Known for making some of the most successful games in the business such as Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Day of Defeat, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal and Team Fortress. Valve in recent years has become something of a gaming joke, “Valve can’t count to 3” comes from the lack of titles to have a third installment in their respective series. The thing that makes the joke bizarre is that the world actually wants, if not demands these games to be released. Half-Life 3, Left 4 Dead 3, Portal 3 and so on. They would make Valve a lot of money and be easy contenders towards Game of the Year.
The fact that they haven’t made these sequels isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Valve have made all these great quality games that have been successful. The lack of the continuous franchises keeps things new and fresh although there are negatives by doing so. With no real end to each respective series there will eventually be a lack of interest in the products. Let’s take a look at the situation with each game.
Left 4 Dead 3
The original Left 4 Dead was released in 2008 and developed by Turtle Rock Studios, the team behind this years Evolve. Earlier in the year, Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Le said in an interview about Left 4 Dead 3 that the game was in development and coming along well. Mr. Le, who no longer works at Valve also said “It wouldn’t be any news if I said yes, I saw it. It looks great.”
“So I was really excited when I saw that. I was like ‘Wow, this looks great.’ I really enjoyed Left 4 Dead,” -Minh Le referencing Left 4 dead 3
Nothing “official” has been announced and knowing Valve they’ll wait until the game is complete, rendered and ready with a trailer before making any solid comments.
Valve uses Source engine to make a number of their games, Left 4 Dead and Left for Dead 2 were examples of what the engine could do. Earlier this year screenshots were leaked onto the internet by Neogaf user CBOAT. The user posted on a thread revelations of a confidential power point presentation shown by Valve, the images were supposedly screen shots of an updated Left 4 Dead 2 prototype running on Valves new engine, Source Engine 2. It is very possible that the screenshots are genuine as user CBOAT is well known for leaking confidential information. The presentation features 20 slide with the screen shot only showing 7, those visible slides are the Plantation level form L4D 2, shown in new high detail that is amazing to look at.
If indeed Source Engine 2 is up and running, Valve will need a project to push the capabilities of the engine and next-gen. Why not Left 4 Dead 3?
Portal 3
A trademark was filed on 2nd of October 2013 for Portal 3 adding to the hype for an announcement of the game, later in December that trademark was mysteriously gone, many people looked at it as just another hoax. There is high speculation throughout the internet that the game is currently in production and we should start blasting portals in 2016, that’s roughly when Source Engine 2 will be available in full.
Of course all this is just guesses and talk, we have lost our only solid source of evidence with the disappearance of the trademark. The Portal 3 stories are as old as they are interesting, during 2010’s E3 Valve boss Gabe Newell was asked by PlayStation Magazine if Portal 2 would support 3D he replied
“have to wait for Portal 3″
It’s obvious they know their fan base wants a Portal 3 and they love teasing us. Valve are known to make some of the highest quality games in the industry, many modern developers would sell all their assets to be on Valves level so it is important to give it time. But how long are people willing to wait in the dark.
Seven years since episode 2 and a full decade since the second installment itself, there has been nothing from Valve about Half Life 3, it’s the Bigfoot of games and people want to find something, anything at all and say this is it, Half Life 3 confirmed.
Announcing that they would continue the Half Life 2 story in little DLC like episodes, the third episode was set to launch around Christmas but Christmas came and went with no sign of Episode 3 while any and all talks of it were washed away, apparently even going as far as removing the trailer for episode 3 from the end of episode 2. In 2007 a single piece of concept art was dug up by GamesRadar and nothing more was added to it. Down the track some dedicated fans were looking through the code for Source Engine and were excited to find a discarded folder called Episode:3 containing character and weapon models. The excitement caught the attention of former Valve employee Tony Sergi, who would cut the excitement short by stating that the folders content was nothing more than simple leftovers from alpha tests. For a few years Valve have been stone quiet about the prospect of a Half Life 3 until this year. Mr. Minh Le has stated that he’s seen Half Life 3 in development, yet no proof is out there (just yet) to support his tease.
“So if I were to say I’ve seen some images, like some concept art of it, that wouldn’t be big news. But I guess I could say that I did see something that looked like kind of like in the Half-Life universe. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if I said ‘Yeah, they’re working on it.’
That’s about as solid as I believe we will get until Valve walks out onto a conference and finally announce something. Valve games get so much hype because anybody that has experienced any of their games knows that they are beyond fantastic, they have long lasting appeal and new people are discovering Portal, Left 3 Dead and Half Life each year. This just goes to prove that yearly sequels may be good for the cash flow but if you truly want a longer lasting fan base that will wait literally a decade for the next installment of your series, then it doesn’t hurt to take your time to sit back and make your game the best that it can possibly be.
With that said Valve if you’re reading this pretty please announce something soon, let the wait be over.
