After 13 years, a new Half-Life film is on the way. Half-Life: Alyx is great, but it's also a prequel, taking place five years before the cliffhanger events of 2007's Half-Life 2: Episode 2. How Gordon Freeman's story will end remains to be seen, but last week I had the opportunity to ask Valve what's next for "Half-Life" after such a long hiatus.

They, unfortunately, did not casually confirm Half-Life 3. However, we did learn that the shape of the next Half-Life film will largely depend on how Half-Life is received: depending on how Alyx is received, the shape of the next Half-Life film will largely depend on how Alyx is received.

"At this point, we really don't know what [the next Half-Life title] will be like; we don't even know if it will be a non-VR title," said Dario Casali, a level designer at Valve who worked on both of the original Half-Life games

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"The best we can do at this point is gauge the reaction to this product. How enjoyable will it be? How many people can we draw into the VR platform? [Are people saying that VR is now an integral part of Half-Life?

Alyx has received great praise from critics, and the scarcity of Valve's Index headset shows that a game as big as Half-Life can certainly drive VR hardware sales. Still, it may only sell a fraction of "Half-Life 2," but considering how much money Steam makes, it may not matter to Valve.

Writer Eric Wolpau, who worked on the "Half-Life 2" episodes and the "Portal" game, sums up why it took Valve so long to return to "Half-Life" again. As you can imagine, the longer the gap, the more pressure there was for the sequel to be great.

"I think as time went on, it felt more and more like a daunting task to go back into the Half-Life universe and release a Half-Life game," Walpaugh said. But there is good news: Alix is out. They did it. We feel like we've got it back."

"Everybody is feeling confident and positive about this," Wolpaw said. 'It's breaking news for Dario. If we do something, we're ready to sign another contract. I'm on board. I'm ready. I'm ready! I know we had a good time, and I know in a week this movie is coming out, and my enthusiasm may be shot through the roof, but I feel good. I feel good. I feel good.