RIP Viktor Antonov

News has sadly broken that Viktor Antonov, the artist and visual designer on video games such as Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, has passed away at the far-too-young age of 52.

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1972, Antonov got his start in the video game business as an artist. He worked on Redneck Rampage (1997) and its various mission packs, followed by a Quake II expansion and Kingpin: Life of Crime (1999), with its gritty, crumbling tenement locations. He started working with Valve whilst Half-Life 2 (2004) was in development and quickly became the game's art director. He spent a lot of time looking at locations in his native Bulgaria, as well as other Eastern European countries, to serve as reference points for the game's sprawling City 17, the neighbouring settlement of Ravenholm and more. Half-Life 2's recent 20th anniversary saw Antonov interviewed about his work on the game.

Antonov was feted for the incredible world design of Half-Life 2 and was hired by Arkane Studios to work on the city of Dunwall for Dishonored (2012). Antonov again knocked it out of the park, creating a realistic, immersive steampunk city of crumbling buildings and diesel-punk-ish brutalism. Antonov then moved into consultancy work, advising on the visual design of Fallout 4 (2015), Dishonored 2 (2016), DOOM (2016) and Prey (2017). He returned to full-time art direction with "Project DG," a game for Eschatology Entertainment, a company he himself had co-founded in 2022.

Visual and graphic design is a key component of video games, but most games are made by art teams and committees. Antonov was unusual in putting his unique touch on a game's environments that was immediately recognisable as his own. Anyone playing Half-Life 2 or its expansions, or Dishonored or its sequel, knows immediately they are in an "Antonovian" landscape. Hopefully he did enough work on "Project DG" that we'll be able to spend at least some more time with one of his worlds.

A great artist who specialised in creating worlds that fused the fantastical and the realistic, he will be missed.

HALF-LIFE 2 turns twenty years old

November 16th marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2, one of the most iconic and influential video games of all time.

The original Half-Life had come out in late 1998 and established new standards for first-person shooters. The game focused on total immersion, with the protagonist, Gordon Freeman, never speaking and the player never seeing outside of Gordon's POV, even in cutscenes (which were fully interactive, with Gordon able to walk around during them). The game had very sophisticated AI for the time, and ferocious combat with both alien creatures and cunning enemy soldiers. The game was noted for its bonkers ending, which saw Freeman recruited by the mysterious "G-Man" to work for him in some unspecified fashion.

Valve subsequently published two expansions, Opposing Force (1999) and Blue Shift (2000), which focused on other characters during the events of the original game, as well as revising and expanding the original for ports to the Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. Valve also welcomed the activities of modders, commercially releasing the multiplayer titles Team Fortress Classic (1999) and Counter-Strike (2000), as well as the single-player Gunman Chronicles (2000), which all came from the modding community.

Most fans were clamouring for a direct sequel but Valve remained tight-lipped on the subject. In the spring of 2003 they confirmed that yes, Half-Life 2 was real and would be released that year. But, famously, Valve were hacked and an early build of the game was leaked onto the Internet. Valve furiously reworked almost the entire game in response, rebuilding it from the ground up over less than a year, something that was hugely expensive and annoying, but later was credited with making the game better.

Half-Life 2 finally released in November 2004 and, despite the backlash over the required use of the Steam software (see below) to authenticate and play the game, the game was a huge success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in its first few days on sale. That may not sound like much by modern standards, but by 2004 the PC platform was starting to slide into sales decline, and a PC-only action game requiring an Internet connection and a reasonably robust graphics card was a fairly challenging requirement, so its success was impressive. Sales would dramatically accelerate over the following years, with over 12 million copies sold by 2011 and more than 30 million of the entire franchise by 2020. The game also achieved immediate critical acclaim, with PC Gamer awarding it 98%, a score that would not be equalled until the release of Baldur's Gate III in August 2023. Maximum PC magazine memorably gave the game 11/10.

Half-Life 2 is also notable the first (and, for several years, only) release requiring the installation and use of the Steam distribution platform. Steam itself had launched a year earlier but the release of Half-Life 2 introduced it to vast numbers of people for the first time. Valve's use of Steam was highly controversial, especially with people who only planned to play Half-Life 2 offline for the story and campaign, but still had to authenticate the game online.

The game's critical reception was down to its incredible sense of atmosphere, its moody restraint with moments of quiet punctuated by satisfying action set-pieces and moments of visceral horror (Half-Life 2 is as much a horror game as it is an SF action blockbuster, sometimes that tended to get overlooked at the time). The setting was incredible, with a sense of melancholy bleakness you'd be hard-pressed to find in any modern shooter. The story was low-key but solid and the supporting cast of supporting characters incredibly popular, with Valve using cutting-edge tech to help them emote and act more believably like real people (well, by the standards of the day). The game did have some tough competition from the recently-released Far Cry, which had far superior environments and use of vehicles, but Half-Life 2 boasted a better story, more interesting characters, stronger music and a more unsettling atmosphere.

Half-Life 2 ended on a huge cliffhanger, one that was swiftly resolved in Half-Life 2: Episode One, released in mid-2006, and then Half-Life 2: Episode Two, released in late 2007 as part of a compilation called The Orange Box, alongside legendary multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 and the experimental puzzle game Portal (which not so much stole Episode Two's thunder as also had its lunch and then tapdanced on its head). Episode Two ended on a cruel humdinger of a cliffhanger, with Valve assuring fans that Half-Life 2: Episode Three was in development.

Except, infamously, Episode Three never appeared. Valve would periodically say it was on its way but instead released other games: Left 4 Dead (2008), Left 4 Dead 2 (2009), Alien Swarm (2009), Portal 2 (2011), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012) and Dota 2 (2013). Steam, that much maligned online launcher, had started generating insane revenues for Valve, rising to billions of dollars a year within a decade, removing the financial impetus to release a new Half-Life title. Eventually Valve acknowledged that Episode Three was dead, with instead the story more likely to continue in a Half-Life 3, but that was never formally announced or confirmed to be in development either.

In 2020, Valve abruptly announced a new Half-Life game. Half-Life: Alyx would be an interquel set between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, and focusing on the popular side-character of Alyx Vance. The game would be VR only, upsetting long-term fans of the franchise who could not afford a VR setup or could not use one for medical reasons. The game had a surprise ending, which revisited the ending of Half-Life 2: Episode Two from a different perspective and seemed to finally hint that a proper, full sequel was possible.

Four years on, there has been no further news on that front, although Valve have released Counter-Strike 2 and have announced a new hero shooter game, Deadlock. But still, hope springs eternal.

To celebrate Half-Life 2's 20th Anniversary, Valve have released a new documentary about the making of the game, an update to HL2 revising some of the level design quirks they'd been meaning to fix for years and updating the game's lighting, and announced a new edition of the iconic Raising the Bar book about the making the game. The new edition of Raising the Bar launches in early 2025 with new sections about the making of the episodes.

Oh yes, and you can get Half-Life 2, Episode One and Episode Two for free for the whole weekend, which is a very good price for total gaming classics.

