Despite some reports floating around the internet, Half-Life 3 is still likely to not be in active development. However, Valve is rumoured to have other Half-Life projects in various stages of development – including an RTS/FPS co-op title designed “to best
showcase what the Steam Deck is capable of”.
These details come via Valve News Network creator Tyler McVicker, who posted a new video on his YouTube channel detailing the various projects Valve has rumoured to be in development – with the most interesting being the project codenamed Citadel, an FPS/RTS co-op game described as “a nostalgia fest” and like “Left 4 Dead, Alien Swarm, an RTS and Half-Life all having a baby”.
Citadel is also supposedly “being created with the Steam Deck in mind” due to how it’s meant to be controlled. We got in touch with Tyler McVicker, who confirmed to us that he received his information through datamines of regularly-updated Valve software – Steam, DOTA2, etc – and he has been researching Citadel in particular “since early 2018”.
Unlike many other projects, Citadel seems to be “still very much in development” despite most of Valve moving to ship the much-delayed Steam Deck – and McVicker estimates we will see “within the next year-and-a-half to two years”. The same can’t be said of Half-Life 3, which still has a few Valve developers working on it but doesn’t seem to be in active development. “Any kind of traditional mouse and keyboard FPS at Valve is not taking place,” states McVicker.
McVicker also touches on “HLX”, which seems to be the VR-based follow-up to Half-Life: Alyx. This has appeared in datamines throughout 2021 but is apparently just in “the mechanical testing phases”, although he also says that there is “growing internal disappointment with the VR platform on the PC” at Valve and “fewer and fewer people continue to work on that hardware base” there.
All of which is a shame, because Half-Life: Alyx was fantastic and definitely opened up possibilities for a sequel or Half-Life 3. Nevertheless, as McVicker himself reminded us, everything here is just rumour and “needs to be taken with a healthy grain of salt… I am not Valve, and Valve can decide what is fact or fiction about their own projects.”
{“schema”:{“page”:{“content”:{“headline”:”Half-Life 3 reportedly “not taking place” but a Steam Deck FPS/RTS may be coming”,”type”:”news”,”category”:”half-life-3″},”user”:{“loginstatus”:false},”game”:{“publisher”:”Valve”,”genre”:””,”title”:”Half-Life 3″,”genres”:[]}}}}