It’s not Half-Life 3, but Half-Life: Alyx may be the closest we ever get.
It finally happened. Yesterday, Valve announced that a new Half-Life game is currently in development. Of course, that announcement came with a few asterisks.
*Half-Life: Alyx is a prequel Half-Life 2, set in the time before the first and second entries.
**And, this new Half-Life game is coming to Steam VR.
“We’re excited to unveil Half-Life: Alyx, our flagship VR game, this Thursday at 10am Pacific Time,” read the tweet, from the official @valvesoftware Twitter.
“Can’t wait to share it with all of you!”
For the many, many players without access to VR, this announcement has been exciting, disappointing and/or the necessary inspiration to finally splurge on a headset. But, for fans forced to download Steam to play Half-Life 2 back in 2004, this kind of bargain isn’t new.
We’ll know more on Thursday, but with Shenmue 3 out this week, we may be fresh out of impossible, never-happening games.
***That said, this long-awaited prequel may be arriving at the expense of an interesting new IP. Members of the team at Campo Santo, the company behind Firewatch which was acquired by Valve in spring 2018, have changed their Twitter bios to remove any references to In the Valley of the Gods, their previously announced upcoming game.
Additionally, some — but not all — references to In the Valley of the Gods have been scrubbed from Campo Santo’s website. The official In the Valley of the Gods website is still up, though. We won’t know for sure until Campo Santo and/or Valve makes an announcement, but… In the Valley of the Gods may have replaced a new Half-Life as the new impossible, never-happening game.
