Consider the 2016 Doom. You could claim expectations were tempered by Doom 3 and Rage plus the loss of Carmack, but the game wildly exceeded expectations and wa

Consider the 2016 Doom. You could claim expectations were tempered by Doom 3 and Rage plus the loss of Carmack, but the game wildly exceeded expectations and was incredibly well received by its target audience. Valve isn't developing HL3 because a project of that magnitude requires simply more dedication and conviction than Valve's devs might even have anymore. The company is one of those flat structures where developers work on whatever they have passion for, which means anything they make is gold, but if nobody has passion for it it will never be made. And compared to the work required to make all their games since HL2 - not skill, just raw hours of design and testing - HL3 is way beyond the scope of what Valve has made since then. Portal 2 is the most significant achievement since then, and all it really was was level design and event scripting - there are no real enemies, no AI, and the game length was still quite a bit less than what a full FPS release on par with the old Half Life would expect. It should be no coincidence the release of Steam ended the Half Life franchise. Once the company had effectively infinite cash the staff could pivot from making complex hard to develop games that would make huge returns to making whatever they wanted - Dota 2 has nothing pay to win, no payments to even play, the only in game transactions are for cosmetics. It is something no other moba, not even Blizzard's, is willing to risk because everyone else is too worried about making sure ends meet from the games revenue. So I do not believe Valve is incapable of living up to the hype. Even making a game as good as Half Life 2 would be enough. Portal 2 was considered a success despite being inferior to its predecessor because it was still really good. The problem has nothing to do with fear of failure, but a lack of willpower in Valve staff to put millions of hours into making a worthwhile successor to Half Life 2 when they can get similar accolades for much less effort making games in other genres. It is the same reason you so rarely see expansive and good RPGs. They are much more time consuming to make than almost any other genre of game.