In true Half-Life fashion, the next game that might come out has been leaked in another game entirely. YouTuber and journalist Tyler McVicker uncovered a few references to a project titled 'Citadel' in the new Aperture Desk Job.
It's nothing new for Half-Life. So many projects have come and gone, being developed and cancelled behind closed doors while onlookers got a glimpse through leaks and rumours. The only one that came to fruition was HLVR - Half-Life VR, now known as Alyx.
With that said, Citadel could be another Half-Life in the works, but that doesn't mean we'll ever see it. As McVicker says, nothing is official until Valve directly announces it. But we do know a little about Citadel thanks to McVickers' datamining.
"Somehow, a significant amount of Citadel code comments are just sitting in the Aperture Desk Job DLLs," McVicker said in his video. "Citadel appears to be a Combine vs rebels, team-based, squad-based, class-based RTS-FPS hybrid. The game appears to have a campaign... and two major systems at play.
"The bots have a dynamic behaviour system, a mood and memory system that changes how they react to something during a game of Citadel." He goes on to note that Citadel has "held items" that are "attached to the player's body" - these serve as abilities, one of the two major systems mentioned. There are also bots.
To put into perspective what Citadel will look like, McVicker said it's like "Left 4 Dead, Alien Swarm, an RTS, and Half-Life all [had] a baby." Don't expect a linear FPS game or a horror-clad VR. Citadel is another kettle of fish entirely, but it's still set in the Half-Life universe.
But that's not all that McVicker uncovered in his datamine. He also found references to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's Source 2 port and "a recreation of the previously cancelled Portal paint game." We do know that Valve has a few "exciting" games in development, so everything is lining up for a new breath of life in its game development department.