Half Life 3 Release Date

We are all waiting for it, the Half Life 3 and Half Life 2 Episode 3 release dates are some of the most anticipated release dates in all of PC gaming.

But when is it, where is it, who do I have to kill in order to obtain it?

Last year when Valve was asked why they went with the Half-Life 2 episodic system, Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell stated that Half-Life 2: Episode One released on June 1st 2006, Half-Life 2: Episode Two came out in October 2007, and Half-Life 2: Episode Three was originally scheduled for 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012, were designed to all be put together serve as the third game in the series. Rather than make gamers wait another six-plus years for Half-Life 3, the developer thought people might appreciate playing the game in smaller chunks (Episodic Content) if they didn’t have to wait as long. So you’ve been playing Half-Life 3 this whole time.

Gabe Newell stated,

“The original Half-Life took us two years to develop. With a considerably larger team Half-Life 2 took us six years to develop, so we thought if we were going to continue our trend with Half-Life 3 we would basically ship after we had all retired. We’re trying to come up with a better way of getting more timely updates to our customers and also come up with something that didn’t have the complexities. Projects increased logarithmically with how much we tried to do, so if you tried to put twice as much content or technology into a box it ends up taking you four times the amount of work, right, and so we’re trying to figure out a better solution.”

We left Half-Life 2 on a cliffhanger …[spoiler break]… with the Citadel blowing up, Alyx is a couple of feet away from the explosion, so what’s going to happen? People were pretty clear that they didn’t want to have to wait as long as they had previously to find out what happened.

Half Life 2: Episode One, so to speak, ended with Alyx and Gordon opting to take a different train from the refugees they save. They manage to escape just as the reactor begins to detonate; the energy sends out the Combine’s message. Several pods containing Combine Advisors are ejected from the Citadel as it detonates. The resulting shockwave catches the train, derailing it. The last thing the player hears is the twisting of metal and Alyx whispering Gordon’s name.

Half Life 2: Episode Two ended after the rocket is successfully launched and the portal closed, Eli again warns Gordon about the “cargo” on the Borealis, which he wants destroyed (while Kleiner insisted earlier that it can be used for better) , and the three of them head into a hangar where Alyx has restored an old helicopter. However, they are ambushed by a pair of Advisors, who restrain them. Alyx and Gordon are then forced to watch helplessly as Eli is grabbed by one of the Advisors and brutally killed. As Alyx and Gordon are taken by the second Advisor to meet the same fate, Dog hears Alyx’s cries, bursts in through the roof and attacks it, causing both Advisors to flee. The game ends with Alyx mourning over her father’s body.

Gabe Newell went on to state,

“Probably a better name for [the three Half-Life 2 Episodes arc] would have been Half Life 3: Episode One, but these three are what we’re doing as our way of taking the next step forward, but Half-Life 2 was the name we used.”

A big focus [in Episode One] was Alyx, both from a storytelling perspective and from a gameplay perspective. She was awesome as a character, and most fans feel the same way, so Valve wanted you to spend a long time with her, and see how far they could push this notion of single player co-op. Being in this world with someone who’s operating pretty intelligently and acting more as an ally, rather than this dumb collection of polygons that sort of troops around and gets in your way.

The arc of the trio of episodes is also about the G-Man. He appears briefly in Episode One, and we’ll get more info on him later. If you think of Half-Life 1 as the G-Man trying to turn you into something that was useful to him – the transformation of the player into hero. And then Half-Life 2 was about how he was using you.

Half-Life 3 [a.k.a. Episodes One to Three] is about the relationship with the G-Man and what happens when he loses control of you, when you’re not available to him as a tool and how he responds to that, and what are the consequences of that. Alyx and the relationship with her is a big focus in Episode One and the larger story about your evolving relationship with the G-Man. That’s the text of the trio of episodes.

Despite these revealing comments, fans are still dying to see the Half-Life series continue after the 3 new episodes, that much is evident from fake Half-Life 3 photos like these:

Update June 2010: An anonymous source says Valve’s “surprise” at E3 2010 will be the unveiling of Source Engine 2. Supposedly Valve will be showing Half-Life 3 running on the new engine. That is how they’ve done it with past versions of their Source engine: Half-Life 1 was shown running on GoldSource, and Half-Life 2 and Counter Strike were shown running on Source back in June 2004. This may have been behind closed doors. (Did Not Happen)

Update May 2011: Valve has stated that they will not be demoing any games at E3 this year, meaning that an announcement for Half Life 3 or Half Life Episode 3 is not in the cards for 2012.