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Steam turns 20 years old

PC video game distribution platform Steam turns twenty years old today. Normally that wouldn't be a major milestone outside of technical interest, but Steam's achievements and position in the industry remain unique, despite some criticisms.

PC games company Valve Corporation launched Steam on 12 September 2003. The first - and for a while only - thing you could do on Steam was use it to patch up your existing Steam games, particularly Counter-Strike. The service did not even have a store front on release. Valve had identified the enthusiasm for online multiplayer early, but also identified that many gamers experienced frustration when new patches were released, as these tended to be released ad hoc and it sometimes took days for them to be disseminated over the entire playerbase. Valve proposed developing a universal updating service with several other companies, including Microsoft, but were shot down. They began development of their own service in 2002. This idea wasn't totally new, as Blizzard had released their Battle.Net service at the end of 1996, but Steam was working on a different scale.

Valve quickly realised the same system could be used to sell and download games in their entirety. Valve ran videos and interviews demonstrating how this would work with the video game Impossible Creatures by Relic Entertainment, with the entire game being downloaded over broadband in just a few hours. Ironically, Impossible Creatures would not be actually released on Steam until 2015.

Valve also sold the benefits of the service for combating piracy, which was widely believed at the time to be killing the PC gaming market. This led to consternation from gamers, already wary of DRM (Digital Rights Management) software trying to restrict when and where they could play games. To assuage concerns, Valve also demonstrated that the system could be used as a mass distribution system for free mods by releasing the popular Half-Life mod Day of Defeat on the service.

After a successful launch, Valve shut down all of their other online matchmaking and updating websites and systems, effectively forcing gamers to migrate to Steam over the course of 2004, to some controversy.

On 16 November 2004, Valve released Half-Life 2. One of the most eagerly-awaited games of all time up to that point, preceded by months of hype, Half-Life 2 was sold at retail and as a Steam download, but all copies of the game had to be activated and authenticated on Steam, even if the game was to be played solely offline in single-player mode. This led to vast criticism and anger from both critics and the gaming community, as broadband internet was still in its relative infancy. However, Valve stuck to their guns and the game's overwhelmingly positive reviews saw a million copies sold worldwide within a relatively short timeframe. Shortly after release Valve demonstrated the versatility and convenience of Steam by releasing an extra bonus level, Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast via the service.

In 2005 Valve signed its first distribution agreement with third-party vendors. The first third-party game was Rag Doll King Fu, followed quickly by the more acclaimed Darwinia. Over the next few years numerous other publishers and developers jumped on board, attracted by the company's generous royalty cut (far superior to boxed retail). Critics continued to complain loudly about the service being a form of intrusive DRM, but fans began to see the convenience of having all their games, multiplayer services and achievements in one place.

It is possible that Steam would have remained a relatively minor success, especially as Valve proved reluctant to release more high-profile original games, but the PC gaming market underwent serious contraction after the release of the Xbox 360 console in 2005 and the PlayStation 3 the following year. Both consoles had comparable power to gaming PCs of the time and pushed the development of HD graphics at a much more affordable price. The result was something of a stampede of gamers to the new consoles, including PC gamers who previously would have not considered switching to console but were lured over by the likes of the Halo series on Xbox. Previously PC-centric developers like Bethesda were also focusing heavily on the console versions of their next-generation games, like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) and Fallout 3 (2008). For several years the future of PC gaming appeared to be in doubt.

The result was an explosion in the indie game sector starting in the late 2000s, alongside Valve using numerous inducements to try to get PC publishers and developers to rally around Steam as a centralised, global launch platform for their games. Valve also initiated aggressively-priced "Steam Sales," sometimes selling games just a year or two old for heavy discounts. This approach proved successful, if again controversial, and PC games began to see an uptick in sales again towards the end of the decade. A good sign of Steam's success was the appearance of competitor products: Ubisoft launched the Ubisoft Games Launcher (aka Ubisoft Connect, later UPlay) in November 2009 and Electronic Arts launched Origin in June 2011.

An earlier competitor was Polish company CD Projekt. The company had enjoyed success by launching its first original game, The Witcher on Steam (as well as physical release) in 2007. In 2008 they launched Good Old Games, a variation on Steam which focused on older, out-of-print games and employing patches and community knowledge in making them compatible with modern systems. CDPR won early victories by recruiting Interplay and Ubisoft to their cause. In 2010, rebranded as GoG, they carried out a successful relaunch spearheaded by the re-release of classic CRPG Baldur's Gate. Valve noted CDPR's success and began launching older games themselves, although generally without the care and attention GoG spent on compatibility.

By the early 2010s, Steam had established itself as the de facto global PC games storefront, to the point that many bricks-and-mortar video game stores dramatically reduced or even removed physical PC games from sale. Most games sold physically still needed to be activated on Steam anyway. Steam users became numerous and passionate, calling for boycotts of other launchers from companies who refused to release on Steam as well, citing the inconvenience of managing multiple launchers and software. The success of Steam also encouraged the further development of Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony's inhouse storefronts for their consoles (several attempts to create console versions of Steam came to nothing).

By 2020, most rivals had admitted defeat, with both Electronic Arts and Ubisoft agreeing to release their games via Steam once again. In 2022 EA discontinued Origin in favour of the EA App, which allows former Origin players to continue accessing their games.

In late 2018, Epic Games, flush with cash from their game Fortnite, launched a service designed to directly take the fight to Steam. The Epic Game Store used aggressive pricing, a more generous royalty scheme and the promise of completely free AAA games to aggressively expand. However, the service was hugely criticised during its launch phase for lacking basic functions like a shopping basket and user reviews, whilst Epic's attempt to lock in some games to exclusivity periods with them in return for buckets of cash was criticised as anti-consumer. It took several years to implement basic features and remains controversial, despite the number of Epic exclusives tailing off as developers discovered that the bad will engendered from not launching on Steam often outstripped the short-term financial benefits of accepting Epic's pricing terms.

Steam enjoyed a further shot in the arm thanks to the COVID pandemic, with the number of people using the service seeing a sharp increase as they were stuck at home with, in some cases, not much to do other than play video games.

In 2023, Steam is the overwhelmingly dominant games delivery service for the PC format. The service continues to set new records for concurrent players - the latest high of over 33 million was reached earlier this year - and now every major publisher and almost all publishers full stop use Steam as their main launch system. Rivals continue to hang in there - GoG has continued goodwill from its attempts to track down and release older games and Epic Games is continuing to try to make inroads through exclusives and free games - but many have thrown in the towel and admitted defeat.

Criticisms of Steam and its monopoly-like position in the marketplace continue, with criticism of the service sometimes pushing shovelware games released without much attention to quality (or sometimes copyright). The service has sometimes been used for cheating, toxic behaviour and even fraudulent activities, which Valve has sometimes acted decisively to stamp out and, at other times, less decisively. However, Steam has also been praised for almost single-handedly saving PC gaming as a viable format during the 2005-10 period when its future might otherwise have been in doubt, and for prioritising convenience and ease of use for customers.

