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After 17 years without a proper, non-VR Half-Lifetitle, fans have at least a little reason to hope again.

That's due to supposed leaks appearing in a couple of different places, per Eurogamer.

Evidence of Half-Life 3?

First, a voice actor's website was found to include a reference to something called "Project White Sands," which was attributed to Valve. That, alone, doesn't tell us much. Valve occasionally still makes new video games — even if they aren’t called Half-Life. It's worth noting that White Sands is the name of a national park in New Mexico, the setting of the original Half-Life.

But after people found that and flooded the webpage, all references to Project White Sands were removed. Then, Valve data miner Tyler McVicker posted a YouTube video explaining that he believes he has found explicit references to a non-VR, single-player game set in the Half-Lifeuniverse that is either actively in development, or was in development recently, in Valve's code updates.

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Specifically, the project is called "HLX" and many of the files associated with it are obviously linked to Half-Life. The main character wears an HEV suit (as did protagonist Gordon Freeman in the first two games). There are also multiple references to "Xen," a prominent alien location in Half-Life. Enemies such as "Xengorilla" and "Xenjellyfish" are even named.

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One has to wonder why Valve would put so many obvious references to Half-Lifein a place where people could see it without using codenames, but still, this is the most substantial lead on a proper new Half-Lifegame in quite some time. 2020 saw the release of Half-Life: Alyx, which was well-received as the first extension of the series since 2007, but it remains a VR-exclusive title that requires both a powerful PC and a headset to play. Before that, a former series writer posted what may have been the story for a canceled Half-Lifesingle-player game in 2017, but that was after he left Valve and what he posted probably shouldn't be seen as indicative of what Valve's future plans might be.

Since Half-Life 2: Episode 2came out and ended on a massive story cliffhanger in 2007, Valve has shifted to mostly developing multiplayer games with some sort of live service elements, like Dota 2and the recently data-mined Deadlock. These games, combined with all of the money that Valve gets from running the pre-eminent PC gaming digital marketplace Steam, have made it difficult to believe Valve would ever revisit Half-Lifewithout a serious incentive to do so.

But maybe it's actually happening. Or maybe it isn't. At least we all have a reason to talk about Half-Lifeagain.