Finally, a new game for the Half-Life franchise has been confirmed. However, it is not Half-Life 3 we are talking about.
Valve has been working on VR games for quite a while, and with Half-Life 3 being in eternal production limbo, it just makes sense that they would release a spinoff game for the franchise. The reveal tweet came from a rather new account and not the official Steam twitter – however, quite a few Valve employees have been retweeting it to verify. Gabe Newell, the CEO of Valve, said in an interview in 2017 that they were working on not one but three big VR projects. The guy was always a dreamer – and looks like this is one of those three games.
With Valve’s current track record of creating little to no original games, the other two VR games might just be some spinoffs of their other titles, just like Half-Life: Alyx. It is likely that the story of Alyx would be set before or during the events of Half-Life 2 so that the game would not contradict canonical events. Due to its nature of being a VR game, you can expect a lot of physics-related puzzles that can only be solved by walking around and tinkering with the environment.
Based on a transcript of an interview, they were going to reveal Half-Life: Alyx at The Game Awards on December 12. It is still unsure if the game would be available to players without a VR headset, as it originally started as a VP project.
We will report more about this game as soon as new information is available. In the meantime, you might want to check out this article about Valve and its upcoming streaming platform.