When Epistle 3 was released many Half-Life fans considered this to be proof that Valve wasn’t going to be releasing a Half-Life sequel any time soon, and it wasn’t long before several groups had decided to take it upon themselves to use Marc Laidlaw’s story as a starting point for a fan-game. The subreddit /r/dreamsofhalflife3 was created as an initial starting point for those interested in the project and from there an initial team began to form. To be honest, it was a bit of a chaotic start to a project, but as we kept attracting increasingly skilled talent, a lot of that industry-standard structure started to fall into place. Since then the team has been gradually evolving and improving the project to the point where meaningful development progress could be made.

Working with such a meaningful piece of gaming history and making sure we treat it with the respect fans feel it deserves is definitely a challenge, but at the same time, it’s highly rewarding for everyone involved. We’re fortunate that Valve has established such a rich world with engrossing lore that inspires our new ideas. They’ve created rules for the world which we aim to follow when creating something new, whether it’s a creature, character, or environment piece. In concept art, we try everything. We have lengthy discussions with other art departments and creative directors, as well as in-depth discussions with the writing team. While a lot the visual problem solving is up to concept art, we take input from the whole team given how well-versed and knowledgeable everyone is on the subject matter. We’re never short of Half-Life enthusiasts!

Sometimes concepts can last for a long time until we realize that a specific thing just doesn’t fit within the story, gameplay, or rules that we and Valve have established. One of the challenges comes from finding the balance between giving everything a much-needed facelift for current generation hardware while staying true to the unique and iconic designs we know and love. This is where we rely on our writing team to see how much change is actually warranted and logical from a narrative perspective.