Half Life fans, here is something special for you today. The modding team behind Half-Life 2: Episode 3 Interlude has released a demo for it. This demo will give you a glimpse at what the modding team aims to create.
As the title implies, Half-Life Interlude will attempt to recreate the events of HL2: Episode 3. The mod is, obviously, based on Marc Laidlaw’s Epistle 3. In Interlude, Gordon Freeman awakens amidst the wreckage of a downed helicopter as the Combine is ruthlessly hunting him down.
Now what’s cool here is that the team is already working on the next part of this project. Part 2 will not only continue the story but also act as an update to Part 1. It will rework some community-reported issues such as the puzzles. It will also improve flashlight mechanics, tweak level design elements, and introduce new features.
And since I mentioned HL3, there are some Half-Life 3 rumors flying around lately. Some claim that Valve may have launched an internal test for a new Half Life game. And then there is a cryptic message that the voice actor of the G-Man tweeted a couple of days ago. So, things may become very interesting in 2025. Still, I suggest tempering your expectations. HL3 fans have been burned too many times. So, take nothing for granted.
Anyway, until Valve announces something, I suggest giving this demo a go. While it may not be as polished as a new HL3 game, it’s still pretty cool. So, make sure to download it from this link.
Speaking of mods that are inspired by Half-Life 2: Episode 3, you can download a demo for Half-Life: Return to Stratigrad. Half-Life: Return to Stratigrad takes place after Half-Life 3 Epistle. You can also download a demo for Project Borealis. For those unaware, Project Borealis is another HL3 fan game.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Urrrggh… for a moment there, I thought it was a leaked version that is based on the cancelled official Episode 3 that was shown by Valve last November.
Same. But it still looks half ways decent. I might give it a shot anyway.
Yes, at least it looks decent, and at the very least it looks better than that piece of crap Project Borealis that they spent over 7 years developing it since 2017 and ended up being a flop, they just released one patch after a week of release and that’s it, they seemingly stopped releasing patches and abandoned it after it flopped. Like dude, I’m getting 30 FPS in JUST THE MAIN MENU! And I have fairly recent GPU+CPU. I then uninstalled it and never tried it again.
I don't know how you consider it as a failure, it's barely a demo intended to test core mechanics and get basic feeback and it's also free and has decent reviews in Steam.
The performance is what you could expect from an UE5 fan project, it's not surprising, and finally i don't know why you're mad because there's no patches for a 10mn tech demo dude…
The points you've raised are absolutely valid, PB is not the worst game I've ever played, in fact, far from being so. It's just "okay" I guess?
I mean, for over 7 years of development (7 years OMG! I even thought it was silently abandoned back then before it re-surfaced), it really underdelivers for what is otherwise a really short experience, it's a mere 10 minutes of gameplay, and for being called a "Prelude", I honestly thought that it had the length of a chapter in a game, like probably 15-20 minutes of gameplay, but in fact it had the length of a demo of a game (a walkthrough video of it on YouTube is even just 8 minutes of gameplay).
Also, the need to own base HL2 to play PB feels pretty weird to me; why the need to own HL2, which is made in the Source Engine, to play PB, which is made in UE5? This is literally the very first time in my life I've seen a mod-derived game in a different engine that requires a base game to run (is this the very first example of a mod made in a different engine that requires a base game that is made in a different engine? No idea). I'm guessing it was to free up some space? It's just 5 GB in size which is very small for a game made in UE5 and despite having different graphics and gameplay mechanics from HL2, so that's a very good plus about it. Thank God I've claimed HL2 when it was given for free when the 20th Anniversary Update was released.
Pro-tip if you or anyone here who want to replay it or have yet to play it: you definitely should set the "effects detail" setting to Low, setting it to even Medium largely hinders the performance out of most of the other Video settings; when I set the "effects detail" to Low, I was getting some ~70-80 FPS, and when set to just Medium, I was getting ~40 FPS. And that's not even the High setting, let alone setting it to Very High.
Thanks for the tip, as for the game itself, i think the devs didn't nail the tag, it's a tech demo and nothing else, people should not expect anything from it.
It's taking long as any other fanmade project, especially HL related ones, they're doing it on their free time, even Black Mesa could've never reach completion if it wasn't for the standalone paid version that gave them ressources and motivation to go further, my advice is to completely forget about it and lower your expectations, you'll be prepared for any outcome.
"my advice is to completely forget about it and lower your expectations, you'll be prepared for any outcome."
Yep, you're exactly right, and that's literally what I just did with Black Mesa (as well as other games, such as Warhammer 2 and specifically the "official HL3/HL2E3 by Valve" since I'm mostly busy nowadays unlike when I was younger); I completely forgot about it, then when it was released after over a decade of development, it was mostly very good, though I hated how they expanded on the Xen levels so much, they're far too stretched out from the original (for several hours even) and just felt like they wanted to cram in as much puzzles as possible without thinking that much about actual combat like how it was before it. Xen is just much better in the original HL1 compared to what it is like in BM, and even Xen in the original HL1 was already hated by fans, so why specifically expand on the worst levels of HL1?
Though you're right, since I forgot about it back then, I don't have much to complain about.
"Thanks for the tip"
You're welcome!
Very short, but the team is very talented, it really felt like what EP3 should've looked like if it was released in the late 2000/early 2010
An extremely misleading title. It probably should be "Fans make a unofficial HL2 Episode 3, since Valve refused to do so"
"Unofficial" , I get it. Long time fans had gotten used to that , unfortunately.
Really makes you wonder about what kind of strings Valve is pulling behind the scenes…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/52db5ded11022ed21aedd3ef6047f532ac9c8f0a1eb232f27a7aef3d62636118.png
It just works.
A 2 hour documentary on the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, the G-Man's voice actor Michael Shapiro dropped a cryptic message a couple days ago on his Twitter account that hasn't been used in years, and some writers and programmers behind HL2 & Half-Life: Alyx have returned to Valve.
If Valve is just doing this to garner attention for an unrelated game on their new Steam Deck, I will be VERY angry.
Get prepared to be very angry then. Valve is not doing anything Half-Life 3 related. That documentary was NoCip made, not Valve, which is just a good PR move to let access media give them free publicity.
Every year this happens. Some random rumor starts and this cycle ends up making people hype things up that were never confirmed.
Just saying, don't expect anything, because it's not gonna happen. (and let me say that I wish I was wrong, I just don't believe I am)
Looks great they put a lot of effort in and it shows.
However.
It's like a HL skin on top of a Portal/Talos gameplay. It's too much problem solving and puzzle-y. Neither HL1 or HL2 felt like this.
There's too much retracing your steps to accomplish moving forward.
Feels like a chore.
Again, it looks great but it's missing the HL feel.
After seeing the gameplay, I totally agree with you.
Except for assets, there's no HL on this thing.
So 7 years and just now releasing a prologue that has some of the worst performance since Stalker 2.
"And since I mentioned HL3, there are some Half-Life 3 rumors flying around lately. Some claim that Valve may have launched an internal test for a new Half Life game. And then there is a cryptic message that the voice actor of the G-Man tweeted a couple of days ago."
I'm quite sure they won't EVER do a sequel for HL.
I mean, it would risk fvcking up one of the most loved franchises of all times.
They did Alyx just to sell their shïtty VR kits that were piling up on their stocks.