Marc Laidlow, a former lead writer at Valve and one of those responsible for the story behind Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and its various episodes, has posted a story online which reads like a potential treatment for Half-Life 3, or Half Life 2: Episode 3. Although the names weren't exactly in line with previous games and the genders of most characters have been swapped, it doesn't take much to put together what the original Laidlow story may have been.
Indeed that's what one fan has already done and in good time too, since Laidlow's website has crashed thanks to all the traffic it's been getting.
You can . You'll note that with some of the Half-Life character names swapped in for their counterparts from the game series, the whole thing reads just like a Half-Life 3 plotline. It follows Gordon Freeman and Alex Vance as they make their way on to the reality shifting Borealis research vessel, with Combine forces ahead and behind them.
While battling through various realities as they and the ship fade in and out of existence, Judith Mossman is killed, presumably by Alex as she attempts to bring the ship into the real world. Instead, Alex and Gordon decide to send the ship to the heart of a Combine dimensional staging area, using it as a time travelling bomb.
As the story closes, G-Man returns once again, but not for Gordon this time. Instead he takes Alex by the hand, leading her on to continued adventures of import, leaving behind his original charge, Gordon, to blink out in an explosion that will do little to stop the Combine's advance. But instead the Vortigaunts save him once again. The world he returns to isn't one that's recognizable, nor one that recognizes him.
And that's where Gordon's story ends. Poetically, it seems as if Laidlaw was reaching out to fans in his final paragraph, warning that this is the last we'll hear from him on the matter and that with Valve a very different place today, it may be down to the fans to create the closure in the series that they so desire.
"I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final episode."