Probably the biggest and most viable criticism of Steam has been its impact on Valve, its creators. Valve used to create vibrant, exciting and original video games. Steam has given them an astonishing annual income (comfortably in the billions of dollars) which frees them from having to rush games or, indeed, do much work on original games at all. Although Valve continued to publish popular titles in the first few years after Steam launched - Portal (2007), Team Fortress 2 (2007), Left 4 Dead (2008), Portal 2 (2011), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012) and Dota 2 (2013) - it is also unquestionable that their financial security has meant they are not under any pressure to actually make new games. The Half-Life franchise was left on a massive cliffhanger with the release of Half-Life 2: Episode Two in 2007 and the company has so far failed to follow up on it, although VR prequel Half-Life: Alyx (2021) hints at how the series might continue.

My main abiding memory of the first time I used Steam was strewing network cables across my house, to my landlady's consternation, as I tried to get Half-Life 2 to work on its release day. I now have 484 games on the service with some 5,769 hours spent on them (which isn't as bad as I'd feared, spread over nineteen years). My most-played games on the service are Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, Fallout 4, Cyberpunk 2077, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, BattleTech, XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Enemy Within, Death Stranding, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Grand Theft Auto IV/Episodes from Liberty City and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. Many of the criticisms and wariness about the service remain valid, but I think without Steam, it's questionable if PC gaming would have survived, let alone thrived as it has.

HALF-LIFE 3 (probably) confirmed

Well, it only took thirteen years, but it now appears likely that a proper sequel to Half-Life 2 and its expansions is finally on the way.

MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR HALF-LIFE: ALYX FOLLOW

The news came in the closing moments of the latest game in the Half-Life series, Half-Life: Alyx. An "interquel" set between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, the game was expected to be a VR showcase and a stand-alone story that would not impact on the future of the series. However, the game's ending is a huge surprise and ties directly into the cliffhanger ending that we were left on thirteen years ago in Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

The game follows Alyx as she gets wind of an artifact that the Combine has hidden in City 17's Quarantine Zone, an area where the flora and fauna of the alien border world of Xen has manifested on Earth. Early in the game it appears to be a weapon of mass destruction, but as the story progresses Alyx's supporting team, including her father Eli and "guy in the van" Russell, discover that it is in fact a prison constraining an individual in temporal stasis. Combine data files confirm that the individual escaped from the Black Mesa Research Facility and raised hell along the way. Eli concludes that the prisoner is none other than Gordon Freeman (the playable character in Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and the latter's two expansions).

After numerous challenges, Alyx breaks into the prison and opens it, only to find it isn't Gordon at all but instead the mysterious G-Man, a familiar figure from previous games in the series. The G-Man tells Alyx that he is grateful for her intervention and offers her a reward, a "nudge" in time. She asks him to make it so the Combine never invaded Earth, but he refuses, saying that would be far more than a nudge. Instead he offers to change the future for her. He shows her the moment five years in the future that her father, Eli, is murdered by a Combine advisor in the closing seconds of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and offers her a chance to intervene. She does so, killing the advisor before it can kill her father. The G-Man then cautions Alyx that she is now his new operative, to replace Gordon Freeman whose performance is becoming "unsatisfactory." Like Gordon and Adrian Shephard (from Half-Life: Opposing Force) before her, Alyx is recruited into the G-Man's private group of operatives and seemingly removed from space/time.

There is then a flash of light and, post-credits sequence, the player resumes control of Gordon Freeman at the very end of Episode Two. A confused Gordon sees a now-alive Eli in front of him, the Combine Advisor dead in the background, and Alyx nowhere to be seen as Eli rants about this being the "unforeseen consequences" they were warned about previously. Eli vows to kill the G-Man - who can briefly be seen walking off in the distance - and throws Gordon's crowbar to him, telling him he has work to do.

The ending retcons that of Episode Two, in which Eli is killed and we end with Alyx weeping over her father's body. Writer Marc Laidlaw later revealed how he planned to resolve the cliffhanger in Episode Three, with Alyx and Gordon journeying to the Aperture Science vessel Borealis which was caught in multiple time frames and using it as a bomb to sever the link between the Combine homeworld (revealed to be an enormous Dyson Sphere) and Earth. At the last minute the G-Man would appear and rescue Alyx, but leave Gordon to his fate. Gordon would be saved and returned to Earth by the vortigaunts, with Alyx now missing and Gordon planning to find and rescue her, possibly going up against the G-Man directly.

It appears that Half-Life: Alyx has fulfilled some of the same story criteria whilst changing things around, so that Alyx's recruitment takes place at the end of Episode Two (presumably her memory of the intervening period was suppressed or eliminated) instead and Gordon's search for Alyx and a way of defeating the Combine once and for all will now simultaneously play out in a prospective Half-Life 3.

And does this mean Half-Life 3 is on the way? It appears so. Valve know their customers and wouldn't have an ending like this unless it was setup work for a future game in the series. It's also clear that Alyx was partially a way of updating their tech, engine and assets in preparation for an even more ambitious project, with the pre-release interviews for the game leaning heavily on the idea that more Half-Life content will be coming down the pipe (global pandemic notwithstanding, of course).

When Half-Life 3 might appear is another question, but fans may take heart from Alyx's unusually fast development time (the game was developed in about three years, surprisingly efficient for a modern AAA shooter). The real question is in which format it will appear. Half-Life: Alyx got away with being a VR game because of its status as a side-project. Making Half-Life 3 itself VR-only would be vastly more contentious and controversial, but if the sales for Alyx are good enough maybe Valve will be tempted to go down that route.

In the meantime, fans and theorists are going to have a field day working out what this all means for the slow-gestating franchise.

SF&F Questions: Will We Ever See HALF-LIFE 3?

The Basics
The Half-Life series of video games is one of the most influential, critically-acclaimed and biggest-selling in history. More than 30 million copies of the two core games in the series have been sold, and many millions more of the various expansions, DLC and the popular Portal series of spin-off games. However, the core storyline begun in the original Half-Life (1998) stalled in Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007), which ended on a massive cliffhanger. In the twelve years (and counting) to date, that cliffhanger has not been resolved.

Concept art for Half-Life 2: Episode Three from around 2008.

The Story So Far
Ex-Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington set up Valve Corporation in 1996. They began development of their first video games, an all-out, first-person action title called Quiver and a moody, story-driven science fiction epic entitled Prospero. After a few months in development they realised they didn't have enough manpower to develop both games, so combined them into a new title: Half-Life.

Released in late 1998, Half-Life was almost immediately acclaimed the greatest video game ever made (at least on PC) and sold millions of copies. Expansions followed, Opposing Force in 1999 (which launched the career of Gearbox Software) and Blue Shift in 2000. Valve and their fans in the modding scene developed a number of spin-offs from the engine, including the popular multiplayer games Counter-Strike and Team Fortress, before beginning work on a full sequel.

