It is one of the great mysteries in the history of video games. After episode 2 of Half-Life 2 was released in 2007, Valve seemed to consider the franchise finished and left players without the promised episode 3. A decade after the release of the first game, Gordon Freeman would not reappear on consoles until the prequel Alyx. The game was left in an eternal cliffhanger, and no fan request would bring it back, even years later, in the midst of a nostalgic fever. Or maybe…?
Well, valve already
Now, in 2024, Valve has finally shown parts of the gameplay in a two-hour documentary telling the story of Half-Life 2, and explained why they had no choice but to cancel it even though, not so metaphorically, it would have drowned them in money. The documentary is free on YouTube and is very interesting, but what has caught the attention of both insiders and outsiders is that so much importance is given to this third chapter of which until now we knew only a few details.
According to reports, they only spent six months working on the development before stopping, during which time they managed to work on an ice gun to create frozen structures, a monster that could split into multiple parts (and, therefore, go through ventilation ducts) and many other things, but they didn’t even get to build it within the game itself.
In that half year, they had only made a “collection of playable levels in no particular order” with a couple of ideas about where the story would go, which would seek the Borealis ship that is talked about so much in Half-Life as well as in Portal. At that time, they estimated that they could make the game in a couple of years, depending on their own ambition…
But they couldn’t come up with new mechanics, so they set it aside to finish Left 4 Dead. And when it went on sale, they themselves said “Well, it’s too late, we would need to make a new engine to continue the saga.” Although fans would probably tell them no and to release everything as it is, the truth is that in 2024, there is still hype and excitement to see it finished. Will this documentary serve as a spur? Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
