It’s that time of year again when alleged information about the long-awaited Half-Life 3 starts surfacing online. Only this time, however, the information seems to be more and more credible.

In the time leading up to the present day, it was revealed that a voice actress named Natasha Chandel had a mysterious “Project White Sands” listed on her resume. This project was categorized by Valve as a video game, with White Sands being a real location in New Mexico, similar to Black Mesa.

Then it was discovered that Valve was trying to cover its tracks by changing the internal labels of the file names. For example, the source code that referenced the HEV lawsuit was changed to “Burbank Suit.”

And while Valve officially admits deadlock, insider Gabe Follower has released his research on Half-Life 3. In a new video, he details the information he’s gathered over the past three years, and it’s compelling.

The hype train around Half-Life 3 is in full swing

The video is definitely worth watching, especially considering the amount of research involved, but the bottom line is this: With Valve officially acknowledging Deadlock, all the information we’ve heard so far about Half-Life 3 is probably correct.

This information includes that gravity will apparently play a key role in the game and that there may be XEN gorillas that have been turned into zombies or altered in some way. Additionally, a dynamic day and night cycle has been discovered in the available code, potentially allowing for weather effects such as rain or fog.

Finally, Gabe Follower suspects that Valve is trying to create some kind of complex world with intelligent NPCs that fits multiple vehicle options with different built-in behaviors.

Of course, these are just guesses, but the research behind them is solid. Hopefully, now that Deadlock is officially confirmed, Valve can eventually do the same for Half-Life 3. We’ve waited so long, but with information like this, the wait becomes even harder.