Valve doesn’t rule out Half Life 3 VR

If there is one thing that feels a little played out now, it’s Half Life 3 hype. At this point, much of the goodwill from the series’ past has been lost to the years and if Valve is actually planning to develop and release a third entry in either the episodes or full games series, it isn’t going to tell us anything about it until its finished.

We’re even getting to a point now where it’s been so long since the last game even those making “Half Life 3 confirmed,” jokes may not have played any of the games and certainly didn’t play the original when it came out.

But that doesn’t mean Valve doesn’t stoke the fires of the rumour mill every now and again, suggesting quite matter of factly at the recent GDC show, that Half Life could potentially work in virtual reality. It certainly isn’t shutting the door on the idea.

“We’re not saying, ‘no’ but we don’t know what the right thing is,” Valve programmer Jeep Barnett told Kotaku in a chat about what does and doesn’t work in VR.

Part of the problem apparently is time, as there’s just so much going on at Valve at any one time that considering making everything into a VR demo just isn’t possible:

“Our most precious resource is time, and we don’t have enough time for people to do everything. Would we like to make all of our franchises in VR? Absolutely. But we don’t have enough time or people. So we have to figure out what’s the best fit, what plays to the strengths of VR,” he said.

Fortunately then you can play Half Life 2 in VR quite easily. If you have the game installed, a couple of little tweaks will have it running in no time and it does indeed work very well and look pretty good too. Certain aspects like the airboat ride can be a little nauseating and the physics puzzles are a bit tired at this point, but the whole game plays well enough and there’s enough vertical elements that craning your neck to figure out what to do ‘up there’ is still a fun experience.

Chances are a brand new franchise will always be a better fit for new technology like this – just look how good Alien: Isolation is in VR – but never say never with Valve.