17 years of waiting seems enough to bury the last ray of hope. It is normal to think that Half-Life Episode 3 will never come into our lives, so a group of fans of the saga decided some time ago to pluck up the courage and create their own version. The result is Project Borealis, a project that will soon have a playable version and that promises to fill that space in your heart that has still not healed.
A homemade Half-Life
Calling this game homemade could be an insult to its creators, as the team has no less than 80 collaborators who have been working tirelessly to create the game from scratch. And that is because The engine used is Unreal Engine, so it is not based on anything original from Episode 2 under the Source engine.
The history will take place in a snowy Ravenholm which, while it will be familiar, will have a frozen atmosphere that will give a different touch to what we saw in Episodes 2 and Lost Coast. As for the narrative, its creators have been inspired by the leaks and comments that some developers have been leaving in these 17 years of waiting (especially that encrypted letter from Marc Laidlaw where he clearly left the script of what was supposed to be Half-Life 3), so the setting could fit perfectly into the events of Episode 2 that left the story completely open.
Where can I download it?
At the moment Project Borealis is still in development, although we now know that it will be This fall when the first playable version will be available for the general public. For now, the only thing they have published is a teaser in video format where you can see the first shots of the new Ravenholm, where the unmistakable headcrabs will also appear.
With the release of the prologue, we will have to continue waiting to see when the full game will be available, although we have to be very sure that for that we will have to continue waiting even longer.
Better to forget than to wait
That a fan-made project is also keeping us waiting is a poetic way to pay homage to a much-maligned series. Gabe Newell was quite adamant a few years ago saying that Half-Life 3 was never going to happen, so having a demo of a fan-made project less than a couple of months away is, at least, the best news.
Now we just have to see how far along they are in the project, how well they have translated the fantastic physics of Half-Life 2 and see if they are able to give us a specific release date to put an end to this endless suffering.