Every spring as the E3 video game exhibition rears up on the horizon like a vast dying sun, the rumour mill cranks into motion. Could this be the year? Could developer Valve Corp make the announcement we’ve all hoped for? Might we at last see Half-Life 3? Or Portal 3? But no. Every year those fragile hopes are dashed against the rocks of the Seattle company’s seeming indifference.

Of course, there have been signs of movement over the years. In 2012, concept art showing Half-Life 2 character Alyx Vance emerged, apparently leaked from within the studio and showing the beloved fighter dressed for a frozen environment. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 ended on a cliffhanger after all. Gordon Freeman and Vance were just about to destroy the Borealis research vessel when Combine Advisors turned up and killed her father, leaving her hugging his corpse. It was like the Star Wars saga ending with Empire Strikes Back. It clearly wasn’t the intended conclusion. So people have always talked, and waited and theorised. Then earlier this year, Valve chief Gabe Newell told fans on a Reddit QA session that the company was still working on single-player titles and may even be returning to the Half-Life or Portal universes.

But then … nothing.

Valve is, after all, rather busy. It has its digital games platform, Steam, which earns many millions of dollars a year and requires a vast software and manpower infrastructure to run. It also has three multiplayer titles to care for – Dota 2, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2; and its virtual reality interests, which culminated in support for the HTC Vive headset. It also spent a lot of time, talent and resources developing the Steam Machine, a console-like PC with a weird controller, which now exists primarily to confirm the fact that there is only a very narrow market for console-like PCs with weird controllers.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Will there ever be another life for Half-Life? Photograph: Valve

There’s also the small matter of talent. Four of the company’s main writers – the genius narrative designers behind the Half-Life and Portal moments we remember – have left the building. Marc Laidlaw, writer of Half-Life, went in January 2016. Erik Wolpaw, who wrote on both Half-Life and Portal followed in February, joined two months later by Chet Faliszek, who also helped build the narratives behind these wonderfully realised worlds. And barely a week ago, Jay Pinkerton, who worked with Wolpaw on Portal 2 was confirmed to have departed the company. Half-Life artist and designer Harry Teasley and Portal designer Kim Swift went ages ago.

The combination of sci-fi smarts, knowing humour and intellectual playfulness that characterised those games has surely more-or-less left with all these crucial architects. True, we have seen excellent rebirths of classic titles. Both Wolfenstein and Doom were successfully rebooted in completely new hands; Prey and NieR Automata do well with seemingly abandoned franchises. But Portal and Half-Life are such finally tuned, intrinsic, artistic endeavours – they are so cohesive in terms of aesthetics, writing, atmosphere and narrative, it is hard to see how they could ever be exhumed in the same perfect form.

Yet still, Valve’s obsessive secrecy, pinpricked with occasional sadistic hints and jokes, has kept a vast number of players waiting and hoping. It is a sub-dom relationship of almost superhuman cruelty.

Best case scenario? A virtual reality game that is either based around Portal or Half-Life, or unites the franchises into one experience. Valve has invested heavily in VR and clearly values the technology as an entertainment phenomenon – the Portal demo for Vive is one of the absolute great products of the modern VR era. But a VR Half-Life or a VR Portal will be very unlike the games we played and loved. It will be a confection, a technical showcase. It will be the Aliens vs Predator of Valve IP. But an actual full Half-Life 3? A real Portal 3? It is hard to imagine. But then, I suppose, so was Shenmue 3. And merely by writing this, am I tempting fate into mocking me with a Valve E3 announcement? If so, you can all thank me later.

No, stop it. It’s time to move on. Even if Valve shocks the world by announcing a sequel to one of its historic narrative adventures in Los Angeles next week, it will almost certainly be a shadow of its legacy. Remember Godfather Part III? Remember Basic Instinct 2? Remember Son of Mask? Sometimes it’s just better not to go back.