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Valve “White Sands” project spotted on Starfield voice actor portfolio, prompting Half-Life speculationIs that you, Gordon?
Is that you, Gordon?
Image credit:Valve
Image credit:Valve
As Hamlet requested of Horatio, it is time to absent myself from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw my breath in pain to tell you that theHalf-Life 3speculators are at it again. Over the weekend, the discovery of a mystery Valve project called “White Sands” on a voice actor’s portfolio has set tongues and fingers wagging about potentialHalf-Lifenews in the offing.
Is it Half-Life 3, or something Half-Lifey but not Three-ey? A follow-up for acclaimed VR gameHalf-Life: Alyx, maybe? IDK what to tell you. Games journalists and Valve nuts alike have beenchasing a proper resolutionto Gordon Freeman’s story for almost as long as I’ve been doing this. Hamlet is notorious for delayed release but he’s got nothing on the G-Man.
The voice actor in question isNatasha Chandel, whose credits includeStarfieldand Call Of Duty: Vanguard. The reason people are linking her TBA “White Sands” project to Half-Life, other than it being a Valve gig, is that White Sands is a US military base in New Mexico, which is also the in-game location of Half-Life’sBlack Mesalaboratory. Chandel has yet to comment on the speculation, but the White Sands listing has now been removed from her portfolio, which I’m sure will put all the rumour-mongering to bed.
The history of unreleased Half-Life games post-Half-Life 2is a giant puddle of wiki-spaghetti. It starts with Half-Life 2: Episode 3, the final act of Half-Life 2’s DLC saga, whichmight have taken place aboard a stranded Arctic vessel, if Marc Laidlaw’s webcomics are to be believed. Episode 3 never reached the finish line: according to Valve designer Robin Walker,speaking in 2020, nobody could think of a concept with the requisite “wonderment, or opening, or expansion” that had come to characterise Half-Life internally.
Also speaking in 2020, former Valve level designer Dario Casalioffered"scope creep", difficulty with the supporting tech development, and a lack of promising ideas as reasons for Half-Life’s on-going vanishing from public life. According to an official Valve documentary, meanwhile, there was a Half-Life prototype in development around 2013-2014 that would have hadprocedurally generated story sections, but this was shelved.
“Please shut up about it,“beggedAlice O (RPS in peace) in 2017, but methinks the lady doth protest too much. Having missed out on Alyx thanks to not owning a VR headset of sufficient muscle, I would love to play a new, old-timey non-VR Half-Life game in the Freeman chronology. In the meantime, there are always Half-Life homages likeAbiotic Factor.
