Back in March, after 13 years of waiting, Valve lastly released a brand-new Half-Life game. Half-Life: Alyx, a VR-only prequel to Half-Life 2, was a huge success for Valve, amassing great deals of favorable evaluations and pushing lots of folks to buy a VR headset. Prior to Alyx, Valve failed and tried to create more Half-Life, with several canceled jobs checked out in Geoff Keighleys The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx.
Last Hours is hard to explain. Its an interactive article-slash-documentary on Steam covering the last years of Valve and their lots of canceled projects. It consists of some puzzles and videos that match the composed portion. The biggest and most intriguing canceled Half-Life project talked about in the documentary was a 2013 project the team was calling Half-Life 3. Half-Life 3 was going to be developed in Source 2 and was planned to feature procedurally-generated levels and circumstances, like a building that would have its layout and enemy positioning change each time players packed up the video game. In what was a common Valve pattern around this time, the project passed away after running into several issues and a lack of personnel. The most significant problem was the engine: Source 2 just wasnt completed, and structure shooters in it was extremely challenging.
Image: Valve
Codenamed “Shooter,” this game was a shooting gallery constructed using Half-Life 2 properties that would task players with combating off waves of Combine soldiers in various Half-Life 2 areas. Shooter, like other Valve jobs, dealt with a host of concerns, but one of the biggest was the reality of releasing something Half-Life-related in 2016 that wasnt Half-Life 3 or Episode 3.
” Shooter” Screenshot: Valve
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Another VR Half-Life task that began development soon after Shooter was internally referred to as “Borealis.” This task was developed in Source 2 and would have been set on the bridge of the well-known Borealis ship, seen in Half-Life 2 Episode 2. Gamers would experience several time-jumps on the ship as it went back and forth through time, checking out crucial moments in the Half-Life timeline. This job didnt get very far prior to shutting down in late 2015. Half-Life author Marc Laidlaw was leading this project; soon after its advancement ended he left Valve and retired, though Final Hours does not explore the reasons he left.
The complete After Hours is available now on Steam and includes a lot of other canceled Valve projects, including Left 4 Dead 3 details and info about an RPG Valve was dealing with that was inspired by Elder Scrolls and Dark Souls. For Half-Life fans like myself, there is a great deal of info in this interactive documentary about Valves battle to make more Half-Life, in addition to all the planning and work that went into Half-Life: Alyx.
Half-Life: Alyx, a VR-only prequel to Half-Life 2, was a big success for Valve, amassing lots of positive evaluations and pushing many folks to purchase a VR headset. Prior to Alyx, Valve stopped working and attempted to create more Half-Life, with several canceled jobs explored in Geoff Keighleys The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx.
The biggest and most interesting canceled Half-Life task gone over in the documentary was a 2013 task the team was calling Half-Life 3. Codenamed “Shooter,” this video game was a shooting gallery built using Half-Life 2 properties that would task players with battling off waves of Combine soldiers in numerous Half-Life 2 places. As for the future of Half-Life, Keighley says in Final Hours that Valve designers told him “privately” that they were excited to make more Half-Life, consisting of Half-Life games that arent VR only.
A timeline included in Final Hours revealing some of Valves canceled and launched projects.Screenshot: Valve
Throughout all of this, another Half-Life task was being established by Arkane Studios. As shown off just recently in NoClips documentary about Arkane, Half-Life: Ravenholm was going to be a Half-Life video game built using Source and embeded in the weird city of Ravenholm. It was, like nearly every other Half-Life project after Episode 2, canceled.
As for the future of Half-Life, Keighley says in Final Hours that Valve designers told him “privately” that they were excited to make more Half-Life, consisting of Half-Life games that arent VR only. However, Keighley makes it seem like those jobs would be far off. Thinking about Valves track record, its likely any brand-new Half-Life games wouldnt see the light of day up until Valve is truly ready.
