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Unreleased games[edit source]

Episode Three[edit source]

"Half-Life 3" redirects here. For the album Half-Life by band "3", see Half Life (3 album).

Episode Three was initially announced with a release date of Christmas 2007. Concept art surfaced in 2008. Valve worked with sign language and was working on a deaf character. Valve released little information about Episode Three in the following years; though Valve still discussed Half-Life, there was no clarity on whether Episode Three was coming, whether Valve was instead planning Half-Life 3, or if Valve had forgone the property to better support the popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. In March 2010, Newell spoke of "broadening the emotional palette" of the series, and how the next Half-Life game may return to "genuinely scaring the player". In 2011, he said: "We went through the episodes phase, and now we’re going towards shorter and even shorter cycles ... For me, 'entertainment as a service' is a clear distillation of the episodic content model." That year, Wired described Episode Three as vaporware.

After Episode Two, Valve abandoned episodic development, as they wanted to create more ambitious instalments. According to level designer Dario Casali, with Episode Two, "We found ourselves creeping ever forward towards, ‘Well, let's just keeping putting more and more, and more, and more stuff in this game because we want to make it as good as we can,' and then we realized these episodes are turning more into sequels." Additionally, Valve had started development of Source 2 at the time of Episode 2's release; as developing Half-Life 2 and the original Source engine simultaneously had created problems, Valve delayed development of a new Half-Life until the engine was completed, by which time they were experimenting with virtual reality.

In 2016, Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw left Valve. Laidlaw said he had intended Episode Three to end the Half-Life 2 plot arc, at which point he would "step away from it and leave it to the next generation". He planned an ending similar to previous games, with Freeman left "in an indeterminate space, on hold ... So one cliffhanger after another ... I expected every installment would end without resolution, forever and ever."

In 2017, Laidlaw posted a short story, "Epistle 3", on his website. Laidlaw described the story as a "snapshot of a dream I had many years ago". Journalists interpreted it as a summary of what could have been the plot for Episode Three. The story features characters with names similar to Half-Life characters, such as "Gertie Fremont" for Gordon Freeman. Substituting the characters with their Half-Life counterparts, the story sees Freeman and his allies travel to the Arctic to board the Borealis, a ship that travels erratically through time and space, where they "confront myriad versions" of themselves. They rig the ship to travel to the heart of the Combine empire and self-destruct, but the explosion is not sufficient to destroy the Combine's Dyson Sphere. Alyx is taken by the G-Man and Gordon is rescued by the Vortigaunts, with most of the Resistance dead and the success of their uprising uncertain.

After Laidlaw published the story, some players left negative reviews for Dota 2 on Steam, believing that Valve had forgone the Half-Life series. The story led to a number of fan efforts to create Episode Three. In 2020, designer Robin Walker denied that the "Epistle 3" story had ever been Valve's plan for Episode Three, and said that it was likely just one of many ideas by Laidlaw.

Return to Ravenholm[edit source]

Return to Ravenholm, sometimes referred to as Episode Four, was under development by Arkane Studios. The episode was set in Ravenholm, a town infested with headcrabs and headcrab zombies. Valve canceled the project, deciding the premise was creatively constrained.