Unreleased Half-Life games
Since the release of the original Half-Life for Windows in 1998, several ports, expansion packs and sequels have been canceled, including projects developed by other studios.
[1] On March 18, 2000, the Adrenaline Vault reported that the new expansion was named Half-Life: Hostile Takeover, and that it had appeared on retail product lists with a release date of late August.
[4] On February 14, 2000, Sierra announced that a port of Half-Life for the Dreamcast console was in development by Captivation Digital Laboratories with Valve and Gearbox Software.
Gearbox, who had developed Opposing Force, created a new single-player campaign for the Dreamcast port, Half-Life: Blue Shift, focusing on the security guard Barney.
Reception was mixed, with criticism for the inconsistent frame rate, long loading times and lack of online play.
[12] On March 29, 2001, Sierra announced that Blue Shift would be released for Windows[13] along with the new models developed for the Dreamcast version, as part of the Half-Life High Definition Pack.
[14] On June 16, 2001, four days after the release of Blue Shift, Sierra announced that it had canceled the Dreamcast port, citing "changing market conditions".
[19] Rebecca Heineman, the co-founder of Logicware, denied this, saying that Valve cancelled the port as Apple had angered them by misrepresenting sales projections.
[28] In 2017, the Half-Life writer, Marc Laidlaw, released a short story that journalists speculated was a summary of the Episode Three plot.
The episode showed how the town of Ravenholm from Half-Life 2 became infested with headcrabs and zombies, with the return of the character of Father Grigori.
Valve lost interest in the project and Junction Point, who had been acquired by Disney Interactive Studios partway through, canceled it to instead develop Epic Mickey.
[38][39] Players controlled Adrian Shephard from Opposing Force, working alongside Father Grigori, who had taken refuge in an abandoned psychiatric hospital.
[37] Valve gave Arkane freedom to develop Ravenholm, as they had with Gearbox and Opposing Force, providing feedback and technical support.
[44] Before his departure from Valve in 2016, Laidlaw led a virtual reality project on the Source 2 engine, Borealis, set on the time-travelling ship mentioned in Episode Two and Portal 2.
[44] Laidlaw said the project ended because it was too early to be working in VR: "When people are struggling with the basic tools they need to rough out a concept, it's hard to convey any sort of vision, and it all evaporated pretty quickly.
