Half-Life 3 Is Not In Production, Says Valve Voice Actor

Fans of the Half-Life franchise have lived in a state of anguish for quite awhile now, ever-hoping for a game that seems to have become nothing more than mythos. Though some keep dropping teasing suggestions that Half-Life 3 has been confirmed, one faithful Valve voice actor has come forward to dash hopes and set the record straight: the game isn't being developed right now, he says.

The source is John Patrick Lowrie, an actor who has been involved with multiple games from Valve including Half-Life 2. He took to the Internet to answer some questions regarding Half-Life 3, posting somewhat lengthy responses over on his blog that have now been removed. In them, it seems one of the biggest revolving issues with HL3 is Motion Capture, a subject on which he says:

"Here is the biggest challenge with bringing out HL3: the big thing now with FPSs is motion capture, or mo-cap. One of the great things about HL2 is that all of the characters that you meet actually look at you when they talk to you no matter where you go or stand. With mo-cap you can't do that, at least not yet. Once you film the actor doing something and capture that motion, that's what the character is going to do. This works great in movies, but when you make something interactive it gets way less interactive with mo-cap. So that's one of the things they're working on."

He then goes on to say that, as far as he knows, the game is not being developed for multiple reasons, one of them being the mo-cap problem detailed above. As mentioned, the comments have now been removed, and instead replaced with a final one in which he says that his previous comments have resulted in confusion. He says that voice actors are the "last to know anything," and that his word shouldn't be taken as the final matter on the subject.

And there you have it: more mysteries regarding that game that could be. Whether it is in production, isn't, or is somewhere between is still unknown, but one thing is certain – there's more waiting to be had.

SOURCE: Kotaku