Valve working on an “entirely new” game engine

Valve boss Gabe Newell has confirmed rumours that the studio is working on a new engine, but-but-but what about Half-Life 3?

“So what do you wanna know about that’s not Half-Life 3?” Newell asked visitors from 4chan who dropped in last week. Okay, so no news about Half-Life 3 then (maybe), but-but-but… what about the new engine, I suppose?

“We’ve been working on new engine stuff for a while,” he told them. “We’ve just been waiting for a game to roll it out with.” But-but-but, oh nevermind.

Asked if it’s an “entirely new” and not just an update or extension to the existing Source engine that Valve has been using since 2004, Newell said simply “Yeah.”

Back to Half-Life 3 then (because obviously), Newell also mentioned that development on Ricochet 2 is ongoing. What’s that? Well, Ricochet was a Half-Life multiplayer mod created by Valve.

It’s not the first time Newell has obliquely referred to the MIA Half-Life sequel as Ricochet 2 – in April, he talked about the “game” in a SevenDayCooldown podcast, saying that “We end up changing our minds as we’re going through and developing stuff, so as we’re thinking through the giant story arc which is Ricochet 2, you might get to a point where you’re saying something is surprising us in a positive way and something is surprising us in a negative way, and, you know, we’d like to be super-transparent about the future of Ricochet 2.”

So, Half-Life 3 is still in development. News at 10.