C'mon, Remedy, you can't use the words 'Rise and Shine' in your TGA trailer—don't you know you're hurting all those hopeful fans in r/Halflife?

A scene from Control trailer reading "Rise and Shine"
(Image credit: Remedy)

Hope springs eternal, and there's no better evidence of that than the members of subreddit r/Halflife, who have been waiting all year for the announcement of Half-Life 3, or Half-Life X, or whatever the next Half-Life game will be called.

Granted, they've worked themself into a frenzy despite a lack of what might be called evidence that the HL3/X announcement would take place before the end of 2025: there were a few vague tweets, but not much else to go on. On the other hand, Valve is poised to release a bunch of new gaming hardware early next year, and it would make sense to have some new software to go along with it.

Either way, these fans have been sadly watching the final days of December slowly tick away, one by one, with no sign of a Half-Life 3/X announcement—which means they've pinned pretty much all their hopes on the announcement coming at The Game Awards. Which just ended. Without a HL3/X announcement.

OH FUCK YOU from r/HalfLife

It was met with agreement from other members of the sub. "FELL FOR IT AGAIN AWARD!" one user posted.

"HOLY HELL GAVE ME AN HEART ATTACK MAN" said another. "WHAT THE FUCK" said a third.

I concur. That is extremely bad form, Remedy! The sweet yet delusional members of r/Halflife are already swapping out their syringes of Hopium and replacing them with Copium—you didn't need to also jab them with Nopium, did you?

That said, Control Resonant does look pretty good, and we'll probably be playing that long before we ever get a real whiff of Half-Life 3. Here's the trailer:

CONTROL Resonant – Announcement Trailer | The Game Awards 2025 - YouTube CONTROL Resonant – Announcement Trailer | The Game Awards 2025 - YouTube
Watch On
Steam FrameSteam MachineSteam Controller

Steam Frame: Valve's new wireless VR headset
Steam Machine: Compact living room gaming box
Steam Controller: A controller to replace your mouse

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

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