Half-Life 3 is perhaps the biggest red herring in the history of video games. No matter what, people will always chase after it, even if the dream of ever seeing the conclusion to Gordon Freeman’s story grows ever more distant with each passing decade.

And now we’ve got a new tidbit that’s got everyone riled up, especially me, who’s grown up hearing about Half-Life 3 but never actually seeing it materialize. It was to the point where I could not look at anything having the number three in it without uttering “HL3 confirmed” and playing the X-Files theme song while drawing triangles. Ah, good times.

Anywho, in a new Q&A hosted by veteran Valve programmer Christopher Green, the developer gave a strong hint toward HLX being Half-Life 3 in what’s probably the most direct “confirmation” of the project’s true nature ever since Gabe Newell was still assuring us that Episode 3 was coming soon.

Asked to give information about HLX itself, Green replied with just one sentence: “I think you know the answer to that :-)” and proceeded not to talk about it further, because, after all, this is a Valve alumnus we’re talking about.

Green’s implication here, of course, is that HLX is Half-Life 3, a theory that’s become so popular among every single Half-Life fan out there, not least because data miners and reputable leakers like Gabe Follower have been digging out some damning evidence for it. There’s probably a vacuum-sealed NDA holding him back from providing any further details, but his willingness to throw that in there could also indicate that Valve is slowly but surely preparing to show it to the world.

We previously heard how HLX was going to be a Steam Machine exclusive, which turned out not to be true, and it’s also something that I couldn’t see Valve doing for any good reason.

The company’s also been developing some pretty advanced NPC behavior technologies, state-of-the-art animation and lip-syncing measures, graphics and physics systems, etc., to the point where there is no way it isn’t working on some blockbuster AAA project.

One of the byproducts of this development recently made it into Counter-Strike 2, where Valve now has baked bomb explosion simulations to realistically emulate real-life explosive behavior. The shockwaves follow physics-based trajectories and are heavily influenced by the environment, meaning corridors, obstacles, and other environmental elements can drastically alter how the explosion behaves. And all of this comes at a zero FPS cost.

Yeah, they’re working on HL3 all right (I am definitely not delusional).