Stop us if you've heard this one before, but a new Half-Life game is rumored to be in development.
The speculation begins at actor Natasha Chandel's website, which mentions having done voiceover work for a 'Project White Sands' under Valve - yes, that Valve. White Sands is a real-life NASA facility in the state of New Mexico, which just happens to be the state where the original Half-Life took place within the (entirely fictional) Black Mesa facility.
Half-Life and Valve expert and dataminer Tyler McVicker weighed in on the situation just a few hours later. McVicker claims that Valve has an entirely new, non-virtual reality, Half-Life game in development, under the codename 'HLX.' This game is entirely separate from the in-development Deadlock, the new Valve-made hero shooter that leaked online earlier this year.
McVicker posits that Project White Sands and HLX are one and the same, and that the project has been in development since Half-Life: Alyx launched over four years ago. The dataminer also claims to have found code in DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike 2 revealing that the player character in Project White Sands wears a HEV suit, and also goes "off-world."
There's also been reference made to driveable vehicles in Project White Sands thanks to said code, as well as "xengorilla," which directly references a feature cut from Half-Life: Alyx. McVicker claims that, from the in-game code, we know that cut Alyx features like "xengorilla" have received updates and are still being worked on in some capacity since Alyx launched.
Back in 2021, McVicker himself claimed that Half-Life 3 had actually been scrapped in favor of a Steam Deck-dedicated game, one that would blend RTS and FPS gameplay, so there's some slightly conflicting information out there right now.
Take a look at our upcoming PC games guide for a look over all the forthcoming games that definitely are coming out.
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