When Half-Life 2 was released in November 2004, it was not only also immediately acclaimed the greatest PC game ever made, it was also hugely controversial for requiring online activation and validation on Valve's propriety online store, called "Steam." A lot of people were furious with Valve for this move, but the overwhelming critical acclaim given to the game saw them give in and join the services. Half-Life 2 also sold millions of copies, as did its expansions Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007) and a related spin-off game, Portal (2007).

Half-Life 2: Episode Two ended on a massive cliffhanger, with a major character dead and the fate of the rest of the characters in severe jeopardy. Valve assured fans they were working on Episode Three. However, several years passed in which little news was released. In the meantime Valve continued making well-regarded games, including Team Fortress 2 (2007), Left 4 Dead (2008), Left 4 Dead 2 (2009), Portal 2 (2011) and Dota 2 (2013).

Also during this time period Steam went through a massive explosion of popularity, becoming the default online PC games portal and making Valve billions of dollars in pure profit. As of this year, there are more than 90 million regular Steam customers and over one billion accounts in existence.

The Half-Life franchise's main protagonists, Gordon Freeman (left) and Alyx Vance (right).

So what happened to Half-Life 3?
Shortly after the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004, Valve confirmed it was working on three "episodes," each one of which would be about one-third the length of Half-Life 2. The idea was that the episodes would form a full sequel to Half-Life 2, and delivering them incrementally would mean that fans would not have to endure another six-year wait such as that which fell between the first two games. Episode One and Episode Two duly followed (split by an eighteen-month gap) in 2006 and 2007, with Episode Three estimated for arrival in mid-2009.

Valve's public statements about the episode were brief and not particularly useful, although they confirmed that the game would pick up on story elements left dangling from Episode Two, particularly the revelation that Dr. Mossman had discovered a key to defeating the Combine on board an old freighter lost in the Arctic, the Borealis. In 2011 the game Portal 2 featured some tie-ins to Episode Three, including the player discovering the drydock the Borealis was launched from. There were also some hints that Episode Three might unite the Half-Life and Portal franchises in some fashion.

By 2012 the Internet had officially grown bored of the wait and a huge number of memes about the missing game had been amassed. Valve boss Gabe Newell made a brief (if coded) comment that the game was in development but said little else about it. Over the following four years there was again little sign of life in the franchise, except a few comments and apparently internal T-shirts at Valve which suggested that Half-Life 2: Episode Three was dead and the story would only continue in a full Half-Life 3 itself.

In 2016, Marc Laidlaw, the main writer on all of the Half-Life games, quit Valve unexpectedly. A year later, he revealed the working outline of Episode Three and how the story would have unfolded (it would have ended on another cliffhanger, if of a lesser magnitude). It was also confirmed around this time that Valve had not seriously been working on Half-Life 3 or Episode Three for many years. This battery of news, following the news that other Half-Life alumni had quit Valve over the years, seemed to confirm to the Internet that Half-Life was finally dead.

Until this week, when Valve unexpectedly announced a full-length, brand-new Half-Life game which wasn't a sequel to Episode Two. Instead, Half-Life: Alyx is an "interquel" set between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, and will be a VR exclusive. It's the latest, unexpected twist in a story that constantly defies explanation.

A pre-release screenshot for Half-Life: Alyx, a new VR game.

So why on Earth has Valve never just made Half-Life 3?
This is the hundred million dollar question. On the surface, Half-Life 3 would have been a licence to print money. The franchise has sold tens of millions of copies and made hundreds of millions of dollars in profit (maybe more). They had momentum from making Half-Life 2 and the two episodes and a team in place ready to roll on.

The reasons why Valve lost that momentum now seem more obvious in retrospect. Steam was a much bigger, much wilder success than anyone ever expected. Valve take home around $4 billion in profit a year from just running a games store, which rather handily eliminates any question over their financial security. Valve are currently the most profitable-per-employee company in the United States and have rejected offers to be bought out by both Electronic Arts and Microsoft, each offer allegedly northwards of $20 billion.

In addition, Valve seemed to struggle with the idea of a central mechanic to hook Half-Life 3 around. Half-Life was built around the all-encompassing idea of a realistic 3D environment; Half-Life 2 was built around physics and the ability to manipulate everything in the world via the Gravity Gun. What new tech Valve could use to direct Half-Life 3 seems to have been something they struggled with for some time; the "Episodes" format even seems to have been a way for them to try to get around that by not requiring a new mechanic for the smaller games, but that didn't work out either.

There's also the risk of diminishing returns and impossible expectations: Half-Life and Half-Life 2 were both deemed the greatest game of all time on release, but by the time of Episode Two's release, the critical acclaim had ebbed away somewhat and the expansion got only middling reviews, with most of the acclaim going on its contemporary spin-off release instead, Portal. One of the reasons for pulling Episode Three is likely that the Source Engine technology it was relying on was going to be too old hat in 2009 (when it was originally due for release) and Valve didn't want to overhaul the engine to the extent required to make it more of a cutting-edge release (although they eventually did for Portal 2 two years later). This inspired the move from Episode Three to Half-Life 3, but the project never seemed to get off the ground, probably due to this issue over not having a central new mechanic. Valve seem to have developed a perfectionist streak and the determination that Half-Life 3 could not be released unless it was guaranteed to re-make the wheel again, which is a huge (and likely impossible) task to set yourself.

The other issue with not making Half-Life 3 is one of age. This year Half-Life turned 21 years old. Half-Life 2 celebrated its 15th anniversary a fortnight ago. An entire generation of gamers has grown up who are completely unfamiliar with the franchise, which is a problem for Valve.

Another pre-release screenshot for Half-Life: Alyx, due for release in March 2020.

Does Half-Life: Alyx put Half-Life 3 back in play?
In a word, yes. Half-Life: Alyx appears to be a gimmick, another attempt to push VR technology on a sceptical gaming audience. But it should be remembered that in order to make Alyx, Valve have had to completely revamp their engine technology and their art. As the game is set in City 17, it will feature new, HD and 4K assets and textures of locations we have already seen in previous games, as well as new lighting technology, better water and so on.

These are all elements that can be fed back into not just a Half-Life 3 but also a Half-Life 2 Remastered. Remasters are all the rage and Half-Life 2 has benefited from minor tech upgrades over the years, but it hasn't had the full remaster treatment yet. With the technology developed for Alyx, it should be relatively simple for Valve to completely remaster Half-Life 2 and its two expansions, all ready for re-release on the next generation of PC and console hardware. And of course, if you can do that then you're most of the way to building expectations for a Half-Life 3.

We saw this recently when Gearbox Software acquired the Homeworld licence, released Homeworld Remastered and then a stand-alone prequel game, Deserts of Kharak, and then based on their success have started work on Homeworld 3. And that franchise was (and remains) very obscure compared to Half-Life.

