Half-Life 3 – What We’d Like to See

It’s been nine years now since the last episode in the Half-Life Franchise. What was once the most anticipated game of all time has now become one of the biggest in-jokes in the gaming industry. With no official release date, or even a confirmation that the game is in development, many have started to wonder if Valve will continue the series at all or if they have lost the love for Gordon Freeman and his band of freedom fighting scientists and rebels.

To celebrate nine glorious years of no news on Half-Life 3, we’ve compiled a list of things that we’d love to see from the game when it finally arrives. We’re not saying that we think any of these things will actually happen, just that we’d really like it if they did. With the absence of any official word from Valve on what to expect, we’ve had to use our imagination here.

Story Branching

The story of Half-Life has always been important. It was what elevated the game from being a good shooter with a physics engine into one of the defining games of the time. It’s always been a linear thing though, with no decision making or evolution. We’d like to see a bit of variety to each play through in the way that Bioware and Red Thread are so good at doing. It doesn’t have to be a full on, multi ending epic that tells a completely different story depending on who plays it, but a bit more of an organic feel would go a long way towards getting us immersed in the game.

A Conclusion to the story

I think this goes without saying, but we will anyway. Everyone wants to see what happened to Eli and what the G-Man is actually up to. If the next game is not a direct continuation then that’s fine, we will live with just hearing it told over a campfire or something, but we need closure dammit!

VR Support

Half-Life has always been a forward thinking franchise. It broke ground in the first instalment by being one of the first shooters to follow a coherent plot, and being one of the best looking games of the time. It might look a little low resolution by today’s standards, but it was cutting edge in 1998. The second game was at the forefront of physics design, with Valve showing off some huge technological achievements in the physics engine. It’s now expected that the Half-Life games are likely to be ahead of the technological curve. With the future pointing towards VR, it’s something that we’d expect to see from Valve’s flagship series, especially as the company themselves are manufacturing a headset in partnership with HTC .

No Cross-over with Portal 

This one might be a little controversial. With Portal being based on the same engine and set in the same universe, the temptation to cross over Valve’s two biggest franchises with a storyline that brings the two games together must be huge. We love the Portal series here at GameGrin just as much as everyone else, but crossovers and cameos are seldom a good thing in games. We feel that a cross-over into the world would run the risk of damaging the story and making the game feel like a cheesy cash in. This is especially considering the styling of the two games is very different, with Half-Life having a much more serious tone compared to Portal’s dark humour.

Don’t change Gordon

There were rumours late last year that Gordon’s character was going to dramatically change, including suggestions that there was a female voice artist recording lines for him. Whilst we applaud any company using a strong female protagonist, we don’t want that for Gordon Freeman. To us, nobody should be recording lines for Gordon at all. His role as the silent protagonist was what made him what he was. He was a blank slate onto which we could project ourselves and that’s why we fell in love with him. Exactly the same with Chell in the Portal series, we don’t need personality traits from our protagonist, because the less there is to connect with, somehow the more we connect.