The development of Half-Life 3 may be close to completion, as the unannounced game suspected to be the third main entry in the series has entered the optimization phase.
The latest news of the game known by its HLX codename, which was discovered in recent updates for other Valve games like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2, have been shared in a new video by Gabe Follower, who detailed plenty of other recent discoveries, such as groups named hlx, hlxaudio and hlxartists having been found in Valve's internal systems, the introduction to the code of console commands related to optimization and NPC behavior adjustments, dynamic navigation mesh, deformable props, improved dynamic hair systems and more. All of this suggests not only how this HLX game is nearing completion but also how it is going to be a complex game, which is making people believe it could indeed be the long-anticipated conclusion to Gordon Freeman's story.
As Valve stated multiple times in the past it is not working on Half-Life 3, this HLX game may not be Half-Life 3, so we shouldn't get our hopes up too much. For all we know, it could be another spin-off in the vein of Half-Life Alyx, which was released back in 2020 and took some time to become playable even without a VR headset with the release of mods.
Despite the silence from Valve regarding Half-Life 3, fans of the series still got something new to try out this week with the release of the Half-Life 2 RTX demo. You can learn more about how ray tracing changes the classic game by checking out Alessio's piece.
