If a recent blog post by Half-Life series voice actor John Patrick Lowrie (via GameSpot) is to be believed, the highly anticipated Half-Life 3 is not currently in development at the massive studio. There are many reasons for the game not getting off the ground, but chief among them is motion-capture issues.
"One of the great things about HL2 is that all of the characters that you meet actually look at you when they talk to you no matter where you go or stand. With mo-cap you can’t do that, at least not yet," Lowrie said. "Once you film the actor doing something and capture that motion, that’s what the character is going to do. This works great in movies, but when you make something interactive it gets way less interactive with mo-cap. So that’s one of the things they’re working on."
When you mention anything about Half-Life 3, the community takes it as an instant confirmation. One commenter quickly made that conclusion, but Lowrie was forced to shut him down.
"Sorry, I'm afraid that the opposite is true. HL3 is not being worked on at this time as far as I know," he stated. "So, I don't want to get people's hopes up. I have no idea what they're planning for the future. But I did have that conversation with some Valve folks, so I thought you might like to know what they're thinking about."
We hear rumor after rumor that Half-Life 3 is happening, but this is a pretty solid source saying otherwise. As always, we won’t know until we hear something a bit more official.