Half-Life 3 has been a long-running meme, given that the ending of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 leaves the series on a massive cliffhanger. Fans have been desperately clinging to the hope of a successor, and now, finally, that might be happening. The company has been documented to be working on a successor on several occasions, with all of those potential successors eventually being canned. This time, though, there are a lot of reasons to hold out hope that the company is finally working on something that will see the light of day and continue to tell the story of The Combine, the Uprising, and Gordon Freeman.

7 Gabe Newell has acknowledged it in a big way

Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve and affectionately referred to as "Gaben" made a rather interesting statement at the end of the Half-Life 2 20th anniversary documentary. In the documentary, the company acknowledges the work that had been done on Episode 3, publishing never-before-seen concept art and even game mechanic demos. What had once been something the company never even really acknowledged became a significant part of the Half-Life 2 documentary, which is interesting in itself.

However, what's even more convincing is how the documentary ends. Half-Life: Alyx, the VR-only title that serves as a prequel to Half-Life 2 and focuses on Alyx Vance, an important character in Half-Life 2 and especially in the episodes, happened because of the new technical capabilities offered by a new platform. To this day, HL:A is still considered to be the best game you can play in VR, and it seems to have ignited a passion within Valve for working on new Half-Life. At the end of the documentary, Newell says the following:

I think that Half-Life represents a tool we have, and promises made to customers, to capitalize on innovations and opportunities to build game experiences that haven't been involved previously. And I think that there are no shortage of those opportunities facing us an industry right now.

For context, Half-Life has always been seen as a way to push something that the games industry hasn't seen before. The first game in the series emphasized how games could tell a story while integrating advanced physics and narratives, while the second game doubled down on graphics, story-telling, and realistic physics, where objects had believable interactions with other objects. As for HL:A, its VR push showed how great games could be made in VR in a way that would only work in VR, with Valve even stating that it hoped for mods to be released for the game to make it playable like any other FPS title so that it would be obvious why it needed to be made in VR.

Gabe Newell has made references to a Half-Life 2 successor in the past, releasing a now-famous clip in 2012 of him simply saying "these things, they take time," but never has it been clearly implied that the company is actively working on one. Saying that "there are no shortage of those opportunities" facing the industry clearly means that the company sees multiple viable ways to make it a reality.

6 Half-Life: Alyx's ending only makes sense if the company plans to revisit the universe in full

Why retcon a cliffhanger ending otherwise?

Without spoiling the ending of Half-Life 2 or Half-Life: Alyx, HL:A's ending completely retcons the ending of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 in a way that only makes sense if the company plans to revisit the series. It changes the cliffhanger ending that had fans yearning for a successor, creating a new path for the series to go down. It's still a cliffhanger, just a different kind of cliffhanger, and one that has potentially far-reaching implications.

Not only does it not make sense to retcon an ending if there's no intention of going back and continuing that story from the new ending, but that's not all that happens. The game ends with you as Gordon Freeman, the protagonist of the main-line series, being handed a crowbar and being told "Come on Gordon, we've got work to do."

This ending is clear hinting that developers and designers at Valve want to work on more Half-Life, and it's the biggest smoking gun yet. Retconning an ending and directly putting the player in the shoes of the series protagonist for a brief moment only happens if there are plans to continue that story from its new ending point. If none of that is enough to convince you, Valve designer Robin Walker stated plainly in an interview following the game's release that Half-Life: Alyx was a "return to this world, not the end of it."

5 Expanded playtesting has reportedly started already

This time with friends and family

Valve's design process for games is a little bit different from other game designers, in that the company consistently playtests within the company to get a feel for how it plays and how people react to it. This playtesting is what saw Half-Life: Alyx's story scrapped and rewritten, with Valve veterans Erik Wolpaw and Jay Pinkerton returning to the company to assist. Now, reports suggest that the game has been successful in its internal playtesting and that friends and family of Valve employees are now testing it.

Erik Wolpaw co-wrote the Half-Life series alongside Marc Laidlaw and Chet Faliszek, and Pinkerton co-wrote the story of Portal 2 alongside Wolpaw. Marc Laidlaw has since retired from Valve, and denied reports of consulting with Valve regarding the story of Alyx. However, the development team in an ask-me-anything hosted on Reddit stated that Laidlaw helped out quite a bit. The team responded when questioned about Laidlaw:

He's been super generous with his time throughout the development of HL:A, answering many questions from Erik, Jay, and Sean as they hammered away on the story. As is always the case with Marc, we send him an email, and he sends us a response, and then roughly 40 more replies to his own email.

So long as the game succeeds in its friends and family testing, renowned Valve leaker "Gabe Follower" suggests that the game might actually meet its target of a 2025 announcement. These playtests are what delayed Half-Life: Alyx and caused the company to entirely rework Neon Prime into what is now Deadlock, so it's not a guarantee that it's going to be entirely smooth sailing from here on out.

