Have you heard the news? According to a renowned leaker, a new Half-Life project is currently undergoing friends and family testing over at Valve. People use the term "Half-Life 3" to refer to this game, but there's no absolute 100% guarantee that it's actually Half-Life 3. After all, we have the codename "HLX" but not a release title, so it might not be a third installment after all.

However, it does make a ton of sense for Valve to actually release this game as "Half-Life 3." So, here's why I think that this new Half-Life title will actually be the third entry in the series.

It's not going to be Half-Life 2: Episode 3 because Valve isn't doing episodic content anymore

It was a good experiment, though

Half-Life fans will know that the second installment had three "episodes" planned. These were smaller, more digestible content that acted as linear story DLC. Half-Life 2 was released in 2004, then Episode 1 came in 2006, and Episode 2 in 2007.

It appeared that Valve would release Episode 3 around 2008, but the game never manifested. In an interview with IGN, level designer Dario Casali explained that Valve drifted away from Episode 3 because they were getting tired of working on Half-Life 2 and its engine. They didn't feel they could do something amazing with Episode 3 and ended up scrapping the format altogether.

As such, there's a very low chance that HLX will be Half-Life 2: Episode 3. The company has already made peace with the fact that the episodic content wasn't its style, and dredging it back up despite everything it has said doesn't sound like a good idea.

It's not going to be a spinoff because the new game's tech advancement isn't too drastic

It doesn't require a whole new accessory to play

Valve could also theoretically take HLX down the route of the spinoff. We saw this the last time Valve worked on a Half-Life project: the codename HLVR ended up referring to Half-Life: Alyx, which wasn't the third installment of the series. Instead, it was a side story where the player took control of the titular Alyx instead of the main character, Gordon Freeman.

So, what's stopping HLX from being another spinoff and not Half-Life 3? Well, I believe the answer lies in the new technology that Valve is bringing with this new title. See, Valve isn't the kind of company that releases a game just to add another title to the shelves. Its employees, including the CEO Gabe Newell, have stated that it only proceeds with a game if it can do something unique and new with the title. If a planned title is just a rehash of prior content, it doesn't get made.

HLVR's main technological advancement is, well, the VR implementation. It's not something Valve has done in its prior Half-Life titles, so it made a fine mechanic to base a game off of. However, with the adoption of VR comes an accessibility issue; not everyone can don a headset and move around in-game. As such, it makes sense to make the VR title a side story instead of a continuation of the main plot.

Okay, so what's HLX's main innovation? We don't know all the details, but as reported by Tyler McVicker and spotted by our delightful sister site TheGamer, it's going to be the ability to create a procedural world that can react to what the player is doing. Tyler found some code that handled the flammability and heat dynamics of different materials and items spawning in crates that change depending on what the player has done and the materials surrounding it. Plus, as Adam Conway pointed out in his piece on why Half-Life 3 may happen in 2025, the procedural company RealBiomes has listed Valve as a client despite none of its games using the system (yet).

While that's all very exciting, it doesn't seem that HLX will require any additional peripherals to play it, and it will likely be as accessible as any standard FPS game. As such, it'd make a ton of sense for this game to be Half-Life 3 and not a spinoff.

It's the perfect opportunity for Valve to raise the bar

Return of the king

Besides those two points, it makes a ton of sense for Valve to do Half-Life 3. With every main entry to the series, we've seen a huge improvement in graphics, gameplay, physics, and immersion. The wait between Half-Life 1 and 2 was six years, and if Half-Life 3 releases this year, it'll be 21 years since the second title was released.

With how far gaming has come since we stepped off the City 17 train, Half-Life 3 feels like a shoo-in. Valve has the technology and the smarts to pull off a game that's just a drastic jump from Half-Life 2 to 3 as the one we felt going from Half-Life 1 to 2. And I think that's reason enough for the company to finally release the third entry of this amazing series.

Here's hoping it's Half-Life 3

As much as I can speculate all day, there's always a non-zero chance that HLX ends up being another Half-Life spinoff title and not Half-Life 3. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that the third installment is just around the corner.