Voice actress Natasha Chandel listed in her resume on her website (and soon deleted it) a Valve project codenamed White Sands, which could turn out to be Half-Life 3.
Users of the Reddit forum who noticed the leak note that White Sands is a national park and missile test site in New Mexico, where the Black Mesa research complex is located in the Half-Life universe.
Blogger Tyler McVicker, who specializes in Valve activities, said (see video below) that White Sands hides a game codenamed hlx, which the Half-Life: Alyx team has been working on for several years.
According to McVicker, hlx is a full-fledged Half-Life not for VR. The blogger said: “It sounds too good to be true, so I wanted to make sure before publishing this information.”
The fact that we are talking about a new Half-Life is directly indicated by references found by data miners in the code of Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 (both based on the Source 2 engine) since March 2021:
- The player controls a character in a protective H.E.V. suit;
- Valve has been working or is working on adding gorillas and jellyfish from the world of Xen to the game;
- The project includes a detailed simulation of controlled vehicles.
«The project, codenamed hlx, appears to be a single-player and/or co-op (we don’t know) Half-Life game for non-VR. I would venture to guess that this could very well be Half-Life 3,” McVicker said.
The game has been in production since the release of Half-Life: Alyx, but development has allegedly accelerated recently. Meanwhile, Valve is testing competitive shooter Deadlock, the existence of which it stubbornly refuses to acknowledge.