Half-Life 3 Creator Explains the Wait

By Matt Mann / April 24, 2012

Valve to this point has not even confirmed that they are working on Half-Life 3 but that didn€™t stop Gabe Newell from talking about the game in code. While being interviewed on a podcast called Seven Day Cooldown, Newell talked about some of the development issues that the game has gone through. Newell was asked about the status of a game everybody has been waiting for:

"When can we expect the release of Ricochet 2?"

Ricochet 2 would be code name for Half-Life 3 considering Ricochet 2 is most likely not in development and not a game that fans have been clamoring for. Here is what Newell had to say about €œRicochet 2€ or Half-Life 3:

"In terms of Ricochet 2, we always have this problem that when we talk about things too far in advance, We end up changing our minds as we're going through and developing stuff, so as we're thinking through the giant story arc which is Ricochet 2, you might get to a point where you're saying something is surprising us in a positive way and something is surprising us in a negative way, and, you know, we'd like to be super transparent about the future of Ricochet 2."

Newell then added it is probably in the best interest of everyone that Half-Life 3 remain a secret because he doesn€™t want to make promises with the game he can€™t keep:

"The problem is, we think that the twists and turns that we're going through would probably drive people more crazy than just being silent about it, until we can be very crisp about what's happening next,"

So after all this we still no basically nothing about the game and at this point if Valve doesn€™t say anything by the end of this year we might as well crown this game as the next coming of Duke Nukem Forever. In fact because it has been so long since the last Half-Life game (5 years), and there have been so many changes in that time to shooting games I wonder if this game will end up like Duke Nukem Forever. A game that it€™s developer kept changing to meet the current standards of gaming but eventually just died because the creator could never fully commit to finishing the game. I am hoping this is not happening to Half-Life 3 but there is a great article here describing what killed Duke Nukem Forever. However, after reading the interview with Newell it sounds like the same issues that plagued Duke Nukem Forever are starting to hit Valve and Half-Life 3; the constant changing of the game to try and live up to expectations that at this point can almost certainly not be met.