For years, fans have been speculating that Valve's Half-Life 3 will never come into fruition, but there were still a strong few who believed it would. However, Half-Life 3 has now become less of a reality since Marc Laidlaw, head writer for the original Half-Life video game and its sequel, has retired.
Reports from VR World were quick to place emphasis on Laidlaw's reason for departing from Valve: "retiring." They say that retiring is "something that happens when you've done a job for far too long and can't really stand the surroundings, colleagues or the work at hand." Valve looks less likely to push through with the development of HL3 now that the man behind the story line of the first two games is no longer their employee.
According to Geek, Laidlaw has no concrete idea about Half-Life 3's future himself. When asked about the game, Laidlaw answered concisely. "Half-Life is fully owned by Valve. It came into existence before my arrival. Where Valve may choose to take it in the future is not in my hands," he said. Since I no longer speak for Valve, it would be inappropriate of me to answer questions or speculate openly on the fate of the franchise."
Laidlaw has said that he would continue writing stories and that he just wants to step out of the office setting for the time being. Valve has also continued developing other video games and IPs, but those are not necessarily in the direction of Half-Life 3.
Laidlaw says ha is grateful to have been part of the creative process surrounding the Half-Life games. However, he also says that his time working on that IP is now behind him. Fans will simply have to wait a little bit longer to know whether Half-Life 3 even gets put into development, let alone released.