Conclusion

Valve have not so far made a Half-Life 3 due to a combination of having total financial security from their Steam service instead; not having found a central technology or mechanic to hook the game around; declining interest in the franchise as it gets older; and utterly unachievable expectations set by the fanbase which only get worse with every year.

However, Valve creating and releasing Half-Life: Alyx suggests that they have overcome some of these objections and also developed technology and assets that could be used to make Half-Life 3. This doesn't mean it'll happen, but it puts the idea back in play as a serious possibility for the first time in many years. Of course, if Alyx is an unexpected success it does raise the possibility that Half-Life 3 itself may follow...as a VR game. And that would be an interesting situation to watch unfold.

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Valve to release third full HALF-LIFE game in March 2020 (but not the one you want)

In highly unexpected news (well, before rumours started circulating a week ago), Valve have confirmed that they have all but completed work on a third full-length video game in the Half-Life series and will be releasing it in March. In less welcome news, the new game is not the long-awaited Half-Life 3 but will instead be an interquel, set between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, and will only be available as a VR title.

Half-Life: Alyx is approximately the same length as Half-Life 2 (about 12-13 hours) and is a first-person shooter where the player controls Alyx Vance, a key supporting character from Half-Life 2 and its expansions, Episode One and Episode Two. The game is set in City 17, an Eastern European metropolis now under occupation by the alien Combine, with many of the alien structures seen in the previous games (including the massive Citadel) still under construction. The game sees the founding of the resistance group which plays a larger role in the other games in the series.

Half-Life (1998) and Half-Life 2 (2004) are two of the biggest-selling video games of all time, regarded as iconic titles for pushing first-person and physics technology forward and featuring atmospheric, organically-told stories that mixed action and horror. However, Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007) ended on a massive cliffhanger which has not been resolved in the twelve years since release, with Valve occasionally insisting they were working on a Half-Life 3 but never confirming a release date. Valve have made two spin-off games set in the same universe, Portal (2007) and Portal 2 (2011), but nothing since then. Several key creative personnel from the Half-Life franchise have left the company since then, one of them publicising a story document confirming where a third game might have gone, story-wise.

Half-Life: Alyx will be available exclusively as a VR game on PC, via Oculus Rift or any other compatible VR technology. The game will not be available to play on standard hardware, although Valve have acknowledged that modders will probably try to make it work somehow. Valve are keen to push VR technology to the masses and feel it has stalled over the last year or two after a promising start, so have gone all-out to make the first VR game which is a full-length title and makes every possible use of the technology. However, according to some hardware surveys only 2-3 million people worldwide have VR hardware in the home, which severely limits the potential customer base for the game.

More interestingly, though, the game means that a huge number of assets from Half-Life 2 and its expansions have been upgraded and ported to the Source 2 Engine, making a remastered version of Half-Life 2 now much more likely and possible. Some commentators have also pointed out that development of Half-Life: Alyx must have cost tens of millions of dollars and it would be insane even for Valve to do that with little or no chance of making that back.

Half-Life: Alyx might be an interesting and fascinating demonstration of what VR can really do, but it may be much more important in showing that Valve actually do want to continue making stories in the Half-Life universe and now have the technology and commitment to doing so.

HALF-LIFE writer reveals where the story would have gone in Episode 3

Marc Laidlaw, the writer of Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and Episode One and Two of the same franchise, has (cheekily) revealed where the story would have gone in the Episode Three that Valve were planning in 2007.

His original blog entry "creatively" reinterprets some of the names and concepts in the Half-Life franchise to (mildly) disguise what he is saying. However, I have penetrated his confusing veil and revealed the true story as follows:

Dearest Player,

I hope this letter finds you well. I can hear your complaint already, “Gordon Freeman, we have not heard from you in ages!” Well, if you care to hear excuses, I have plenty, the greatest of them being I’ve been in other dimensions and whatnot, unable to reach you by the usual means. This was the case until eighteen months ago, when I experienced a critical change in my circumstances, and was redeposited on these shores. In the time since, I have been able to think occasionally about how best to describe the intervening years, my years of silence. I do first apologize for the wait, and that done, hasten to finally explain (albeit briefly, quickly, and in very little detail) events following those described in my previous letter (referred to herewith as Episode 2).

To begin with, as you may recall from the closing paragraphs of my previous missive, the death of Eli Vance shook us all. The Resistance team was traumatized, unable to be sure how much of our plan might be compromised, and whether it made any sense to go on at all as we had intended. And yet, once Eli had been buried, we found the strength and courage to regroup. It was the strong belief of her brave daughter, Alyx Vance, that we should continue on as her father had wished. We had the Arctic coordinates, transmitted by Eli’s long-time assistant, Dr. Judith Mossman, which we believed to mark the location of the lost luxury liner Borealis. Eli had felt strongly that the Borealis should be destroyed rather than allow it to fall into the hands of the Combine. Others on our team disagreed, believing that the Borealis might hold the secret to the revolution’s success. Either way, the arguments were moot until we found the vessel. Therefore, immediately after the service for Dr. Vance, Alyx and I boarded a seaplane and set off for the Arctic; a much larger support team, mainly militia, was to follow by separate transport.

It is still unclear to me exactly what brought down our little aircraft. The following hours spent traversing the frigid waste in a blizzard are also a jumbled blur, ill-remembered and poorly defined. The next thing I clearly recall is our final approach to the coordinates Dr. Mossman has provided, and where we expected to find the Borealis. What we found instead was a complex fortified installation, showing all the hallmarks of sinister Combine technology. It surrounded a large open field of ice. Of the Borealis itself there was no sign…or not at first. But as we stealthily infiltrated the Combine installation, we noticed a recurrent, strangely coherent auroral effect–as of a vast hologram fading in and out of view. This bizarre phenomenon initially seemed an effect caused by an immense Combine lensing system, Alyx and I soon realized that what we were actually seeing was the luxury liner Borealis itself, phasing in and out of existence at the focus of the Combine devices. The aliens had erected their compound to study and seize the ship whenever it materialized. What Dr. Mossman had provided were not coordinates for where the sub was located, but instead for where it was predicted to arrive. The liner was oscillating in and out of our reality, its pulses were gradually steadying, but there was no guarantee it would settle into place for long–or at all. We determined that we must put ourselves into position to board it at the instant it became completely physical.

At this point we were briefly detained–not captured by the Combine, as we feared at first, but by minions of our former nemesis, the conniving and duplicitous Wallace Breen. Dr. Breen was not as we had last seen him –which is to say, he was not dead. At some point, the Combine had saved out an earlier version of his consciousness, and upon his physical demise, they had imprinted the back-up personality into a biological blank resembling an enormous slug. The Breen-Slug, despite occupying a position of relative power in the Combine hierarchy, seemed nervous and frightened of me in particular. Wallace did not know how his previous incarnation, the original Dr. Breen, had died. He knew only that I was responsible. Therefore, the slug treated us with great caution. Still, he soon confessed (never able to keep quiet for long) that he was himself a prisoner of the Combine. He took no pleasure from his current grotesque existence, and pleaded with us to end his life. Alyx believed that a quick death was more than Wallace Breen deserved, but for my part, I felt a modicum of pity and compassion. Out of Alyx’s sight, I might have done something to hasten the slug’s demise before we proceeded.

