Now I’ll be the first one to tell you that if this turns out to be real concept art from the highly-anticipated final chapter in the Half-Life 2 series, I will be as giddy as a school girl. Ever since my father bought me the original Half-Life 2 on CD-ROM for my PC back in 1998, I’ve been fascinated with the world Valve has created.
The concept art was found on ValveTime, and unofficial Valve fan site. Apparently an Anonymous visitor to their website sent it to them.
Here’s what ValveTime had to say:
“These fantastic images have been sent in by an anonymous visitor to the site from an unknown source. Despite that, we have no reason to believe they aren’t real.
One could argue that perhaps they are just generic Half-Life 2 concept art of concepts that never made it into the final game. But there’s plenty of evidence here to suggest they are post Episode 2.”
They went on to say;
“We wouldn’t post anything unless it was 100% confirmed,” says someone from ValveTime in the comments, defending against viewers’ skepticism. “Sometimes we post things with a question mark at the end. This isn’t one of them.”
The keyword there is ‘evidence’. After checking out all of the images that ValveTime uploaded to their Facebook page, I have come to the conclusion that this is either a very elaborate hoax, or this is definitely Post-Left 4 Dead 2 Concept Art. The art style is very similar to previous work that Valve has done, and for somebody to hoax this, they would have to be extremely talented. Here are a few shots from the gallery. Here is the rest of the leaked Episode 3 art.
