This article will obviously spoil the very ending of Half-Life: Alyx. Thus, if you haven’t finished the game, you shouldn’t continue reading. You have been warned.

“The problem was how do you make any ending feel like this game mattered? How do we solve the prequel problem to not feel like this game is just like a hermetically sealed short-story in the world of Half-Life?” Sean Vanaman.

Half-Life: Alyx has a very familiar ending, and is also kind of predictable. It ends where Half-Life 2: Episode Two ends. Are they planning to continue the timeline? Is Half-Life 3 ever going to happen? Will Valve continue making VR titles? Are we ever going to see another first-person shooter?

“We had the prequel problem, we had the ‘god in a box’ problem. Those are the two big ones. The idea that once you free god, god owes you a favor. And that favor has to be pretty consequential. What does Alyx want?” Jay Pinkerton.

According to Valve’s writers, there’s no secret book that lays everything out for the next games. The ending of Half-Life: Alyx suggest certain directions, and Valve is very excited about it. They do have ideas, however there’s not a concrete 300-page manual of where it goes after Half-Life: Alyx.

“It just it moved the ball forward in a way that everyone in the room just found interesting. You couldn’t stop thinking about it … We couldn’t stop talking about it.” Jay Pinkerton.

The team has a timeline and they are working through it, but they don’t want to talk about it. They are actually enjoying the whole fan speculation thing that is going on. They also feel discussing and wondering about what’s exactly going on is an important part of the game.

“It’s fun to think about, isn’t it?” Sean Vanaman.

Lastly, you can read the whole article here.

Thanks Polygon.