Gabe Newell talks about his vision for the future of Half-Life 3

The rarest photo from DICE in 2013, Gabe and the number three in one frame.

Waiting for the game Half-Life 3 has become something of a kindred religion, and even those who have never played in HL have heard about this project. For more than ten years, players have been waiting for the continuation of the cult series from Valve, which gave rise to many ironic jokes about the CEO, Gabe Newell: Gabe does not know how to count to three, but immediately counts to four, Valve does not go to E3, because there is a troika in the name, Gabe went straight to fourth grade after second and so on. Gamers have already gone through all stages, from anger to humility, and the hope of seeing the adventures of the great theoretical physicist Gordon Freemanmelts every year. The CEO and founder of the Half-Life Valve series development company has been avoiding questions about the game for years. During interviews and meetings with Newell, players and journalists were often warned: “No questions about Half-Life 3!”. But still, it happened.

“When we think about the challenges and challenges that await us in the future, we tend to choose the projects and franchises that are best suited for their implementation. And if we do not have a suitable project, then we will create another one. You know, I'm a fan of TV shows, a fan of a number of writers, a lover of cinema and, of course, computer games. And each time I got an amazing experience and sometimes I start to worry at the thought that I will never feel something like that again. I am a fan of Terry Pratchett, but after his death I will not be able to read a single of his new novel about the Flat World. We understand all this and believe that thanks to this understanding we can make our users happier, and entertainment for them is better.

We are going to build on our own experience, and we have learned enough over the years. We are not going to hit retro, because there are so many things in the world that are worthy of being studied by us. The only reason for creating a “classic” retro product can only be the desire of a sufficiently large number of people in our company to do this. But understand, if we want to do the next part of Half-Life, while ignoring everything that we learned while working on Portal 2 and other multi-user projects, we will make a mistake. So we want to say that we will continue to move forward, but this should not cause concern for our players. ” - said Gabe Newell.

Making a squeeze from Gabe’s interview, we can conclude that Half-life 3 will not see the light, and if the game is created, it will be unlikely to be similar to the previous parts of the franchise.

The position of Valve in the person of Gabe is understandable. As a developer of such session multiplayer hits as Counter-Strike (1.6-GO), Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, the company follows the modern trend, and the F2P model of the last two and the sale of caps and chests(including in CS: GO) brings a decent profit. It is also worthwhile to understand that if Valve still releases Half-Life 3, but it does not live up to the expectations of the players (having grown ten years to the size of a small galaxy), the company will suffer serious reputation damage. So for now, Gabe and his team maintain the status quo: players are waiting and hoping for the masterpiece of the adventures of silent Gordon Freeman, and Valve is not developing it.