Half-Life 3, Dota 2 Ax RPG and Minecraft voxel copy – which games did Valve cancel?

Half-life 3

The full third part of Half-Life was under development for several years and went so far that Valve managed to scan the face of Frank Sheldon, who got the role of G-Man. However, work on the project was canceled due to the unavailability of the Source 2 engine – at that time, Valve had not yet announced it and created it in parallel with the third part of Half-Life.

According to the description from the book, Half-Life 3 was supposed to combine the procedural generation of levels and manually created plot moments. An example is the situation with the release of a hostage from a captured building. Each time the game painted the level differently, placing opponents at random points.

Left 4 Dead 3

The development of the third part of Left 4 Dead was parallel to Half-Life 3. The authors planned to transfer the shooter to the open world and increase the number of zombies on the screen to several hundred. In this case, the main scene of the third part was to become the African country of Morocco.

Work on the project was canceled for the same reason as on Half-Life 3 – the game was based on the Source 2 engine, which was not completed.

Unknown role-playing game, codenamed RPG and plot title about Ax from Dota 2

A separate team at Valve was thinking of creating a role-playing game. Judging by the description of Jeff Keely, the development remained the imagination of the authors. The only thing known is that they were inspired by such series as The Elder Scrolls, Monster Hunter and Dark Souls. What exactly was supposed to be “RPG” is unknown.

In parallel to her, the studio was thinking about creating a plot role-playing game, the main role in which would be played by Ax from Dota 2. Apparently, the developers planned to uncover the past of the red orc.

A.R.T.I.

A.R.T.I. It was conceived as a voxel game with complete destructibility and the ability to erect buildings. The closest analogue can be called Minecraft from Microsoft. The development was canceled for unknown reasons, then to transfer the game to VR – and then canceled again, already completely.

VR helmet Vader

As it turned out from the book, Valve planned to release the second variation of the Index VR helmet, codenamed Vader. At the same time, he was supposed to become the “older brother” of Index in terms of cost and functionality.

But in the end, Vader production was canceled – its cost reached $ 5 thousand. And this is taking into account the fact that a full set of Valve Index costs $ 999.

Three VR games

At different times, Valve worked on three projects for virtual reality helmets inside Valve. However, none of them reached the release or even the announcement. SimTrek, for example, was supposed to be an analogue of the Kerbal Space Program, and Shooter – a shooter in VR.

The Borealis project has the most complete description. It was a story game for VR devices, the action of which took place on the ship of the same name. It is known that the script for the game was written by Mark Laidlaw, who worked on all parts of Half-Life, and the events of the game unfolded immediately in two time periods. And there you could fish. That’s all the information that came to us about Borealis.

A book by Jeff Keely made it clear that Valve is constantly working on a variety of games, but most of them are not destined to reach consumers. A company would rather cancel a project than make it bad. It remains only to guess which title will be next.