Unsurprisingly, yesterdays big Half-Life release wasnt the sequel to Half-Life 2 or even the third Half-Life 2: Episode entry, but a 20th-anniversary update to Valves legendary 2004 game. And given what studio co-founder Gabe Newell has to say on the subject in a 2-hour documentary that the company released in tandem with the update, it seems less likely than ever that well be seeing either follow-up anytime soon.Newell explains what he calls his personal failure near the end of the video:You cant get lazy and say, oh, were moving the story forward. Thats copping out of your obligatiion to gamers, right? Yes, of course they love the story. They love many, many aspects of it. But sort of saying that your reason to do it is because people want to know what happens next... you know, we couldve shipped it, like, it wouldnt have been that hard. You know, the failure was my personal failure was being stumped. Like, I couldnt figure out why doing Episode 3 was pushing anything forward.Thats not to say the company didnt try. One idea for Episode 3 included an Ice Gun that Engineer David Speyrer says in the documentary wouldve let players spray amorphous shapes that could serve as barriers, platforms, or even Silver Surfer mode paths that they would shoot in front of themselves to cross gaps. Speyrer also talks about blob enemies that could move through grates or split into smaller head-crabby things. RelatedBut Speyrer and other Valve employees featured in the video echo Newells sentiment that they just couldnt come up with ideas that seemed worth a new Half-Life game. One of its level designers said something similar in a 2020 IGN interview. He also blamed scope creep the tendency of a project to slowly grow beyond its original plan and the company wanting to get going on developing the Source 2 engine that drives VR prequel Half-Life: Alyx. Newell sees Half-Life 2 as an engine, a platform, or at best a whole industry unto itself, gaming journalist Geoff Keighley, who Newell once gave a key card for Valves studios and told to do whatever you want, wrote for Gamespot.