Right up until the release of Half-Life: Alyx in 2020, the only news fans ever learned of any development on the Half-Life series came from leaks and datamining.īehind the scenes at Valve, it had become clear over the course of developing the Half-Life 2 episodes that the team had an issue of scope creep: the episodes were planned to shorten the amount of time between Half-Life games (given the six-year time span between the first and second game), but Episode Two's development took much longer than anticipated and the results appeared to be much closer to sequels to Half-Life 2 than simple episodes. This led to further speculation that Valve was instead planning to create a full-fledged sequel titled Half-Life 3. With the exception of leaked concept art in 2008, Valve essentially went radio silent on the status of the finale for the trilogy. Very little news on the status of Episode Three could be found following the release of Half-Life 2: Episode Two in October 2007 with The Orange Box. In May, Valve explained Episode One would be the first in a planned trilogy, with Episode Three to release in December 2007. In February of the following year, Aftermath was renamed Half-Life 2: Episode One. In April 2005, Valve announced an upcoming expansion for Half-Life 2, titled Half-Life 2: Aftermath, which would pick up after the events of the game.

Traveling on foot, the two would have to face the Arctic environment while dealing with the Combine.ĭevelopment, cancellation, and future See also: Development of the next Half-Life game Concept art suggests Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance would have continued on their journey to the Arctic in search of the Borealis and Judith Mossman, only for their helicopter to crash. 3 Official and semi-official derivativesĪlthough the game never reached a finished state from which a definite plot summary can be formed, Episode Three would have presumably picked up after Episode Two's cliffhanger with the discovery of the Borealis and the death of Eli Vance.2 Development, cancellation, and future.

Half life 3 announcement