Valve insider Tyler McVicker has claimed that the long-rumoured Half-Life 3 is not only real but is ‘playable end-to-end,’ and that an announcement could even happen this year.
The tipster has a long standing history with Valve projects and claims in a YouTube discussion video that Half-Life 3 is codenamed HLX, and that a large group of people have already play tested the game, some of which have leaked details on the project to others. He also made it clear that Half-Life 3 is not a VR title unlike Half-Life Alyx, which had suffered significantly more leaks than Half-Life 3 at this point in production.
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HLX is being playtested so religiously and so widely that there are individuals that will just talk. I personally have a policy of avoiding any story-related questions or information where possible, so I currently have avoided all of them. But I’ve been offered it by people whom are trustworthy and I know that some of my contemporaries have been given it, so there is information out there about the plot.
This is the furthest it’s ever been. Period. The game is playable end-to-end, period. It’s never been that far. And they’re optimising it, polishing it. They’re probably content-locked, or if they’re not they’re mechanic-locked.
Half-Life 3 has been rumoured for years at this point, although despite the obvious appetite for the sequel among fans, Valve has never officially announced the project. Interestingly, McVicker had stated back in 2021 that Half-Life 3 was not in active development at the time as Valve was instead focussed on Steam Deck.
Half-Life 2 was released in 2004 and remains one of the most celebrated video games of all time. Valve supposed the game with episode content in the form of Episode One and Episode Two in 2006 and 2007, respectively, and had planned Episode 3 before cancelling the project.
[Source – Tyler McVicker on YouTube via VGC]