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The Half-Life 3 speculation mill has been running hot over the last few months. G-Man’s voice actor Mike Shapiro rang in the new year by posting a video in which he refers to “unexpected surprises” in the staggering voice of Half-Life’s dimension-hopping villain. Before that, evidence that Valve was working on a “Project White Sands” was revealed on an actor’s website—White Sands referring to an area of New Mexico where Black Mesa was supposedly situated.
Now, Reddit user Relevant_Basis5444 has spotted that Valve’s Steam page currently lists two projects beneath its “Upcoming Releases” tag (via Eurogamer). One of these is Deadlock, Valve’s third-person MOBA, which is currently in development, and technically unreleased despite thousands of people playing it right now. The other, however, is hidden from view. It’s worth noting that Steam developer pages can hide games from view depending on your filter settings. But this mystery game remains obscured even with all filters disabled.
Primed to view any unusual behaviour by Valve as evidence of Half-Life 3’s development, fans have naturally speculated that this hidden game is Gordon Freeman’s long-awaited third adventure. But it’s worth bearing in mind that it could really be anything, as the comments to Relevant_Basis’ original post deliberate. Several users suggest this purported additional game is the result of a good old-fashioned bug, while others note this second title could be In the Valley of the Gods—Campo Santo’s follow-up to Firewatch in development before the studio was acquired by Valve. However, Campo Santo has its own Steam page where In the Valley of the Gods is listed as an upcoming game, so it’s unlikely to be that.
Another possibility is raised by user Accurate_Till 7811, who points out that on archive.org, Valve’s Steam page listed ‘Steam Gift Cards’ in the upcoming releases section as late as December (despite gift cards being purchasable on Steam for years). Curiously, Steam Gift Cards are the only item listed as upcoming on the page at the time, with no mention of Deadlock on the upcoming tab alongside gift cards.
Right now, the most logical explanation is that the second game is the outdated gift card listing, which Valve hid from view when it updated its upcoming games to publicly list Deadlock. It could be a new game, but there’s no additional evidence to support this beyond Shapiro’s cryptic tweets and references to HLX that have been unearthed by dataminers. And even if it is a new game, that doesn’t mean it’s Half-Life 3. Remember, Valve works in mysterious ways, and rarely does the expected.
Although Half-Life 3 remains elusive, Valve has released a lot of information related to the conclusion of the Half-Life story over the past months. In its 20th anniversary documentary, the company revealed that the cancelled Half-Life 2: Episode 3 featured an ice gun that was ‘kind of like a Silver Surfer mode’. Gabe Newell also admitted he was ‘stumped’ about how to approach episode 3, adding, “I couldn’t figure out why doing Episode 3 was pushing anything forward.” As was the case with Alyx’s VR origins, this is the key ingredient Valve needs to justify doing anything Half-Life related, and until Valve can find that revolutionary idea or technology to wrap Half-Life 3 around, it will remain nothing more than wishful thinking.
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Kurt Indovina
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