Valve: There Is No Half-Life 3

Valve community manager doesn’t want the community to continue trolling itself.

After years of meme-level jokes about the lack of a Half-Life game in 8 years – especially since the series was supposed to be “episodic” – the collective internet began to rumble this month. There was that guy with the Half-Life 3 tee-shirt at a Valve party, and the appearance of a phantom website with the logo clearly emblazoned upon it. A poster on Valve’s official forums even claimed there was an arcane clue hidden in Wheatley’s speech for Game Character of the Year at Spike’s VGAs. Later in the thread, though, an official Valve community manager dispelled any illusion Gabe Newell is cooking up some secret ARG leading up to a HL3 reveal. Apparently, we are just trolling ourselves.

Here is the supposed “evidence” of Half-Life 3 hidden in the video to the right which was originally posted at Vividgamer:

• A series of Cyrillic symbols (СПУТНИК НАБЛЮДЕНИЯ <<ЛАНТАНУМ>>) can be seen above Wheatley. Translated, the message reads: Observation Satellite “Lanthanum”. Lanthanum is a periodic element in Group 3.
• Translated to Greek, “Lanthanum” reads λανθανω. Note the lambda symbol, a gaming icon that screams Half-Life.
• Numerous constellations can be drawn in the stars behind Wheatley, all forming lambda symbols.
• Wheatley finishes his speech by attempting to give coordinates of his location in space. He only has time to say “1, 1, 1″ before being cut off. 1 + 1 + 1 = 3
• The atomic number of Lanthanum is 57. 5 and 7 are the starting and ending dates in July for next years E3. 5 + 7 = 12. 6/5/12 – 6/7/12.

Wait, what? Really?

“You are being trolled. There is no ARG. Wheatley’s speech was set in Portal 2 fiction – that is all,” posted Chetf from Valve. “There has been no directive from Gabe to leak anything. That is all false.”

In case that wasn’t clear, Chetf states for the record that there is no HL3 announcement incoming. “I just want to say this so there is no confusion. This is the community trolling the community nothing more. While it is nice to see people excited about anything HL, I hate seeing people be trolled like this,” he said.

Of course, you know what this means? It’s all obfuscation! Smoke and mirrors! Half-Life 3 must be dropping soon, if they are making official posts to tell us to stop looking for clues in meaningless symbols!

Valve fanboys, redouble your efforts! You are definitely on to something.

Source: Valve forums