Rumor: Valve Has Ramped Up Hiring For Next Half-Life Game, & Working On An Immersive New Gameplay System - Gameranx

Half-Life fans may not want an immersive sim, but we don’t know where Valve is going with this yet anyway.

We have interesting new information about the development of the next Half-Life game, from Tyler MicVicker’s latest round of datamining.

We had previously reported that Tyler believes this new Half-Life will have “a more elaborate and open world setting with smart NPCs, cool vehicles, and brand new gravity mechanics.”

Today, he shares some fresh new details, that seem to have had other viewers and readers confused. So we’ll clear up what information he shared is relevant today.

Tyler found that Valve went into an aggressive hiring spree between 2021 to 2023. They rehired many former Valve employees and developers, and they also picked up people who had worked at iD software , MachineGames, Sucker Punch, Insomniac Games, and Naughty Dog.

Notably, most of these new hires were either artists or level designers. These very specific needs seem to point to the peculiarities of Valve itself.

People like Cayle George felt they had to leave Valve to make projects like Half-Life: Caged. Considering that Valve spent a substantial period of time making very commercial titles like DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike, they may have driven away talent who wanted to be more risky. For Deadlock and this Half-Life revival, they need those risk-taking creative people back.

Tyler also found new data in Deadlock’s files, that he believes will be used in the next Half-Life. And this is where some other readers got confused, because he did not drop multiple details that he believes would be in the game. Tyler was explaining that Valve’s previous statements about game development supported his theories on what they are making with Half-Life now.

The new Half-Life is introducing an attribute called surface properties, which sounds innocuous, but is actually brimming with potential.

For example, Tyler found some surfaces have a designated flashpoint and heat conductivity. The flashpoint is the point that an object gets set on fire after exposure to heat. Heat conductivity is how quickly a material absorbs heat from nearby heat sources.

In plain English, Valve is introducing the real-life properties of real materials to their shooter game starring Gordon Freeman. Tyler says that this could make the game nearly immersive, but for now, we are only talking about a game system he found. We don’t know how far Valve will take it in the game.

But the potential these systems have is indeed very high. Valve can set details such as a piece of paper catching fire faster than a plank of wood. And Valve seems to be applying this system to everything in the game. NPCs can affect surface properties as much as the player can. So, you can imagine an enemy setting a nearby plank of wood on fire to attack you with it.

Tyler even describes a complex system that already exists in Half-Life 2 and how it could be changed by this.

So, if you didn’t realize it, Half-Life 2 doesn’t just give you a set amount of ammo every time you run into an ammo box. It actually comes up with those numbers on the spot, and it decides on that based on what weapons you have, how much ammo you have left, and which weapons you favor.

That’s a lot that Valve was able to accomplish in a game made twenty years ago. But now, that system will also take into account what surfaces surround you when you approach it. So, using the abovementioned example, they could give you bullets that encourage or discourage you from starting fires.

It’s really fascinating, and we may find out that Half-Life 3 will turn out to be an immersive sim in the end. That may not be a choice that longtime Half-Life players will enjoy, and we’re sure Valve knows that. But Valve always seemed to have a better read on what fans want in their games than other developers. So we’ll see how this system plays out when we finally get this game.

In the meantime, you cant watch Tyler’s video below.