Not far from where we had been detained by Dr. Breen, we found Judith Mossman being held in a Combine interrogation cell. Things were tense between Judith and Alyx, as might be imagined. Alyx blamed Judith for her father’s death…news of which, Judith was devastated to hear for the first time. Judith tried to convince Alyx that she had been a double agent serving the Resistance all along, doing only what Eli had asked of her, even though she knew it meant she risked being seen by her peers–by all of us–as a traitor. I was convinced; Alyx less so. But from a pragmatic point of view, we depended on Dr. Mossman; for along with the Borealis coordinates, she possessed resonance keys which would be necessary to bring the liner fully into our plane of existence.

We skirmished with Combine soldiers protecting a Combine research post, then Dr. Mossman attuned the Borealis to precisely the frequencies needed to bring it into (brief) coherence. In the short time available to us, we scrambled aboard the ship, with an unknown number of Combine agents close behind. The ship cohered for only a short time, and then its oscillations resumed. It was too late for our own military support, which arrived and joined the Combine forces in battle just as we rebounded between universes, once again unmoored.

What happened next is even harder to explain. Alyx Vance, Dr. Mossman and myself sought control of the ship–its power source, its control room, its navigation center. The liner’s history proved nonlinear. Years before, during the Combine invasion, various members of an earlier science team, working in the hull of a dry-docked liner situated at the Tocsin Island Research Base in Lake Huron, had assembled what they called the Bootstrap Device. If it worked as intended, it would emit a field large enough to surround the ship. This field would then itself travel instantaneously to any chosen destination without having to cover the intervening space. There was no need for entry or exit portals, or any other devices; it was entirely self-contained. Unfortunately, the device had never been tested. As the Combine pushed Earth into the Seven Hour War, the aliens seized control of our most important research facilities. The staff of the Borealis, with no other wish than to keep the ship out of Combine hands, acted in desperation. The switched on the field and flung the Borealis toward the most distant destination they could target: the Arctic. What they did not realize was that the Bootstrap Device travelled in time as well as space. Nor was it limited to one time or one location. The Borealis, and the moment of its activation, were stretched across space and time, between the nearly forgotten Lake Huron of the Seven Hour War and the present-day Arctic; it was pulled taut as an elastic band, vibrating, except where at certain points along its length one could find still points, like the harmonic spots along a vibrating guitar string. One of these harmonics was where we boarded, but the string ran forward and back, in both time and space, and we were soon pulled in every direction ourselves.

Time grew confused. Looking from the bridge, we could see the drydocks of Tocsin Island at the moment of teleportation, just as the Combine forces closed in from land, sea and air. At the same time, we could see the Arctic wastelands, where our friends were fighting to make their way to the protean Borealis; and in addition, glimpses of other worlds, somewhere in the future perhaps, or even in the past. Alyx grew convinced we were seeing one of the Combine’s central staging areas for invading other worlds–such as our own. We meanwhile fought a running battle throughout the ship, pursued by Combine forces. We struggled to understand our situation, and to agree on our course of action. Could we alter the course of the Borealis? Should we run it aground in the Antarctic, giving our peers the chance to study it? Should we destroy it with all hands aboard, our own included? It was impossible to hold a coherent thought, given the baffling and paradoxical timeloops, which passed through the ship like bubbles. I felt I was going mad, that we all were, confronting myriad versions of ourselves, in that ship that was half ghost-ship, half nightmare funhouse.

What it came down to, at last, was a choice. Judith Mossman argued, reasonably, that we should save the Borealis and deliver it to the resistance, that our intelligent peers might study and harness its power. But Alyx reminded me that she had sworn she would honour his mother’s demand that we destroy the ship. She hatched a plan to set the Borealis to self-destruct, while riding it into the heart of the Combine’s invasion nexus. Judith and Alyx argued. Judith overpowered Alyx and secured the Borealis command area, preparing to shut off the Bootstrap Device and settle the ship on the ice. Then I heard a shot, and Judith fell. Alyx had decided for all of us, or her weapon had. With Dr. Mossman dead, we were committed to the suicide plunge. Grimly, Alyx and I armed the Borealis, creating a time-travelling missile, and steered it for the heart of the Combine’s command center.

At this point, as you will no doubt be unsurprised to hear, a Certain Sinister Figure appeared, in the form of that sneering trickster, the G-Man.  For once he appeared not to me, but to Alyx Vance. Alyx had not seen the cryptical schoolmarm since childhood, but she recognized him instantly. “Come along with me now, we’ve places to do and things to be,” said G-Man, and Alyx acquiesced. She followed the strange grey man out of the Borealis, out of our reality. For me, there was no convenient door held open; only a snicker and a sideways glance. I was left alone, riding the weaponized luxury liner into the heart of a Combine world. An immense light blazed. I caught a cosmic view of a brilliantly glittering Dyson sphere. The vastness of the Combine’s power, the futility of our struggle, blossomed briefly in my awareness. I saw everything. Mainly I saw how the Borealis, our most powerful weapon, would register as less than a fizzling matchhead as it blew itself apart. And what remained of me would be even less than that.

Just then, as you have surely already foreseen, the Vortigaunts parted their own checkered curtains of reality, reached in as they had on prior occasions, plucked me out, and set me aside. I barely got to see the fireworks begin.

And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Except no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final Episode.

Half-Life 2: Episode 3 was effectively cancelled this decade in favour of a full Half-Life 3, although Valve has shown little appetite in continuing the series. Instead, fans have revisited the series through Black Mesa, a superb remake of Half-Life with modern technology, and I daresay more than a few modders will be reading this outline, looking at their copy of the Source Engine code and saying, "Right..."

HALF-LIFE 3 not in development at Valve

A new expose undertaken by Game Informer has concluded that Valve are not developing Half-Life 3, even on the backburner, at present. This contradicts Valve's position, taken since the release of Half-Life 2: Episode Two in 2007, that the next Half-Life game remains a work-in-progress.

To rewind, Valve released the original Half-Life back in 1998 to immense critical acclaim. A first-person shooter noted for strong combat and total immersion in the game's viewpoint character, Gordon Freeman, the game sold over 10 million copies and completely redefined the first-person shooter genre. Two expansions, Opposing Force and Blue Shift, followed in 1999 and 2001. Opposing Force launched the career of Gearbox, themselves now one of the biggest FPS developers in the industry for their Borderlands series.

Half-Life 2 was released in 2004 to even greater acclaim and sales. It was praised for its graphics and its pioneering use of physics technology. More importantly, the game launched the Steam digital distribution platform which is now the leading online retail store for PC games with over 125 million users.

