Nihilanth is shrouded in mystery. Our first and only encounter with him doesn’t reveal much. We know very little about him – but he is key to the Half-Life story.

Happy 10th Birthday Half-Life 2!

It was today, November 16th 10 years ago in 2004 when Valve first released Half-Life 2 for the PC.

To celebrate, LambdaGeneration is hosting a live 24-hour playthrough of the game.

In the approach to the 10th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2, a mass community playthrough of the game is being organised.

This is an editorial by Lilgreenman which analyses the recent development of the “We Want Half-Life 3” fan campaign from a retrospective standpoint. All views expressed in this article are his own.

Like any story with its depth and complexity, the Half-Life series leaves a lot to the imagination. In fact, considering the latest installment’s cliffhanger, it leaves more to the imagination than anyone wants.

Update: This article has been updated with further information on the upcoming first release of Black Mesa: Source. Check it all out, within!

You may or may not know that the work I do, especially here, tends to demand some pretty crazy late night hours of me. Consequently, I might sleep in worse than Gordon Freeman himself (after all, we can all imagine why he was late for that faithful experiment).

And sometimes, it so happens that the universe itself will directly conspire against my sleepy ways.

Like now.

The oh-so-long wait between Episode Two and… whatever the next Half-Life will be, is starting to be very tough for the Half-Life fanbase. During the 6-year wait between HL1 and HL2, we at least had the modding community and the active HL1 multiplayer scene, but we also had official spin-off games like Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay. Whereas now… we’ve sort of got… well, nothing. I’m sure some sort of Half-Life game released during this wait would have tided everyone over a bit.

But maybe that was the plan. Sure, the plan has changed, but what if Valve did intend to do just that? Well, today, we might have evidence pointing towards that.

Despite what Valve plans or doesn’t plan to do regarding the next Half-Life, or how long they plan on developing it, there’s no denying that they’ve dropped the ball when it comes to communicating with the Half-Life community, and the gaming community at large. As a result, they may have inflicted a fatal injury upon the franchise and its community. There’s better ways to ensure a lengthy development time than acting like the franchise in question doesn’t exist, and occasionally annoying your fanbase by blatantly trolling them.

Whenever Half-Life 3 does come out, we’re all pretty sure it’s going to be monumental. I wouldn’t expect any less from a Half-Life game that’s been in development for nearly a decade. But I think we can all agree that Valve isn’t doing this right. At all. So what can we do? Can we even do anything at all? Well, there might be something. Let’s see what it is…

This is how desperate the Half-Life fanbase has become. Or, at the very least, certain elements of it. They are… well, they are… uh…

Fanart!

It is one of the best ways a fan can express his love for a game.