Half-Life Actor Stirs Up Half-Life 3 Rumors With Cryptic New Year’s Message

For the last two decades, players have looked for any sign that Valve is moving forward with Half-Life 3. The 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 came and went without any announcement about the long-awaited sequel. Now, actor Mike Shapiro, who voices the enigmatic G-Man in the Half-Life games, has shared a cryptic New Year’s message on X that has some fans speculating that Half-Life 3 could finally arrive this year.

In the brief recording, Shapiro revisits his unsettling G-Man voice as he says, “May the next quarter century deliver as many unexpected surprises, as did the millennium’s first.” He then cryptically notes that time is fluid like music, before adding that he’ll “see you in the new year.”

This message follows a previous report by Valve leaker Gabe Follower, who claims that Half-Life 3 recently entered play testing for “family and friends of Valve developers.” If so, that would be a remarkable cone of silence from the trusted few, since there haven’t been many other reports that suggest a new game is closer than expected.

Fans of the series have been eagerly hoping for some kind of resolution to the cliffhanger ending of the 2007 expansion Half-Life 2 Episode 2, which left the heroes in dire straights. There were originally plans for Half-Life 2: Episode 3, which would have been set in the Arctic. According to the Half-Life 2 documentary released by Valve last year, Episode 3 was in development for six months before it was abandoned. Instead, the team went to work on Left 4 Dead. Since then, the only new title in the franchise was the VR game Half-Life: Alyx in 2020.