Half-Life 3 is not in the works, according to some dissenting statements posted by John Patrick Lowrie, an actor who has worked on several Valve games. Lowrie claimed in the comments of his own blog (via Kotaku and NeoGAF) that Valve's system of immersive design is at odds with what the industry is now doing, and for that reason, the project is still shelved.

In the comments, Lowrie writes that the most common process for animating characters in modern FPS games is to motion-capture an actor and translate those movements to a 3D rendering. Half-Life 2 used a mechanic where NPCs would turn and watch the player move while they spoke, using their eyes and bodies to follow the player around the room.

The motion-capture paradigm is naturally at odds with the turn-and-follow one, Lowrie says, because the latter can't provide for the former. “Once you film the actor doing something and capture that motion, that’s what the character is going to do,” Lowrie wrote.

Since the turn-and-follow mechanic never had any hope of being as immersive as the use of motion capture, we’re unsure why Valve would hold so fast to the trope of HL2 rather than moving forward with motion capture. Lowrie disclaimed his statements, saying that this was “just a conversation [he] had” with employees.

Lowrie also cites the full schedule Valve has created for itself between running Steam and working on other upcoming titles as reasons Half Life 3 remains on the shelf.

Shortly after posting the comments, Lowrie removed them, saying they "just seemed to cause a whole bunch of confusion and when I tried to minimize the confusion I misspoke and caused a whole bunch more confusion... Sorry that I gave the impression that I know what’s going on. I really wasn’t trying to and I really don’t know."