Half Life 3 Fans

Even though Valve has not made any official announcements about Half Life 3 or a new Source 2 engine it doesn’t mean we won’t see either. Just because they haven’t been talking about it, doesn’t mean development is not under way. Some keen developers over at ValveTime found some juicy bits of code that proves Source 2 and Half Life 3 is on the minds of Valve developers.

Many fans use the term ‘Valve Time’ in a negative way, as a way to say “Valve is taking their sweet time and will get to it when they feel like it.” How does Valve feel about this term?

Valve business development chief Jason Holtman told Eurogamer that Valve loves the Valve Time tag line. Holtman described Valve Time as “charming” and “kind of a compliment”. “We like it,” he continued.

The 2012 E3 expo was held last month from June 5th – June 7th, where the video game industry gathers to show off new releases. As expected, Valve was silent about any Half Life 3 or Left 4 Dead 3 announcements. Here is my reasoning why we won’t see a new Half Life anytime soon. Valve is moving to cross-platform compatibility with their games. Games like Portal 2 successfully tapped into the console market, opening a whole new market for Valve. It stands to reason any future Valve titles will be concurrently released on PC and consoles.

Which is it, Half Life 3 or Half Life 2: Episode 3? There seems to be mixed ideas about what the next Half Life game will be. Some believe it will be a full featured game with new weapons, characters, maps, multiplayer mode, and maybe a new or modified game engine. Others believe it will be the final Episode to Half Life 2 that was promised to fans many years ago. Then you have some who use HL 3 as a synonym to the next HL content release, regardless if it’s Episode 3 or a full retail game.

Should Half-Life 3 be developed on a new Source 2 engine or built using the current Source engine? Half-Life 2 brought us the amazing Source engine with great facial animation and quality graphics. The Source engine, by design, is made to be modular and easily updatable. Valve has shown us its capabilities with its latest release, Portal 2. If Half-Life 3 was released today I think we all would be more concerned about the game play rather than the graphics. It’s not in Valve’s nature to develop breathtaking graphics because they want their games to be played by all and not by the few video game enthusiasts who have tons of cash to throw at the latest and graphics computer hardware. Sure, the current Source engine does show its age compared to other video games, but is it good enough for today’s gamers and future games?