Forget GTA. The original game event series is Half-Life.

I'm only human, so I'm not immune to hype. I can't wait to play Grand Theft Auto 6. In fact, there's no game announced that I'm more excited to play than Rockstar's open-world sequel. But if we include unannounced When it comes to games, Half-Life 3 has to take the cake (I'm becoming more and more convinced that this isn't a lie, it's actually in the oven as we speak).

The past five years have been an incredible time to be a Half-Life fan. I didn't own a gaming PC until 2019, but shortly after I bought one, the long-dormant FPS series woke up from a 10-plus year nap. Half-Life: Alyx was announced in November of that year, and I spent late 2019 and early 2020 digging deep into the first two games and their expansions to catch up.

Half-Life has an amazing ability to make me spend money

More importantly, I spent my money on the Oculus Quest with the plan to play games using the link cable. This became a problem when Valve contacted me offering to send me Index for review. However, no matter how much I tried to play Alyx, I had to upgrade my computer because the gaming laptop I was using did not have a mini HDMI port. So I spent a lot of money and made several trips to Best Buy to get everything I needed. When Alyx arrived in March 2020 – along with something much more important we don’t need to talk about – I was ready.

There are very few games that I would put that much effort into. New Zelda? yes. What about the next Naughty Dog game? confident. But I've enjoyed Zelda and Uncharted since I was young. There's a history there. Even though I came to Half-Life late, this series hooked me during my first tram ride to Black Mesa and never let go. Since then, new Half-Life content has been drip-feeded so frequently that I've never stopped thinking about it. It really feels like Valve is building something.

Slow but steady leak of new halving information

Geoff Keighley's The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx arrived on Steam in July 2020, just a few months after the game's release, detailing everything Valve had been doing between single-player entries. After Portal 2 released in 2011, we waited until Alyx came out nine years later. In 2022, Valve released Aperture Desk Job, set in the world of Portal/Half-Life, as a free experience for Steam Deck players.

Then, to celebrate Half-Life's 25th anniversary in 2023, Valve partnered with Danny O'Dwyer's Secret Tape to produce an official behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of the original game. To celebrate Half-Life 2's 20th anniversary this month, the company released an update that added another documentary and new developer commentary to the game, made it available for free for a limited time, and folded into Episodes 1 and 2. For the first time.

As Valve's slow drumbeat of official information continues, unofficial information about the new Half-Life game has begun to leak, and this year it's been a frenzy. Not only are there leaks pointing to Half-Life 3 being an actual game in development, but reliable leakers also point out that it uses procedural generation, a temperature system, the inclusion of grenade launchers, upgradable HEV suits, and a return feature. Xen, day/night, weather cycles, gravity emphasis.

Bigger and better is not a half-life approach

Valve has always thought of Half-Life as a series that represents technological and artistic leaps forward, making every new release exciting. The first Half-Life was one of the first first-person shooters to focus on storytelling in realistic spaces. Half-Life 2 takes the first game's rudimentary physics to the next level with puzzles revolving around weight distribution, fragile environments, and a gravity gun that allows players to turn any item into a weapon. Half-Life: Alyx brings the series to VR and discovers new levels of player freedom and expression as a result.

I love Rockstar, but this is why Half-Life remains the best event series. With each new GTA and Red Dead, we basically know what we're going to get on a gameplay level. It might get bigger and better, but it probably won't. that surprising. But each time Valve returns to Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance, they've combined the best of storytelling with a Nintendo-like focus on finding new and fun ways to interact with the world. The laundry list of leaks boasts some story details, but it's a Cambrian explosion of gameplay ideas. Whatever the end result of Half-Life 3, it won't just be a bigger, better Half-Life 2, and whether Valve admits it or not, it will be the most compelling event in gaming.