American game developer Valve Corporation has not said anything about the third installment to its survival first-person shooter video game franchise “Half-Life” being launched in the Gamescom 2016 in Cologne, Germany this week but a giant red poster outside the event venue seemed to have suggested something is up with the game.
The eye-catching poster is displayed alongside banners for very real video games including “Dishonored 2,” “Watch Dogs 2,” “Sniper,” and “Ghost Warrior 3” outside of the Koln Messe convention center, notes Eurogamer.
However, upon closer look, the poster turned out to be not of “Half-Life 3” but the original “Half-Life” game played by three editors.
The poster does not actually read “Half-Life 3” but “Half-Life: 3” and under in smaller text “Editors Who Played It Back Then.” The 3 in the poster refers to the number of editors and not the latest installment of the highly-anticipated video game, notes Kotaku.
It turns out that the poster has also been paid for by a media company with a naughty sense of humor, which some critics describe as some kind of world-class trolling, the new term for misdirect or false advertising.
The logos at the bottom of the poster indicate that the poster was paid for by spieletipps and GIGA games.
The “Half-Life: 3” poster reminds fans of an old NeoGAF joke thread titled “Half-Life, 3 screenshots” which was simply a thread with three screens from the original “Half-Life” game and nothing to do with “Half-Life 3” yet again.
Valve Corporation may have nothing to do with the trolling at Gamescom 2016 but it would be interesting to know its thoughts about it, especially since the company is just fresh from a $20 million DoTA 2 tournament.
Coming out on its 20th anniversary
The game developer 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.
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.
One-third of the company working on 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.
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.