Unhappy with the six-year wait between the two games, Valve decided to split the next Half-Life game into three distinct episodes. Half-Life 2: Episode One was released in 2006 and was followed by Episode Two in late 2007, which infamously ended on a massive cliffhanger involving the death of a major supporting character. Episode Three, it was speculated, would be released in 2009. Valve also improved their game catalogue by releasing Episode Two alongside two other games in the "Orange Box" collection: Team Fortress 2, a colourful and fun multiplayer shooter, and Portal, a sophisticated puzzle game using portals, physics and momentum to solve puzzles in a story with a very dark sense of humour and a break-out villain character, the evil computer GLADOS. Portal also took place in the Half-Life universe and fans had fun spotting the Easter eggs linking up the two storylines.

Portal 2 was released in 2011 and was a massive success. A far larger, funnier and more sophisticated game than its forebear, it gained immense acclaim. It also had much closer ties to the Half-Life franchise, including some elements that seemed to be helping set up Episode Three.

Since 2011 there has been almost blanket radio silence from Valve on the status of the Half-Life franchise, except for rumours that Episode Three was dead and the next game would be a full-blown Half-Life 3. Valve has since released Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012), Dota 2 (2013) and Portal VR spin-off The Lab (2016) but no more games, instead focusing on online content for Team Fortress 2 and experimenting with new hardware, particularly virtual reality.

Game Informer's investigation relies on an interview with an insider at Valve. According to them, the game never gained much traction due to Valve's way of working, where developers work on projects that they like and then take prototypes to senior management to approve and take to the next level. For whatever reason, Valve's senior management (and its overall boss, Gabe Newell) have never formally approved a Half-Life 3. Apparently some of the ideas and prototypes were pretty wild, including an real-time strategy game spin-off and a live-action movie with branching storylines based on player choice. It does look like that Episode Three did get off the ground after Episode Two's completion, but it was canned pretty quickly, possibly in favour of Portal 2, and the momentum was never regained.

Valve has occasionally released concept art for Half-Life 3, including this image of the Borealis, a ship which was heavily referenced in both Episode Two and Portal 2.

The idea that the Half-Life franchise may be dead was given greater credence when Viktor Antonov, the main designer of Half-Life 2 and its episodes, left Valve for Arkane, where he became lead designer on Dishonored and Dishonored 2. However, even more damaging was the departure of Marc Laidlaw last year. Laidlaw was the main writer on Half-Life and its sequel, as well as the episodes. His departure is a much bigger blow, since it was his influence that led to the franchise's signature laidback, subtle and environmental storytelling, as well as its nods to pulp SF.

Half-Life 3 is a difficult project to take on at this point. Gabe Newell seems to want a game that will redefine the FPS genre as the first two titles did with new ideas and technology, but no-one seems really to have come up with a viable idea. In addition, the Half-Life franchise may have sold over 25 million copies but its console ports have never been more than modestly successful, whilst a new game would also have to appeal to console gamers. The direction of FPS games on console has been to lowest-common denominator, cut scene-heavy and violence-focused titles. That's not to say that a smarter, more thoughtful FPS could not be successful (arguably the Fallout series has moved away from being RPGs to narrative and conversation-heavy FPS games instead), but the project has to be seen as being risky from a commercial POV.

On the other hand, there is no way that a new Half-Life game from Valve would bomb. It'd be a big success regardless of the mechanics it employed. The huge cliffhanger ending of Episode Two, not to mention the numerous storyline nods from Portal and Portal 2, have also set up expectations and questions that Valve should really answer, if not in a new game than perhaps in a novel or comic.

The one thing that might resurrect the franchise? A movie. Star Wars and Star Trek producer and director J.J. Abrams is a massive fan of the Half-Life and Portal games and recently confirmed that his company, Bad Robot, is developing movies set in both universes, although it sounds like the Portal movie will happen first. Whether Abrams would direct or just produce remains to be seen. But if something lights a fire under the franchise and gets a new Half-Life game going again, this might be it.

So a new HALF-LIFE game came out today

Sadly not Half-Life 3. Instead the new game is called Prospekt and is a stand-alone expansion for Half-Life 2 whilst also serving as a sequel to the classic, original Half-Life expansion Opposing Force.

Long-term gamers will recall that in Opposing Force you played Adrian Shephard, one of the special forces sent into the Black Mesa facility to kill the witnesses to the resonance cascade event that permitted the invasion of Earth by the evil Combine in the first place. Shephard didn't take part in the morally murky shenanigans, instead being enlisted by the enigmatic G-Man to help out Gordon Freeman in his mission from behind the scenes. At the end of the game G-Man temporally suspended Shephard like he did Freeman.

In Prospekt, Shephard is awoken after a decade or so in suspension. Earth is now under Combine occupation and the events of Half-Life 2 are underway. Gordon Freeman is mounting his assault on the Nova Prospekt prison facility and Shephard is once again deployed to help him from behind the scenes, diverting Combine reinforcements and so forth. The game pits Shephard against traditional Half-Life 2 enemies (and some from the episodes). The game features updated visual effects because, well, it's not 2004 any more.

Sadly, overeager fans shouldn't read too much into the release of this episode and what it might mean for the long-MIA Half-Life 3. The game is the creation of Half-Life superfan Richard Seabrook. It so impressed Valve that they've agreed to release it officially, and you can get it on Steam here.

HALF-LIFE writer leaves Valve

The primary writer of the iconic Half-Life series of video games, Marc Laidlaw, has confirmed that he has left Valve.

Laidlaw, an experienced novelist  joined Valve in 1997, at roughly the same time that Valve decided to completely revamp their then in-development action game, Half-Life. Laidlaw helped stream back the game's original, much more overt action/horror angle, instead developing a pared-back form of worldbuilding and abandoning lengthy exposition in favour of environmental clues and letting the player piece together the plot from clues left lurking around the levels. This more naturalistic form of story-telling helped Half-Life become one of the biggest-selling first-person shooters of all time when it was released to blanket critical acclaim in 1998.

Laidlaw returned as the sole writer on Half-Life 2, released to equal acclaim and even greater sales in 2004. The game again favoured environmental storytelling over exposition or infodumping. This form of storytelling - largely ignored by the cut scene-heavy, narratively clunky first-person shooters that have followed - was highly praised for its immersion but also criticised by some who felt it left the game's backdrop and setting underdeveloped and even obtuse. Laidlaw also co-wrote the two expansions to the game, Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007). More recently he has worked on the background fiction for Valve's online battle game Dota 2 (2013).

Laidlaw's best-known novels are Neon Lotus (1988), nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and The 37th Mandala (1996), which was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and won the International Horror Guild Award. Laidlaw has indicated that he will likely now return to writing novels and short stories.

Laidlaw's departure from Valve has led to renewed speculation over the fate of the long-missing continuation of the Half-Life series. Valve were developing Half-Life 2: Episode Three after Episode Two ended on a monumental cliffhanger over eight years ago, but the title failed to appear. Valve later seemed to indicate that the episode had been abandoned in favour of a full Half-Life 3, but official comments were hard to come by. Fans of the franchise have grown increasingly frustrated as Valve have released several other games in the meantime whilst refusing to comment on the status of Half-Life 3. More recently Valve have chosen to focus on online games and on their insanely popular gaming marketplace software, Steam, which now boasts over 125 million users.

