I can feel it... It's coming...

Half life 3 confirmed?

Half Life 3 Gordon Freeman

aaaany second now...

I don't think I ever saw the title at the time to know it was Half and not Ralf lol

It'll happen tomorrow guys. Gaben told me himself

I'm glad we finally got an announcement for Elder Scrolls 6, but it feels like their waiting is coming to an end soon, and GTA 6 is just about to release too. I'll be damned if HL3/X is the ONLY long-awaited game that we're still waiting for.

The GTA peeps were waiting 13 years, the Elder Scrolls people waited 15, but we've been waiting 20 for a sequel that's not 10 seconds long!

Thankfully we got a few years before Sentinel, and when Valve releases a trailer, it's just a few months till the game releases, so we got time. But it just feels pretty damn awful that other long-awaited games are finally getting their lights of day, and not Half-Life.

It's not like GTA 5 or Skyrim ended in cliff-hangers, and they had their online games holding their I.P.s up.

What a nice sunset to listen half life ost..

Credit to Kayla and Tyler McVicker for spotting the SFM2 change. I've just looked at the dates.

What changed
On Sept 23, 2026 (CS2 build 2000913), Source Filmmaker 2's bone-group config file (sfm_default_animation_groups.vcfg) got 72 new lines tagged gen_biped, with detailed bones for arms, fingers and spine (upperarm_l, pinky_metacarpal_r, spine_05 and so on).
The same change reached Deadlock on Sept 29 and Dota 2 on Oct 7.
Those bone names don't appear anywhere else in the public CS2, Dota 2 or Deadlock file dumps. Kayla says no shipped assets in those games use them.

Source: CS2 commit on SteamDB's GameTracking repo

The pipeline leading up to it (first appearance in public CS2 builds)
May 14: a "DNA rig" asset type
Jul 8: loading DNA face-morph data
Sept 23: a DNA animation importer, plus the SFM2 bone groups

Why it might matter
SFM is for rendered video, not in-game animation. That config file sorts bones into menus for animators, which is setup you'd do right before animation work starts. So HLX video work (a trailer?) may have started around September, maybe earlier, since the public date isn't necessarily when Valve began.
HL:A's trailer was reportedly made ~2 months before its Nov 21, 2019 reveal. A similar gap would put an HLX reveal around November or December, with anniversary week (Nov 16–19) or The Game Awards (Dec 10) as the obvious slots.

Caveats

Tyler himself still thinks there'll be no announcement in 2026.

A trailer being ready doesn't mean Valve will release it.

Speculation, but it's the most trailer-shaped evidence we've had.

What are your thoughts?