The creative director and programmer of Naughty Dog, Neil Druckmann said in a statement that the company is interested in developing the Half-Life 3 game, if Valve agrees to it. In a post in his Twitter account, Druckmann stated that given a chance, Naughty Dog is ready to continue this franchise in the future.
Naughty Dog in the past has belted out some pretty successful games which include The Last of Us and Unchartered 4. So it could be safely assumed that this company would be the ideal one regarding working on Half-Life 3.
Game Rant, however, suggested otherwise. It stated that the words of Neil Druckmann are not to be taken seriously because as far as the matter of production companies are concerned; there has been no discussion yet on the matter regarding the Half-Life franchise.
Without question, Half-Life 3 is one of the most awaited games of 2015, but fans are not yet sure whether the developer of the franchise, Valve Corporation, is actually going to roll out a third installment of the franchise or not.
The previous installment, Half-Life 2 was released back in 2004 by the company but it did not contain a conclusive ending and this created confusion among gamers as to whether the developer would add another installment to the franchise or not.
It was rumored that the company is working for over a decade on the sequel to Half-Life 2 but nothing has been confirmed by Valve as of yet. At the same time it should also be noted that Valve hasn’t officially denied that Half-Life 3 could be released sometime in the future. Certain unconfirmed reports are stating that the game is currently under development and it might be made ready and released sometime between 2017 and 2018.
In a recent Q/A session at EGX, Chet Faliszek, one of the main writers of Valve Corporation, shot down rumors regarding Half-Life 3 being a VR game. He was asked twice by a member of the audience whether there are chances of Half-Life 3 releasing as a Virtual Reality game. His response was a simple ‘No’ both the times.
It was not sure whether he was saying no as an answer to the person’s question or whether he was saying no to any questions regarding the game.
Another report by a renowned website, stated that Half-Life 3 might not be released at all! According to the site, Half-Life 3 is being developed for quite some time now and reportedly its story is complete. At the same time it was also reported that the game had to face some major obstacles during its development and this has resulted in Valve deciding to not release the game at all.
It is being speculated that Valve is worried about the violent reactions from fans if the game fails to impress them and meet their expectations and thus the company is not taking the risk of releasing the game.
Another reason behind the company’s decision for not releasing the game could be its financial success. Valve is currently making just shy of a billion dollars every year from its current undertakings which involve microtransactions in IPs like Counter Strike: Global Defensive and Team Fortress 2 and third party sales through Steam.
In the present scenario, the economic condition of the company is looking great and thus it may not even bother to release Half-Life 3 at all, especially when there is a fear of backlash from the community if the game is not upto their standard.