Half-Life 3 Is Reportedly Playable In Its Entirety (engadget.com) 50
According to Valve insider Tyler McVicker, Half-Life 3 is finally playable from start to finish and could be announced this summer, with a release as soon as winter 2025. Engadget reports: Besides McVicker's hours-long livestream, there have been other recent hints about Valve's progress on its highly anticipated title. In March, Valve concept artist Evgeniy Evstratiy claimed that he was in the room where Valve made Half-Life 3 on CG Voices Podcast. In the same month, another Valve leaker, Gabe Follower, claimed that Half-Life 3 would be the "end of Gordon's adventure," potentially signaling a non-cliffhanger ending to one of gaming's best franchises. Outside of these rumors, internet sleuths discovered code referencing HLX, which is widely thought to be the codename for Half-Life 3, in major updates to Deadlock and Dota 2.
valve can count to 3? (Score:2)
now there's a game that might actually be worth paying $80 for
TFS is wrong, and TFA is disinformation (Score:5, Informative)
There is no "valve insider". There's a random streamer making shit up with no evidence whatsoever. That's it.
Meh (Score:4, Informative)
After the success of Half Life 2, Half Life 3 can only be the longest-ever awaited disappointment. They don't make games like they used to.
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They don't make games like they used to.
Valve makes games just like they used to — verrrryyy sllooowwwwwwllly. But given that, I will reserve judgement until I see the new game. People thought 2 would suck, and it didn't. Portal 2 was very very well received. Why should HL3 be bad? It certainly could be, but why make assumptions?
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If Bethesda can remake Oblivion, bugs and all, and it still ends up a weirdly good game, then surely a company with Valves reputation and resources could actually pull this off.
It wont necessarily be the next coming of christ. But it might at least be a long overdue catch up with one mr gordon freeman, and thats enough for me.
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The VR game Half Life Alyx was excellent
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After the success of Half Life 2, Half Life 3 can only be the longest-ever awaited disappointment. They don't make games like they used to.
I generally agree with you; however, what you are claiming is not entirely true. Elden Ring is a recent example of old school thinking and principles in game design. There are others, but they are rare... but then, even in the past, they were rare. How many games came out when Half Life came out? Hundreds, and yet, Half Life is one of the only games we remember from that year.
Nooooo (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that the release of Half Life 3 is one of the signs of the apocalypse. WE'RE ALL DOOM3'D!
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No, we're duke nukem'd.
Forever.
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If true (Score:3)
Then I hope playable on the same hardware as the originals, or at least not a requerment to have a multi-gigabyte videocard to render things that won't be noticed anyway.
Besides, I think suddenly realistic graphics would break the transition between the episode 2 and 3.
Aside from this, they should bring out Alyx as a regular game as well for those of us not interested in virtual reality.
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How, the originals won't run on the same hardware?
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No better way to destroy a major release game than to not upgrade the graphics, unfortunately.
Not old enough to remember the quantum leap between HL and HL2 (which basically introduced everyone to HDR, and had entirely different and far more detailed models and locations)?
If HL3 isn't pushing your computer, then they're really spend DECADES too long on it. Hell, even Alyx is so humungously more demanding than HL2 ever was.
And Alyx won't work well as a normal game, it'll be quite a boring and limited first-
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"and it's without question the best VR game in existence"
I can think of two VR games that on terms of sheer gameplay smash Alyx - SuperHot VR, and Moss.
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None of those comes even close to HL:Alyx in terms of immersion.
I played in a friend's Index and I spent a good 10 minutes watching a Combine guard shifting weight between the legs when standing.
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Half Life 2 is why my home PC has a graphics card at all. I just hope I don't have to spend a lot on a new one if it's not good enough for Half Life 3.
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But, I always said, if Valve ever makes Half Life 3, THAT will be what gets me back into gaming. We'll see...
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Yes....let's game like it's 1999 (ok, was released in 1998, but I didn't play it until 1999).
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Then I hope playable on the same hardware as the originals
It is! The originals still work today, and Valve has even put out an updated Half-Life (original) so this is extra true. But it was already true.
If you mean you want the brand new game to be playable on the recommended hardware for the original game, that's unrealistic. Even Valve's handheld is more powerful than that. Nobody owes you support for your antiques.
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Yes, a brand new game that they want to make money on should be playable on hardware where 3D accelerators were their own card (3Dfx Voodoo2). I'm absolutely sure they coded it for DirectX 5 and Windows 98 just to make you happy.
What an absolutely ridiculous demand.
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HL2 wasn't playable on the same hardware of HL1, why would you pretend hL3 to be compatible with 20 years old hardware?
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Besides, I think suddenly realistic graphics would break the transition between the episode 2 and 3.
