If there’s something the gaming community wants to see, it’s Half Life 3. And with recent leaks showing off the capabilities of the new Source 2 engine, a Half Life 3 game or a Left 4 Dead sequel isn’t too hard to imagine. A confidential Power Point presentation containing a few screenshots of Valve’s newest Source engine show a reworked Left 4 Dead 2 Plantation level, in great detail. The screenshots were leaked on valvetime.net, and show a potential next-gen version for Valve’s popular zombie survival game.
L4D2’s Plantation level with the new Source 2 engine
Light effects have been considerably beefed up, and the screenshots show an amazing level of detail and vegetation. Based on the Power Point presentation, the Source 2 engine will include “simple, automatic compiling of content”, a built-in browser for “quickly finding, managing, editing assets” and a new and powerful front-end GUI. Source 2 will be easy to modify through custom and pre-game assets too.
Last year, a couple of Dota 2 fans visiting the Valve offices revealed that there are mentions of a Left 4 Dead 3 game and a Source 2 engine. Valve’s Gabe Newell himself mentioned that a Source 2 engine was in development back in 2012, and stated that the company would roll out the new engine when it had a promising enough game for it. Could this game finally be Half Life 3? At least with Source 2, there’s a remote chance Valve might be working on it at least. The first Source engine debuted with Half Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source, after all. How far-fetched would a Half Life 3 speculation based, then?
Seeing a visual update for Left 4 Dead 2 would be good enough already. A Left 4 Dead 3 announcement following this reveal would be even better. But the news we’re all hoping for is the announcement of Half Life 3. The engine for it definitely looks capable, so how about it Valve?