Valve seems to have completely pigeonholed itself out of making new Half-Life games because they all need to be revolutionary titans that steer the course of the genre, rather than fulfilling sequels in their own right. It’s a cold, mechanical view that undermines so much of what made these games special beyond their influence.
A voice actor working for Valve listed “Project White Sands” on her resume, a clear play on Black Mesa (even referencing a dune in New Mexico). Dataminers unearthed something called “HLX” shortly after, which is almost exactly how Half-Life: Alyx leaked back in 2016 when these same dataminers found a piece of code called “HLVR”.
White Sands may even be a reference to the Arctic, which is where Episode 3 and later Half-Life 3 would have taken us in our search for the Borealis.
Whether HLX is Half-Life 3 or not, it doesn’t matter. Valve is making something, and that’s enough to give me hope. Of course, Valve has dabbled in several iterations of Half-Life 3, and all were cancelled because of that strict box it had placed itself into and the expectations of a community that has been left waiting for 17 years. But things feel different this time.
Half-Life’s Universe Is Sci-Fi At Its Peak
The first game redefined the arena shooter era of Doom clones in 1998 by introducing a tangible world and story, filled with reactive and thinking enemies rather than mere fodder to shoot at. Half-Life 2 upped the ante in 2004 with graphics that still impress today alongside a groundbreaking physics engine that reinvigorated the shooter genre. 16 years later, Alyx launched as the first full-length triple-A VR game, still unrivalled in the medium.
I love chucking boxes at zombies with a gravity gun as much as the next person, but Half-Life—the sequel and its episodes especially—don’t stick in my mind because of smashable crates or stacking concrete bricks on a seesaw. The unfathomable horror of an interdimensional empire far beyond our understanding conquering our entire planet in a mere seven hours and twisting our species into their soldiers to keep their dystopian occupation thriving… that’s what resonates.
The Combine is one of the most poignant fascist regimes in all of sci-fi. On the Kardashev Scale, they’re likely a Type 4 civilisation as we find out in lead writer Mark Laidlaw’s Epistle 3, an idea of what Episode 3 might have looked like, that they had Dyson Spheres harvesting the energy of stars to fuel their conquests. Toppling the Citadel was like tearing down a tree house in their neighbour’s backyard. It didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because we’re up against a civilisation that makes us look like Neanderthals.
Type 4 civilisations are able to harvest the energy of the universe itself, which describes the Combine pretty well. Type 5 meanwhile are described as being perceived as gods by lesser civilisations, which sounds r to G-Man and his benefactors.
Even though humanity is so insignificant and technologically behind the Combine, they developed teleportation technology far outclassing their alien overlords. That's what placed our species in the Combine's crosshair and made us more than just specs on their radar.
I could unravel so many of the intricacies of what makes Half-Life’s universe special, from the body horror of the stalkers to the ever-mysterious G-Man and his even more elusive higher-ups, but the point is that Half-Life has so much more heart than just being a pioneer in the FPS genre.
Half-Life 3 Doesn’t Need To Surpass Its Predecessors, It Just Needs To Wrap Up This Story
Half-Life 3 feels like a pipe dream these days. The st we’ve come is Alyx, a prequel-sequel that reframed the 2007 cliffhanger. And yet, like humanity clinging onto hope against insurmountable odds, we finally have something to keep ourselves optimistic.
Valve isn’t nearly as idle as it has been in the past. We’ve had the Index VR headset, Source 2, Half-Life: Alyx, the Steam Deck, Aperture Desk Job, the leaked Deadlock hero shooter, and many more projects. Alyx even ends with Eli Vance, now alive, handing Gordon Freeman a crowbar. We shouldn’t take cliffhangers as guarantees, especially not after Half-Life 2: Episode 2, but in this new world where Valve is moving, I have more faith than ever. HLX feels like more than dust in the wind for once.
The only question is, what does a new Half-Life look like in today’s world? Especially one that isn’t in VR. Alyx was Valve attempting to open the doors to an emerging medium, and even though the game itself was revolutionary, it didn’t make the waves that the original games did because VR is still an incredibly expensive and demanding hobby. Regardless, it was a triumph that raised the bar for every game thereafter.
HLX has big shoes to fill if it wants to stand as tall as its predecessors, but that mindset is exactly why we’ve been waiting so long, and I’m hoping that Valve finally understands that all Half-Life 3 needs to be is a satisfying sequel that ties the knot on a story we all fell in love with decades ago.
