Half-Life 2: Episode 3 was supposed to be released in 2007, shortly after Episode 2, but Valve’s vague promises that it would be coming “soon” ultimately led to the whole episodic model being abandoned in favor of Half-Life 3. Not great, but a new game! Hopefully! The only catch is that we had to wait until Source 2 was released first.

As the years went by without any news on the new engine, let alone the next Half-Life, we admitted that all hope was lost. Half-Life died with a crowbar in hand, screaming into nothingness, finally abandoned by Gabe-Man.

Then came 2015; out of nowhere, Dota 2 was ported to Source 2. The engine was real. Just a year later, references to something called “HLVR” were found in the files, which was eventually revealed as Half-Life: Alyx, a prequel that launched four years later in 2020.

Only it’s not really a prequel. We go back in time before Gordon Freeman resurfaced after the Black Mesa incident, but it continues the story of Episode 2 by giving Alyx Vance a way to save her father in the future. After the credits rolled, we were back to waiting for Half-Life 3 with the same cliffhanger as 13 years ago, just a little different.

A brief history of the many Half-Life 3s

It’s a misconception that Valve sat idle. There were several new Half-Life games planned at various points, they just never released. Half-Life 3 itself was in development between 2013 and 2014, but “it didn’t get very far” before it was canceled – all we know is that it mixed procedurally generated levels with hand-crafted levels, so you’d take a new route every time you played (thanks, IGN).

Lead writer Marc Laidlaw, who was so frustrated with Valve that he released his version of the narrative summary of Episode 3, cleverly called “Epistle 3,” was also working on a VR game called Borealis. In it, we would have been on the interdimensional time travel ship that was originally cut from Half-Life 2 but later reappeared at the end of Episode 2, jumping back and forth between the Seven Hour War and a time period shortly after the 2007 game. Unfortunately, it was canceled and Laidlaw left Valve.

There was also a Half-Life-themed VR shooter that used assets from Half-Life 2 and would have served as a tech demo-style shooter as part of The Lab.

This idea of ​​reviving the Seven Hour War was also present in a cancelled Half-Life game in 2015. According to Valve leaker Tyler McVicker (as reported by Metro), it went so far that there was a playable opening section, but only ten developers were working on the game. It supposedly began with Gordon Freeman experiencing dream sequences of the Combine invasion before waking up in Aperture Science with a robotic arm. It supposedly allowed him to change the size of objects and change their temperature.

As we escaped Aperture Science and took refuge in a destroyed American city, we eventually discovered that this game was set 20 years after Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and that many of the characters we knew were dead. It was supposedly more open-world than previous games, and even featured procedurally generated quests. None of these details appeared in Geoff Keighley’s interactive documentary The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, however, so take it with a grain of salt – it could be the same Half-Life 3 that was in development between 2013 and 2014, but Valve hasn’t confirmed this yet.

Half-Life 3 in a post-Alyx world

It’s important to look at what led us to Alyx to predict where Project White Sands (or HLX, if it’s the same thing) might take us next. According to McVicker, this recently leaked Half-Life game follows someone in an HEV suit, so it’s likely we’ll finally get back into the orange boots of Gordon Freeman for a sequel. That makes sense, considering Alyx ends with the now-living Eli Vance handing us a crowbar. But what might the story look like?

So much of the cancelled Episode 3 and Half-Life 3 that we know of revolves around revenge for Eli and the Seven Hour War. Before his original death, he begged us to destroy the Borealis before the Combine could get their hands on it while Dr. Kleiner wanted to use it against the Combine. We would have set off into the Arctic in the footsteps of Judith Mossman to find the lost ship, only to discover that the Combine was also on its trail. The race was on.

In Laidlaw’s Epistle 3, Gordon and Alyx fly the Borealis into the heart of the Combine empire in a self-sacrificing maneuver to wipe it out once and for all. They honor Eli’s memory while making a move against their interdimensional overlords. But it’s hardly a success, and neither dies. G-Man takes Alyx, the Voritguants take Gordon. A failure by all accounts.

Laidlaw reveals that the consultant who kills Eli was Dr. Breen, after transferring his consciousness at the end of Half-Life 2. We would have found him in Episode 3, where he begged us to kill him – Alyx would say we should leave him behind to slowly waste away, but you could make a choice here. Like at the end of Half-Life: Alyx, he’s now dead.

That story can’t repeat itself now. At least not in the same way. Alyx has been kidnapped by the G-Man, and her father is still alive. We know Eli knows a lot about the G-Man that he’s keeping secret. We’ll probably still venture into the Arctic in search of the Borealis and clash with the Combine, but what we do with the Borealis will change here. Instead of hurling it into the Empire and destroying it, maybe we can use it to search the universe and other dimensions for G-Man and his employers to rescue Alyx – maybe we’ll find out where he’s keeping people like Gordon and Adrian Shepherd in stasis.

Chances are we’ll even see some elements of the Seven Hour War, as it played such a major role in several of the cancelled Half-Life games that Valve has now openly discussed. Who knows what revelations await us in recent human history?

Alyx will also not be joining us on our journey to the Arctic. This is a huge change, as in Epistle 3 she is the one who suggests we fly the Borealis into the Combine. Without her to make such a hasty suggestion, the fate of the Borealis is uncertain. Regardless, we still have a goal in mind, we just have a new goal now driving us. Before it was about capturing this ship before the Combine can, now it’s about capturing the ship and finding Alyx. For the first time, G-Man will be an active antagonist. He threw Gordon off track and took Alyx in his place, but Gordon isn’t the type to sit idly by and wait for her to resurface—he’s after her.