4 Data has started to leak in other Valve games like Counter-Strike and Deadlock

This has happened before

When Half-Life: Alyx first leaked, it was picked up in other Valve games like Dota 2 with code changes referencing "HLVR." In an Autumn update to Dota 2 in 2019, multiple strings relating to virtual reality and "HLVR" were spotted in changes to the Source 2 engine. Now that's happening with "HLX" references appearing in updates to Source 2 games like Counter-Strike 2 and Deadlock. "HLX" is the code name of the suspected Half-Life successor.

To be clear, multiple references to Half-Life titles have been spotted over the years, so this doesn't necessarily mean that the game will get any further than it has in the past. However, multiple titles that have launched have also been spotted this way, including Counter-Strike 2, Deadlock (previously known as Citadel and then Neon Prime), and content updates for existing games.

3 RealBiomes has listed Valve as a client

Procedural level design might be back

Given that the Half-Life series has always been seen to be a way to advance gaming experiences, as acknowledged by Valve itself, it's clear that a new Half-Life would have to offer something new to the gaming world. From datamining, various sources such as Tyler McVicker have stated that Valve is working on various things relating to surfaces, including procedural level generation.

In the Half-Life: Alyx - Final Hours interactive storybook, Dave Speyrer says that the company was "working on this single-player game that would use proceduralism in concert with a crafted experience to create something played in an open-ended way." When asked by Keighley what game it was, Speyrer said "that game was Half-Life 3."

As spotted by Water CS2 on YouTube, a company called RealBiomes has recently listed Valve as a client. While it's not clear when exactly Valve was listed, it was definitely between 2022 and 2024. RealBiomes focuses on Unreal Engine 5 biome generation, but it's not out of the question that Valve might be working with the company to generate terrain and environments for an upcoming game.

To be clear, procedural generation doesn't necessarily have to mean entirely new levels every time you play, and it can mean that levels are created around the player with dynamic placement of NPCs and weapons. For example, Alyx will only spawn ammo for guns if you need it, and will dynamically change those spawns depending on your ammo counts at that time.

However, given past statements made on Half-Life 3's previous attempts, and new technologies that Newell could be referring to, it's possible that RealBiomes is a part of it somehow.

2 An actor claimed to have worked on "Project White Sands" at Valve

The "White Sands" are in New Mexico

Portal 2 first leaked through a casting call looking for voice actors at Valve, and it seems that a similar thing may have happened yet again. Actor Natasha Chandel, who has lent her voice to Apex Legends, Valorant, and Starfield to name a few titles, listed "Project White Sands" at Valve on her resume hosted on her personal website. Once it was picked up in gaming news, it was removed, leading fans to question what it was, and why it was so sensitive that it had been removed.

In Half-Life the Black Mesa research facility that Gordon Freeman worked in is located in New Mexico. The largest gypsum dune field in the world known as "White Sands" is also in New Mexico, which creates a clear link. While this isn't necessarily a lot of information in its own right, it's yet another piece of the puzzle that appears to suggest that the company is working on something Half-Life-related.

1 Valve's Steam Box is codenamed "Fremont"

It's giving Epistle 3

Before getting into why "Fremont" is important, it's important to acknowledge that there's a little bit of reaching going on with this point and that in isolation, it's not particularly strong evidence. However, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence to believe that "Fremont" has ties to the Half-Life universe, and might even be launched alongside HLX, Half-Life 3, or whatever it ends up being called.

A year after Marc Laidlaw retired from Valve, he published "Epistle 3" on his personal site. This has been described by fans as a plot outline for what Episode 3 could have been, though it's important to note that Valve games often see story rewrites and changes as development gets underway. The story features gender swaps and name changes, with Gordon Freeman's name notably changed to "Gertie Fremont."

Where things get interesting is that, according to Geoff Keighley in the Half-Life: Alyx - Final Hours interactive storybook, Valve had initially intended to launch Alyx alongside the Valve Index. However, those previously-mentioned story rewrites meant that it missed its launch window and was released a year after the Index was. Index owners eventually received the game for free.

Given that there's already established precedent that Valve wanted to launch a Half-Life game alongside its own hardware, it's not too far of a stretch to believe, alongside everything else, that "Fremont" might actually be a reference to Laidlaw's Epistle 3. Plus, if Valve is targeting a Half-Life 3 release in 2025, that lines up with when "Fremont" is expected to launch, too, given that 2025 is the ten-year anniversary of the first Steam Machine.

Things are different this time

We've heard it all before, "Valve is working on a Half-Life game but this time it's definitely real." However, there's a lot of reason to believe this might actually be the case. The last time the fanbase got caught up in Half-Life 3 rumors, it turned out Valve actually was working on it, but the project was canceled. This time around, things appear to be significantly further ahead of where development was back then.

On top of that, there's a lot more reason to believe that the game could actually be completed. With a new ending that might help story writers continue to tell the story of The Combine and Gordon Freeman alongside statements from developers and Newell himself that make it clear Valve is open to exploring more of the Half-Life universe, it might really be that time again.