American game developer Valve Corporation has been consistently quiet regarding the development of the survival first-person shooter video game “Half-Life 3” amid countless rumors about it online.
But the company can only keep the secret far too long as there are now reports saying that “Half-Life 3” will come out in 2018 complete with a virtual reality (VR) support already.
More than the groundbreaking feature of the game, the rumors are also getting louder that 2018 is indeed going to be the release year of “Half-Life 3” because it shall mark the 20th anniversary of the video game franchise, notes Tech Report.
The first original release of the series happened in 1998 so it is only but historic and fitting to see the release of its third iteration on the gaming consoles exactly 20 years later.
Indicative of how intensive the development of “Half-Life 3” is, there are also reports saying that one-third of Valve’s total workforce is now focused on the development of the game.
Growing development team for the game
The latest almost official information that came from Valve’s end emanated from Alan Yates, the company’s hardware engineer.
In a recent post on Reddit, he said that he was quite fortunate to start working at Valve right around the time when Michael Abrash had begun the AR/VR research team.
He said that the group was a much smaller team than it is now and the team has since grown to encompass about a third of the company.
Yates said that the key individuals that solved most of the really difficult technological problems and facilitated the development of the next-generation consumer headsets are still working on the device.
The post of the hardware engineer pretty much confirmed that “Half-Life 3” shall come out of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One by 2018 already exuding VR technology. Unless Sony and Microsoft unveil their respective PlayStation 5 and Xbox Two before “Half-Life 3” officially comes out.
Working on the necessary gameplay tweaks
Valve Corporation is planning to make the necessary tweaks and updates on the gameplay of “Half-Life 3” if the latest rumors are true that it shall come out in 2018 already with VR support.
The excitement and anticipation of fans and gamers on the “Half-Life 3” have more than doubled following reports that the game would come out already compatible with VR headsets.
In fact, the VR support of “Half-Life 3” is now being pointed out as the reason why the game is still in development at this time, according to speculations.
That is in addition to reports that Valve is also working on some huge changes on the game because it wanted to really come up with something that is way better than “Half-Life 2” released back in 2004.
However, Valve Corporation actually has yet to confirm whether the game is indeed in development or not so everything about “Half-Life 3” remains as speculation at this time.
According to rumors, Valve Corporation is preparing “Half-Life 3” to be one of the big titles for the new gaming consoles, which shall be providing VR support already. In fact, the game is rumored to make a grand entrance as a VR-compatible title in 2018.
The rumors emanated from the fact that Valve recently collaborated with Taiwanese tech company HTC in developing the HTC Vive or the virtual reality headset.
Since VR gaming is not the mainstream gaming mode yet, it is possible that “Half-Life 3” will only become a full VR-compatible title by 2018 at the earliest.
However, all these remain as speculations pending the confirmation from Valve Corporation, which has yet to confirm whether “Half-Life 3” is already in development or not at all.
Critics believe that a 2018 release date for “Half-Life 3” is a very realistic timeline because the creation of a good VR game will take at least two years to complete.