A report from ValveTime explains that the company felt the episode couldn’t introduce anything new due to the setting constraints, this could be why Valve eventually chose VR as the platform for Half-Life: Alyx a decade later. Entitled ‘Return to Ravenholm’, it was to put the player in control of a new character and revisit the zombie-infested titular town during a period before Episode Two’s conclusion. Between 20 Arkane, the studio behind Dishonored 2, was developing Half-Life 2: Episode Four. While the concept art leak helps keep the candle of hope burning, the story of Return to Ravenholm offers an opposite viewpoint. Half-Life 2: Episode Four – Return to Ravenholm Concept art is generally part of the pre-production process however, so it’s not an indication that the third episode ever even reached a greybox build. The art was acquired by the fan website ValveTime, who claimed the images were from a 2008 project. Among them were various drawings of Alyx Vance, men wearing cold weather gear, and a return to Xen.
Valve couldn’t possibly release a four-hour episode to an audience that’s spent almost a decade in waiting, could it?Ģ012 saw the leak of a series of concept art images reportedly drawn for Half-Life 2: Episode Three. If Valve has been working on a Half-Life 3 game all this time, it’s logical to presume that Episode Three is no more, and a full-size Half-Life 3 game is now what to expect. Episode Two promptly arrived the following year in 2007.ĭuring that time the general opinion on Episode Three has changed. Half-Life 2: Episode One suffered a delay, but released just two years after Half-Life 2’s 2004 debut. Let’s take what we would ordinarily do and break it up into piecesĪnd the format worked, almost. Here’s the story of Half-Life 3 so far, leading up to the release of Half-Life: Alyx. So, what is Half-Life 3, especially now Half-Life: Alyx has been released? Over the years there have been two quite different answers – it’s either a collection of three short, episodic games – two of which have already been released – or it’s a full-length sequel to both Half-Life 2 and its expansions.
Although it’s still unclear on what this means for Half-Life 3 (or if this is even Half-Life 3) and PC players, Half-life: Alyx launched in March, 2020, and will hopefully open the doors for more Half-Life in the not too distant future. The Half-Life hiatus has finally ended, after a rumour that a VR Half-Life game is in the works, we have confirmation of Valve’s third full-length entry in the series, Half-Life: Alyx.
More intriguing than the actual magic that makes your GPU work, and more elusive than a good movie tie-in game, so what is the current state of Half-Life 3? The game sold almost 200,000 copies on Steam and nearly twice that amount on the Valve Box, it was a commercial and financial success.Half-Life 3 is the greatest mystery in PC gaming. The game released on Steam and as one of the flagship titles for the brand-new Valve Box, alongside Portal: The Final Level and Team Fortress: The New Batch. The graphics where hailed for being absolutely stunning and the gameplay was praised for being revolutionary in the FPS genre. The game's groundbreaking graphics and gameplay are in no small part thanks to the Source 2 engine. He teams up with Adrian Shephard, to save Alyx and take down the Combine once and for all. He already thinks he knows who is the cause, the mysterious G-Man. Freeman is also planning on saving Alyx from whatever has caused her disappearance. He plans to track down the Borealis that has advanced technology that the resistance could use against the Combine, and unfortunately, vice versa. It seems as if the Combine have finally truly won. Several members of the resistance have gone been killed. Eli Vance is grieving and is is having trouble even living without his daughter.
The story takes place after Alyx Vance has gone missing. It was praised by both fans and critics for it's story, gameplay, and visuals. It quickly sold almost 200,000 copies on Steam within it's first year. It became the highest grossing video game of all time. Despite it's unusually long development, the game was a smash hit.
HL2:E3 is the final entry in the critically acclaimed Half-Life franchise.