Even if your wish for Half-Life 3 was to ever come true, it wouldn't satisfy the itch for very long. That's the idea we're getting from series writer Marc Laidlaw.
In an interview conducted over at Arcade Attack, Laidlaw, who left Valve back in early 2016, went on record to speak about what his plans were for a continued Half-Life franchise.
"I had ideas for Episode 3. They were all supposed to take the series to a point where I could step away from it and leave it to the next generation. I honestly don’t know if anyone else shared this goal, but it seemed important to me to give ultimate freedom to whoever inherited the series, with my own personal set of loose ends tied up to my satisfaction. "
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Reassuring players that he hadn't even considered Half-Life 3, he was more focused on the once promised Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Following the cliffhanger ending of the Episode 2, the Half-Life franchise has been dormant ever since. But even if we were given another game, it likely wouldn't have given us the closure we've longed for. Laidlaw confirmed the fears; "My intention was that Ep3 would simply tie up the plot threads that were particular to HL2. But it would still end like HL1 and HL2, with Gordon in an indeterminate space, on hold, waiting for the next game to begin."
It was always planned to be one after the other. We would have ended up in the same situation many times over. While there's still no solid answer as to why the mega-popular Half-Life series fails to go on, Laidlaw never would have wanted it to end.
