Geoff Keighley has released Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hours on Steam. Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hours is an interactive storybook, in which Keighley has detailed all the cancelled games from Valve. These cancelled games include Half-Life 3, as well as an open-world Left 4 Dead 3 game.
Going into more details, Half-Life 3 would be using Source 2 Engine and would draw gameplay inspirations from Left 3 Dead. The game would have procedural generated content, as well as hand-crafted story moments.
On the other hand, Left 4 Dead 3 would be an open-world game. The game would feature hundreds of zombies at a time. However, Valve has cancelled it as the Source 2 Engine wasn’t ready yet at that time. Back in 2014, we shared the first WIP screenshot from Left 4 Dead 3.
Below you can find all of Valve’s cancelled games. As you can see, the team has been experimenting with VR for a while. After all, we knew that the team was working on three triple-A VR games.
Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hours – Cancelled Valve Games
Part #1
- Half-Life 3. Created in the Source 2 engine and drawing some gameplay inspiration from Left 4 Dead, the project known as Half-Life 3 would have used procedural generation between hand-crafted story moments to create a more replayable game. For instance, the game would generate a building and an objective (such as rescuing a prisoner), then create a route through it and fill the building with enemies, meaning that section would always play out differently. The team went as far as scanning Frank Sheldon, the actor whose likeness was used for the series’ G-Man. However the Source 2 engine was unfinished, and the project “didn’t get very far” before it was dropped. It was in development for around a year between 2013 and 2014.
- Left 4 Dead 3. An open world game set in Morocco and potentially featuring hundreds of zombies at a time, this was also deemed unworkable because of the unfinished Source 2.
- RPG. This RPG project was simply codenamed ‘RPG’, drawing inspiration from the likes of The Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls and Monster Hunter, and was envisaged as being released in small chunks, but “never really left the conceptual stage”. After RPG was abandoned, experiments went into turning it into a single-player RPG based on DOTA character Axe, which were also shelved.
- A.R.T.I. A light-hearted, voxel-based game that allowed for open-ended destruction and creation in the vein of Minecraft. One version included Half-Life 2 and Portal writer Erik Wolpaw voicing a character called King Kevin, who had to be broken out of prison using the game’s tools. A.R.T.I. was later resurrected as a VR game, but was shelved as Half-Life: Alyx grew.
Part #2
- SimTrek. A VR game developed by members of the Kerbal Space Prgram team that was also shelved during Alyx’s development.
- Shooter. A Half-Life themed VR shooter that would have been a part of The Lab, Valve’s VR showcase. Using only Half-Life 2 assets, it would have had players take part in short gunfights, and was designed more like a Half-Life theme park ride than an continuation of its story. However, it was deemed not to be ready in time for The Lab’s release.
- Borealis. A Half-Life VR project, led by writer Marc Laidlaw. The game would be set on the time-travelling ship mentioned in Half-Life 2. Skipping between the Half-Life series’ Seven Hour War, and a time period shortly after Half-Life 2: Episode 2, no gameplay details were revealed, aside from that it included a fishing minigame.
- Hot Dog. Another new take on Left 4 Dead, purposely codenamed so that people on the Internet wouldn’t know it was a Left 4 Dead game.
- Vader. Valve’s first internal attempt to create a VR headset. Vader was designed without compromise, but was scrapped when it became clear that it was too ambitious. The team estimates it would have cost $5,000 per unit if released. Half-Life: Alyx was initially conceived to launch alongside Vader.
Valve’s designer Phil Co has also expressed the desire to create a full-scale Half-Life game for more traditional platforms. Phil Co claimed that after the positive reception of Alyx, they are “not afraid of Half-Life no more“. However, it’s still unknown whether Valve will commence work on such a project.
Lastly, Valve is currently working on a “top secret project”. Unfortunately, though, we don’t have any additional details about this game.
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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HL3 and L4D3… a damn shame those aren’t coming out
Better to cancel them than release failures
its not that the games would have been failures but that valve is now failures
I don’t think they would be failures but most likely not as good as previous games. The reason that I think they wouldn’t be as good is because I think most of the original talent have moved on to other Publishers.
But Valve could have developed and released the games a long time ago when they still had that talent.
Even if the games were developed more recently and released they would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue even if they weren’t as good as the past games.
You did hear about the shitstorm on last of us 2? Fans are sometimes the worst. And the half-life fans are even more hardcore than the last of us fans. Yeah no, if they decided to cancel it, it was for a reason and yes he’s right, the game could have been a massive failure.
I haven’t paid any attention to that game because I’m not interested in playing it but it’s a good example of why to not listen to what most people have to say about a game. The game was a success despite so many condemning it. It sold 4 million copies on the weekend of it’s release. Most people were review bombing it before even having time to finish it. Probably quite a few were review bombing it without having played it at all.
An interesting article on Forbes said that the game was getting better reviews when people had finished it. It can’t be the LGBT thing because even if a player did the most basic of research before buying then they would have known it was about 2 lesbians.
If HL3 ever came out there would be thousands of people rating it very poor on Metacritic and Steam no matter how good the game was and the forums and comment section users would be filled with people tearing it down. It means nothing to me what most people say because no matter what they can’t be pleased.
There are a very few that I listen to though and consider what they have to say.
We’ll never know if they would’ve been failures or not.
Parallel universe i guess
I hope that increasing competition may force them to make their own platform exclusives. Half Life 3 that would let loose the flood gates. Steam on launch day: https://media1.giphy.com/media/mxM93n1zUBJU4/giphy.gif
Yes, a real exclusive. No posterior Epic or GOG launch (sorry CD Projekt, luv u), no console port bullshit.
They haven’t released a console game since Counter Strike Global Offensive 8 years ago.
But back then not only were console audiences much bigger than they are now but they also needed the money which hasn’t been the case for some time.
HL3 would generate incredible revenue even if it weren’t as good as HL1 and HL2. It’s been 16 years since HL2 was released and 13 years since HL2 Ep2 was released and people are still talking about wanting more.
Imagine owning those two IPs and just sitting on them for a decade.
Konami has something to say about that.
The least that Valve could do is to give another Developer the rights to develop HL3, Portal 3 and Left 4 Dead 3. Newell is just sitting on the rights for no reason.
Sad days when every Valve game announcement is disappointing
Steam and their online games is making bucks so no need waste money on creating sequel.
They don’t need more money. Having Steam is more than enough.
Just release the Source 2 SDK and start licensing it goddammit it
Valve doesnt count to 3.
We like to make jokes about Newel’s aversion to the number 3 but he could have named them differently to avoid using that number. The biggest reason that Newell dumped the games is that Steam was a huge success.
It was such a slap in the face that Valve wouldn’t bother finishing Gordon Freeman’s story. They left the series on a cliffhanger in Ep2. You don’t leave a story on a cliffhanger which is done to ensure interest in the next installment and then dump the project. That was stupid and unforgivable imo.
There are 3 games that Valve should of continued with:
Half Life 3 or at least HL 2 Ep3
Portal 3
Left 4 Dead 3
So why didn’t we get those games? Because of Steam’s success.
Edit: I was just reading on another site that the majority of the team that worked on Half Life: Alyx wants to develop a Half Life game that is non-VR. I’ve heard it reported over and over that Newell let’s his employees work on whatever game they want too so I don’t see why a non-VR Half Life can’t be a possibility. Why is Newell holding it back?
List is missing a few games