Gabe Newell ponders the future in new Half-Life 2 documentary: 'I think that Half-Life represents a tool we have and promises made to customers'

Gabe Newell in Half-Life 25th Anniversary documentary video
(Image credit: Valve)

To celebrate Half-Life 2's 20th anniversary, Valve dropped a few surprises in our lap on Friday afternoon, like putting together the original dev team to record in-game commentary for the legendary FPS, which is free for the weekend on Steam. Awesome! Valve also posted a two-hour documentary on the making of Half-Life 2 on YouTube. Also awesome—unless you had something else to watch tonight like a ridiculous boxing match.

Personally, I'm less interested in the development of a 20-year-old game I know like the back of my hand as I am in some hints about what might come next for Half-Life. So, I did the thing you do when you just can't wait to find out who done it in a whodunnit: I skipped to the end.

Is there confirmation of Half-Life 3 in the Half-Life 2 documentary? Or confirmation of Half-Life: Alyx 2? Or confirmation of anything specific at all? No. But in the closing minutes of the documentary, there are some hints that the Half-Life saga isn't over.

"It was easy to think about VR being a vehicle for Half-Life because that was a big technological innovation and kind of a core reason for that product's existence," said Valve engineer Brian Jacobson. "And I think one of the things we have internally tended to attach to the Half-Life IP is innovation. Gameplay innovation is often enabled by technological innovation. Clearly there was a ton in Half-Life 1 and 2.

"It's an interesting challenge moving forward to think about what that means for future Half-Life stuff, for sure," Jacobson added.

Future Half-Life stuff confirmed? I mean, sorta, though Jacobson is implying that more Half-Life won't happen until more technological innovation is done.

Over to you, Gabe Newell:

"The ending of Half-Life: Alyx is somewhat a self-critical realization," said Gabe. "I think that Half-Life represents a tool we have and promises made to customers to capitalize on innovation and opportunities to build game experiences that haven't been involved previously. And I think there are no shortage of those opportunities facing us as an industry right now."

Look, I know GabeN is a beloved industry figure but at times he talks like a business cyborg. What does that word salad mean? At the end of Half-Life: Alyx we briefly get to inhabit the boots of Gordon Freeman again for a few seconds, and a portion of the history of Half-Life is changed due to a bit of spacetime G-Man magic. I'm not sure how that adds up to a self-critical realization, honestly.

But it does seem like Gabe is saying something along the same lines as Jacobson did: Half-Life and technological innovations go hand in hand, and you won't get one without the other.

What those innovations might be, I'm not sure: more advanced VR? More powerful GPUs? A Steam Deck you control with a neural implant? Whatever breakthrough needs to happen, I hope it happens soon. Otherwise, see you at the Half-Life 2 25th anniversary party for some more speculation.

TOPICS
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

Read more
Half-Life: Alyx
Valve's Steam page currently lists a second mystery game alongside Deadlock, sending Half-Life 3 theorists into another frenzy of speculation
The G-Man looking at the camera.
G-Man's voice actor rings in the new year by dropping a cryptic tweet grenade promising 'unexpected surprises' into the starving Half-Life 3 fanbase
Steam Deck with menu screen
The Steam Deck 2 doesn't need to happen because Valve will win either way (though I hope it does)
The G-Man looking at the camera.
8 bold gaming predictions for 2025
Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer still - woman in the front seat of a car, looking out the back window while holding a wad of cash
GTA 6 was never going to be at The Game Awards, but it is a little surprising that we haven't seen another trailer yet
James Sunderland looks at own face in mirror
After 2024, it feels like the games industry is poised for a vibe shift—or maybe a reckoning
Latest in Games
A young witch watering a smiling mushroom in a magic garden
Here's a roguelite dungeon crawler Steam reviewers call 'a botanical Diablo' and 'like Cult of the Lamb' except you manage a mystical garden
Destiny 2 Rite of the Nine: The Emissary, massive, ominously standing at the edge of a water basin.
Oops! Bungie rolled out Destiny 2's Rite of the Nine event three weeks early, and new loot is already dropping
Chatacabra from Monster Hunter Wilds
The latest Monster Hunter Wilds event quest gives piles of Armor Spheres for hunting a Chatacabra, making this a very bad week to be a frog in the Forbidden Lands
No Rest for the Wicked Steam early access screenshots
No Rest for the Wicked developer Moon Studios is now 'fully independent' after acquiring the rights to the game from Take-Two
A hunter posing with an absurd Blangonga outfit in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Attention, fashion hunters: There's a Monster Hunter Wilds mod to disable all those obnoxious glowing buff effects that distract from your fits
Gallywix wears an uneasy smile as he's confronted by Xal'atath in WoW: The War Within.
World of Warcraft guild uses exploits to get world 'first' on the game's new raid, gets banned, puts its name backwards and does it again
Latest in News
A masked man with an axe in the woods
Rebellion CEO seems kind of awed by major studios making massive videogames: 'How do you organize a game that has 2,000 people working on it?'
A young witch watering a smiling mushroom in a magic garden
Here's a roguelite dungeon crawler Steam reviewers call 'a botanical Diablo' and 'like Cult of the Lamb' except you manage a mystical garden
Destiny 2 Rite of the Nine: The Emissary, massive, ominously standing at the edge of a water basin.
Oops! Bungie rolled out Destiny 2's Rite of the Nine event three weeks early, and new loot is already dropping
Chatacabra from Monster Hunter Wilds
The latest Monster Hunter Wilds event quest gives piles of Armor Spheres for hunting a Chatacabra, making this a very bad week to be a frog in the Forbidden Lands
No Rest for the Wicked Steam early access screenshots
No Rest for the Wicked developer Moon Studios is now 'fully independent' after acquiring the rights to the game from Take-Two
A hunter posing with an absurd Blangonga outfit in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Attention, fashion hunters: There's a Monster Hunter Wilds mod to disable all those obnoxious glowing buff effects that distract from your fits