incorporate proceduralism alongside hand crafted experiences to create gameplay that was open-ended, hoping to "re-birth" Half-Life as a replayable experience, inspired by the likes of Left 4 Dead. A stated example involved the player needing to rescue a prisoner located inside a building. The game would take the building and dynamically create a rescue path and populate the space with enemies, resulting in a different route every time. These procedurally generated skirmishes would complement crafted story moments, said to likely involve the G-Man.[1]
While this venture had not been publicly announced, on June 18 of the same year, several of Valve's internal projects were discovered by the community from a mailing list found within the company's project management and bug tracking software, Jira. This list included mentions of Half-Life 3, Left 4 Dead 3, and Source 2. The Half-Life 3 mailing group contained 42 employees, which is known to have been updated relatively recently as it included Paul Pepera who had only joined the company earlier in the year in March. 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.[2] Later, on October 1, Valve's Jira database became publicly viewable for a short time again. It is noted that some employees have been added to the previously known Half-Life 3 group, now coming to a total of 46 people, while a new group known as Half-Life 3 Core has since been created containing a smaller subset of the former group, including former Valve designer Kelly Bailey and Adam Foster, among others.[3]
In the following year, by the end of June 2014, Speyrer's team ended their work on Half-Life 3, ultimately having made little progress. The unfinished and unstable nature of the in-development Source 2 engine proved unsuitable for significant game development at the time, leading to the end of other internal projects using it as well, those being Left 4 Dead 3 and an RPG prototype.[1]
Known gameplay[edit]
On October 9, 2015, Valve released, possibly unintentionally, four help files used by the Source 2 version of Hammer, the level editor.[4] These files instruct the level designers on how to use the entities defined in the "Game Definition Files". In Source, these game definitions are stored as FGD files. hl3.txt and ai_basenpc.txt contain information related to Half-Life. The other help files were lights.txt, a file that explains how light characteristics work in Source 2, and rpg.txt, a base for a role-playing game prototype. rpg.txt is known to be an unrelated and independent project since it has its own map properties.
A vast portion of the hl3.txt file consists of Half-Life 2 code ported over to Source 2 with some changes and additions, indicative of the Half-Life 3 prototyping that Speyrer's team worked on in 2013. The text file includes the Base AI functions (such as companions, squad following, scripted sequences) from Half-Life 2, an implied quest system, virtual reality settings in the map properties (enable VR Chaperone, VR Movement), and many other features. The listed entities include npc_quest_citizen, npc_hunter_invincible, npc_turret_ceiling_pulse (Combine Pulse Ceiling Turret, a new enemy), and props_zipline, item_generic.
The quest system is referenced by several entities, such as info_quest_dialog, and point_quest_goal. Moreover, a variation of the npc_citizen entity, called npc_quest_citizen, is apparently able to become a "Quest Member".[i] When this option is enabled, the character becomes friendly/neutral towards Combine units and doesn't take any damage from their attacks. Other new Citizen attributes include beckon_approach_enabled,[i] beckon_radius,[i] approach_radius,[i] and combat_enabled.[i]
A possible Left 4 Dead-style AI Director for procedurally generated enemy placements, similar to the version used in Left 4 Dead 2. The level designers have more control over the spawns. There are hints of a possible game mode with multiple players referenced in the attributes of item_generic. These include: Associated PlayerCounter Name (HL3 only)[i], Pickup prevents respawning (HL3 only)[i].
See also[edit]
- Half-Life 2: Episode Three
- Timeline of Half-Life series developments following Half-Life 2: Episode Two
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, Chapter 3: The Wilderness
- ↑ Half-Life 3, Left 4 Dead 3 and Source 2 Mailing Lists Found on Valve Project Tracker on ValveTime
- ↑ Valve Jira Database Accessed Once More - HL3/L4D3/Source 2 Groups Expand on ValveTime
- ↑
Post: "Valve just accidentally pushed a file named hl3.txt to Dota 2 Reborn that seems to be pretty damn interesting." @SteamDB on X (October 9, 2015)
