In the official documentary released on the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, Valve employees talked not only about the development of the legendary shooter, but also about the unsuccessful attempts to release its sequel.
According to the game designer, during the development of the next part of Half-Life, the development team “came to a dead end.” Newell emphasized that from a technical point of view, releasing the third part of the video game was not that difficult, but he did not understand how it would develop the story of the project. The head of Valve spoke about this in a documentary released for the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2. Gabe Newell called the non-release of Half-Life 3, which gamers had been waiting for many years, “a personal failure.” Other developers also confirmed the words of the head, noting that they could not come up with ideas worthy of such a great game.
At the time of cancellation, the team had managed to create working versions of several levels. The documentary showed a selection of concept art and a couple of developments for Half-Life 2: Episode Three:
ice cannon – allowed to form barricades and lay a path of ice under itself;
slug enemy – could change shape and disintegrate into several smaller slugs.
According to dataminers’ findings, Valve is currently developing a game codenamed hlx, a non-VR sequel to Half-Life: Alyx that takes the place of Half-Life 3 in the universe’s chronology.