A Valve insider has suggested that the long-rumored Half-Life 3 could be announced in 2025, provided playtesting goes smoothly.
It seems like 2024 couldn't end without one more rumor about Half-Life 3. While fans have been waiting for a proper sequel for years, the last few months have made people think that Valve is really pulling it off.
Aside from a voice actor's CV found in August, prominent Valve experts have claimed to have found evidence that a new Half-Life is being developed by mining data from other Valve games, such as Deadlock and Dota 2.
One such insider, Gabe Follower, has already boldly said that Half-Life 3 is real after three years of research, and now believes the game has entered the testing phase.
In fact, in Gabe Follower's latest video on the topic, he says he heard that Valve has been testing a new Half-Life for the past few months. Not only internally, but also with friends and family of Valve employees.
As a reminder, similar private playtests are also underway for Deadlock, causing screenshots and videos to leak online ahead of a formal announcement from Valve.
This testing phase is very important, according to Gabe Follower. In the past, private playtests like this have resulted in Half-Life: Alyx having its entire story rewritten and Deadlock apparently changing its art style twice.
Gabe Follower also believes that if everything moves forward smoothly, then Valve could have an announcement ready in 2025. Although considering Valve has canceled iterations of Half-Life 3 in the past, there's no guarantee that any new title won't suffer a similar fate. .
Elsewhere in the video, Gabe Follower mentions other datamined details that he believes are related to a new Half-Life game. For example, it claims to have found more evidence that Valve is working on altered gravity mechanics that would allow players to go from flat surfaces to spherical environments.
Valve co-founder and president Gabe Newell recently admitted that he didn't see the point in making Half-Life 2: Episode Three if it didn't offer anything new from a gameplay perspective. Therefore, one would think that any new Half-Life game would feature unique mechanics not seen in previous entries.
The chances of Half-Life 3 actually getting made are more likely now than before Half-Life: Alyx came out in 2020. Before its release, Valve even teased that the Half-Life series would continue, with this virtual reality interquel marking 'our return to this world, not the end of it.'
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