Robin Walker, one of Valve's oldest developers, who has worked on everything from Half-Life to Team Fortress to Dota 2, was recently interviewed by The Gamer about the internal reaction to the creation of Half-Life He talked about the reaction within the company to the creation of "Alyx" and gave a preview of what's to come.

"I think for the first couple of years [of Alyx development], a lot of people within the company were skeptical that we would actually create and release a Half-Life product again," says Walker. skepticism about Valve developing Half-Life was lived on in the same way.

Walker further noted that "fear is a good motivator" and that the positive reaction to the announcement calmed nerves within the company. Suggesting that the title would be exclusive to VR, he added: "The worst thing we can do is ship a bad 'Half-Life' game, but if we ship something good that lives up to its name, I think in time people will be able to experience it."

Most interesting in the interview is Walker's discussion of the "narrative void" left behind for fans of the series after the HL2 episode and his determination with Alix to change that equation. Of the game's ending (no spoilers), Walker says:

"We realized it had to be important. The story couldn't be something that we could just ignore and move on to the next thing we were going to make. We also knew that "Half-Life" fans had been stuck in a state of narrative limbo for a long time.

Still staying away from spoilers, the context needed here is that Alix has an open ending that hints at what is to come.

"We wanted to get people excited about the possibilities once again," Walker said.

"We gave [the audience] a red herring that would make them think they knew how it would end with a completely plausible ending, and then subvert that.

Well, I'm certainly excited about the possibilities again, and I know that Half-Life 3 has been anticipated for a long time and is now a meme, but for one of the greatest and most influential shooters and environments of all time, Half-Life 2 to be left out for so long feels really strange. When Walker is talking about the narrative limbo, the original came out in 2004, 17 years ago, and Episode 2 was released in 2007 and ended with a ridiculous cliffhanger, it's good to hear Valve saying they want to "change that." Freeman, rise up. We're all waiting.