Ah, Half-life 2: Episode 3–or more commonly referred to as Half Life 3–what could have been. After over a decade of waiting, fans still hope and meme for your existence just to hide the pain of never finding out. While finding out what would’ve occurred in this fabled third entry would’ve been was once a pipe dream, ex-lead writer for the series, Marc Laidlaw, has published a short piece on what would’ve transpired after the events of Episode 2.
Laidlaw labelled the story as a “genderswapped snapshot of a dream I had many years ago”
Published on his personal blog, Laidlaw’s writing is written as a genderswapped version of events with altered names, presumably to stop any copyright problems with Valve. Following Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance and written as a diary entry, the piece takes the two through to the Arctic looking for the Borealis. I won’t spoil the rest here, but it’s an interesting short summary of the general events which may have made up the series’ fourth main entry.
Speaking on Twitter about the matter, Laidlaw labelled the story as a “genderswapped snapshot of a dream I had many years ago”, confirming that this was the original vision he had for a potential third episode.
Laidlaw’s departure from Valve two years ago was a big hit to Half-Life fans who were still patiently waiting for the next game in the series, but it seems that Laidlaw himself was also waiting for Valve to move forward with the game’s development. Hopefully, this small entry by the writer will give some closure to the fans who are still dying to find out just what happens.
If you want to read Laidlaw’s third entry in the story, click here for his personal blog. Since his site has been hit with severe traffic since the release of this post, click here for a Pastebin post which genderswaps the characters back to their “original selves”.