You know what else would really break the transition between Episode 2 and 3?
EIGHTEEN GODDAMNED YEARS.
Now do Portal 3... (Score:1)
and and let's hope HL3 has a native VR option too!!
SteamDeck (Score:2)
This also gives hope that Valve could manage to keep makes SteamDecks beyond the 2.
Half-Life 3 Confirmed! (Score:2)
Half Life 2 + Alyx = 3!!
1, 2 remaster? (Score:2)
Worth them doing a relatively simple remaster on 1 and 2? Meaning not going full-on Oblivion Remaster gold standard, but just upping some text resolutions and any simple graphical changes that are easy to pull off.
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Worth them doing a relatively simple remaster on 1 and 2?
Half-Life 1 has already been remastered and released by Valve. Half-Life 2 doesn't need a remaster yet, it still looks pretty decent.
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Half-Life 1 has already been remastered and released by Valve. Half-Life 2 doesn't need a remaster yet, it still looks pretty decent.
Usually, I would agree with you, HL1 was recently remastered (to HL2 level graphics/physics) and HL2 still looks pretty decent. However, cast your mind back to 2004 and the state of FPS video games back then. HL2 (well, the source engine really) was a monumental leap forward in terms of realistic graphics and more importantly realistic physics. When Valve released source engine and HL2 tech demos in 2003 people were literally stunned by how advanced it was for the time (I remember this one vividly: https [youtube.com]
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If, however, Valve makes a repeat performance of 2004 by dramatically improving on the graphics and physics simulation capabilities available in games today (maybe they'll call it Source 3?), then that may warrant further remakes of HL1 & HL2 in this new engine.
That's what Bugthesda would say, sure. But most of us would hope for a new game more than for old games to be endlessly rehashed and resold.
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But most of us would hope for a new game more than for old games to be endlessly rehashed and resold.
Who says we can't have both?
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Who says we can't have both?
We can't have both at the same time, apparently.
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Somehow Source 2 has better lip sync than many modern game engines I've seen.
Why is this news ? (Score:1)
Was it previously so buggy as to be unplayable ? That was my first thought when I read the headline. In the old days, games used to ship on tapes, cartridges and floppies, with no opportunity to patch them. One had to do actual QA before RTM.
Of course, in this case, it's just some report from some blogger about an unreleased game having somehow reached an internal milestone. Stuff that matters ? Surely not.
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There were a whole lot let less bits to test on a 720k floppy than there are in a 100GB download.
Re: Why is this news ? (Score:2)
By the time games started to ship on floppy, patches existed. New versions of games replaced old ones and customers could get new floppies mailed, usually for mailing and floppy fees.
Re: Why is this news ? (Score:2)
Not in France where I grew up. No patches whatsoever, no ability to get them. Games got released in CGA and you had to buy them all over again to get EGA or VGA versions. Needless to say, no kid could afford that. Maybe their rich parents. Let's just say I had a lot of floppies sent in the mail in the days of V.23 modems.
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Not in France where I grew up. No patches whatsoever, no ability to get them.
Well, I don't know shit about France of decades ago so maybe that's true, but didn't you guys invent some kind of early multiuser network with file trading and stuff? In this country patches for DOS games were often distributed via Compuserve, which is kind of mind boggling if you think about it because we're talking about a time when modems were 9600bps, or maybe if you were really flush you bought a USR and could do up to 19.2kbps some of the time (when connecting to another HST modem.) And Compuserve was
Re: Why is this news ? (Score:2)
If you are referring to the minitel, it was a terminal with keyboard, screen and modem. There was a serial interface you could connect to a computer. The modem was V.23, which is half duplex . 75 bps upstream, 1200 bps downstream. The modem was reversible. It was still quite slow. A 360KB floppy would take about 25 mins to download, assuming no protocol overhead. And of course, the minitel servers also used 7 bits per byte, not 8. Let's just say it was slow. And file transfer protocols were not standardize
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I used 1200 bps for a long time, and also had two different terminals with 300bps. One was a Bank of America Homebanking terminal, which was 40 column text with RF output for TV, in a brown plastic slab box, and the other was a Kaypro 4, a 64 kB machine which ran CP/M and whose terminal emulation was adm3a... basically a glass line printer. Eventually I got a used 2400 bps with MNP5, so mostly 4800 bps. Very fancy.
We also had like 20+ BBSes in Santa Cruz. It was a very nerdy place.
Finally, they learne to count to 3! (Score:2)
Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:2)
It should be "Half-life 2 *Episode* 3," not "Half-Life 3".
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I agree that there needs to be an Episode 3, but perhaps they've just skipped it in favour of a full game.