Half-Life 3 update: Valve still hasn’t started making it

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Half-Life 2 artwork — Half-Life 2 – the wait goes on for a sequel (pic: Valve)

Even if you’re not interested in Steam Deck – Valve’s take on a Switch style portable console – it did seem as if it would have the welcome benefit of encouraging Valve to start making traditional single-player games again.

Shortly after the release of VR game Half-Life: Alyx, Valve stated that, ‘We’re not afraid of Half-Life no more’. They never said what their next project would be but strongly implied that there’d be multiple new Half-Life games in the future.

Since then there’s been no updates and while that is no doubt partially due to the pandemic, Valve insider Tylver McVicker claims that there is no sequel to Alyx or Half-Life: Episode Two currently in development.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two was the last non-VR entry in the franchise but that was 14 years ago. Half-Life: Alyx retcons an important element of its plot, that seems to leave a clear way open for Half-Life 3, but apparently not even that has spurred Valve into action.

The problem is apparently Steam Deck itself, which was recently delayed because of supply chain issues and, with pre-orders more than expected, Valve has moved more and more developers to work on it and its updated software.

McVicker claims that there is no ‘traditional mouse and keyboard FPS’ in development at Valve at the moment, expect perhaps a ‘very small group of people’ testing out ideas – something which has been the case for most of the last 14 years and, you will have noticed, has never resulted in anything ever being released.

According to McVicker, Valve is instead working on a new game codenamed Citadel, which is designed very much with Steam Deck in mind – even though it’ll also work on ordinary PCs.

Citadel is apparently set in the Half-Life universe but is a first person shooter and real-time strategy hybrid, with an emphasis on co-op play.

It’s not the first time Valve has toyed with the idea of real-time strategy elements in a Half-Life game, although that never came to anything and Citadel is described as ‘Left 4 Dead and Alien Swarm and RTS and Half-Life all having a baby’.

If it is Half-Life related than that’s still got to be a good thing, but it means the endless wait for Half-Life 3 will have to go on a little bit longer.