Back in September 2024, the team behind the Half-Life 3 fan game, Project Borealis revealed that a demo for it will be released on PC in Fall 2024. And although we still don’t have an exact ETA on when it will come out, the devs shared some vague PC requirements. Not only that, but we now know that this fan game will be powered by Unreal Engine 5.
Project Borealis is a fan-made project inspired by the huge cliffhanger from Half-Life 2: Episode Two. This prologue chapter will let players step back into the HEV suit of Gordon Freeman, and offer a glimpse into the next chapter of his journey.
Players will explore a Ravenholm that has changed over time and been affected by nature. While moving through this eerie place, they will face familiar enemies that have been reimagined. They will also find new secrets hidden within.
As said, Project Borealis will be powered by Unreal Engine 5, and not by the Source Engine. In other words, we’re looking at a completely standalone free HL game. The team also promises to faithfully recreate the Half-Life 2 movement and gameplay mechanics in UE5. So, it will be interesting to see whether or not they’ll be able to achieve this.
To run Project Borealis: Prologue, you’ll at least need an Intel Core i5-8500 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 with 8GB of RAM and a GPU that supports DirectX 12 Ultimate or Vulkan 1.3. The devs recommend using an Intel Core i5-12600K or an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D with 16GB of RAM. Sadly, though, they have not listed specific GPUs in their PC specs.
Project Borealis is the most promising HL3 fan game of those that are currently in development. So, I’m really looking forward to it. To be honest, I don’t expect we’ll ever get to play its final version. But hey, at least we’ll get a taste of it with this demo.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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