Laidlaw's departure is not necessarily bad news for the Half-Life franchise, as Valve still employs other talented writers who have worked on games such as Left 4 Dead and, especially, the critically-acclaimed Portal 2 (2011). However, speculation that Laidlaw may have decided to leave due to Valve's move away from narrative games, and potentially from any interest in bringing Half-Life 3 to market, will no doubt be rife.

Happy 15th anniversary to HALF-LIFE

Valve's seminal masterpiece, Half-Life, celebrates its 15th birthday today. The original game was released on 19 November 1998 and completely changed the face of gaming, especially in the first-person shooter genre.

Fighting a helicopter is ten-a-penny in modern shooters. But in 1998 this was totally jaw-dropping.

Half-Life was notable for its total immersion: the main character, Gordon Freeman, never spoke and there were no cut scenes to take you away from the action. Instead the game involved you in its world and action at every turn. Exposition and plot development was fairly restrained, with you picking up clues on what was going on in the world from overheard conversations and notes pinned to walls. The combat was sublime, especially at the time, and the game was noted for its strong art style, sense of place and exceptional AI. Some criticisms were levelled at its linearity, overly-frequent load points and the dull closing levels on the planet Xen, but overall the game is well deserving of its masterpiece status. Two expansions from Gearbox followed, Opposing Force (1999, excellent) and Blue Shift (2000, meh). Last year a superb modern remake of the pre-Xen levels, Black Mesa, was released and was totally worthy of the Half-Life name.

After a long delay, the game was followed by a sequel, Half-Life 2, released in late 2004 to almost as much acclaim. Two of three planned expansions followed, Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007), as well as two games set in the same universe but focusing on different elements, Portal (2007) and Portal 2 (2011). Valve went on to also create Steam, the PC's biggest digital gaming store (with over 65 million active accounts) which has been credited with helping save PC gaming from falling into obscurity and restoring it to the front line of gaming popularity.

It has been informally confirmed (via many, many leaks from Valve) that Valve are now working on Half-Life 3, which replaces and supersedes the missing Episode Three, but it is unknown when we will get to see it.

So happy birthday to Half-Life and congratulations to Valve, who have gone from a bunch of ex-Microsoft developers and Quake map-makers into one of the biggest and most important companies in gaming. And it all began with a certain tram ride a decade and a half ago.

No HALF-LIFE 2 Episode 3 in 2010, but PORTAL 2 announcement on the way?

According to Game Informer magazine, Valve are not planning to ship Half-Life 2: Episode 3 in 2010. Episode 2 was released as part of the 'Orange Box' pack in 2007, alongside Team Fortress 2 and Portal, and word on Episode 3 has been very limited since then, despite the original plan being for all three episodes to be released in just eighteen months following the release of Half-Life 2 itself in November 2004. The magazine goes on to speculate that it's possible that Episode 3 may have even been cancelled and replaced with a Half-Life 3 running on a next-gen version of the Source Engine.

At the same time that this disappointing news has been circulating, an artificial reality game has appeared via the latest Steam updates hinting that further developments on the Portal 2 front may be imminent. The Portal team have been working on the sequel since shortly after the original game was released, despite the departure of original designer Kim Swift a few months ago to work for another company, and it sounds like some sort of announcement or preview is now on the way. A Portal 2 could certainly ease the waiting pains for the release of Episode 3.

Escape from City 17: The Movie

It just goes to show what two geeks with $500 (Canadian), a PC rendering farm and an obsession with Half-Life 2 can achieve. This is the first part of an apparently intermittent live-action film series set in the Half-Life universe, made with the blessing of original game developers Valve.

Seriously, this is impressive stuff. The opening shot of City 17 is amazing. The acting is a little cheesy, but as one critic put it, this is already the best game-to-movie translation ever made. The first episode has already been a massive success on YouTube, with 1.5 million viewings in less than a week and it is already the most highly-rated video in the website's history.



A higher-definition version can be seen here. More information can be found here and here.

Half-Life 2: Episode One

Half-Life 2: Episode One is the first of three stand-alone expansions to Half-Life 2. It picks up moments after the first game ended - which you may recall was on a massive cliffhanger - and nicely sets up the events of Episode Two.


Before the events of Half-Life 2, the Earth was invaded and subjugated by a ruthless interdimensional alien race known as the Combine. Inhibiting humanity's desire to procreate with suppression fields, draining the oceans and gradually transforming the surviving humans into cybernetic slaves or indoctrinated soldiers, the Combine are clearly not very friendly. However, aided by the alien vortigaunts who used to be slaves of the Combine but were liberated by the actions of your character, Gordon Freeman, at the end of the original Half-Life, humanity has formed a resistance. Freeman's unexpected arrival in City 17, the main Combine base of operations in Eastern Europe, triggered a mass-uprising against the Combine. At the end of Half-Life 2, Gordon and Alyx Vance infiltrated the Citadel and defeated the plans of the Combine and their ally, Dr. Wallace Breen. Unfortunately, although their plan succeeded, the zero-point energy generator at the top of the Citadel exploded, apparently incinerating Alyx, although Gordon was 'rescued' once again by the mysterious G-Man.

Episode One picks up moments later as the G-Man suddenly finds his powers neutralised by a bunch of vortigaunts, who teleport both Alyx and Gordon to freedom. The resistance is evacuated City 17, but as thousands of people flee for safety the defensive shields around the city collapse and dangerous wildlife starts flooding in, causing havoc. Gordon and Alyx's task in Episode One is simple: to re-engage the Citadel's shields to stop the reactor exploding for a few hours longer, and then to get the hell out of the city.

Episode One is impressive for distilling the Half-Life experience down to a few intense hours of fun. The episode isn't as long as any of the other games or expansions in the series, clocking in at around four hours in length, but it does cover a fair amount of ground. New weapons are disappointingly nowhere to be seen, but there are some new enemies and some interesting set pieces. As usual, combat is fast and furious and the physics puzzles aren't quite as blindingly obvious as in HL2 itself. They've also generously increased the battery life of your torch, which given that chunks of the game take place in darkness as you have to fight off zombie and headcrab hordes is a good thing.

Much of the game's enjoyment comes from having Alyx by your side for most of the game. She is easily the most impressive allied NPC to ever appear in an action game, and her reactions in a few situations are surprisingly lifelike. However, Valve definitely missed a trick by not allowing a co-op mode with another player controlling her.

Episode One (****½) is a fun game and an enjoyable addition to the series, if you can stomach yet another cliffhanger ending (although that is eased due to the fact of Episode Two already being available). The game is available in the UK as part of The Orange Box (PC, 360, PS3), and the Half-Life 2 Episode Pack (PC), and in the USA as part of The Orange Box (PC, 360, PS3) and the Half-Life 2 Episode Pack (PC).