Seven years after its announcement, Project Borealis – a fan-developed game based on an unused story for Half-Life 2: Episode 3 – offers a ten-minute playable prologue on Steam.

Project Borealis was officially revealed by developer Icebreaker Industries in 2017, with the aim of Epistle 3 from former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw a reality. Epistile 3, for the uninitiated, was a gender swap summary of the story chronicling the adventures of Gertrude Fremont which many believe detailed the events originally planned in Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

The Borealis Project team continued to share updates on his progress until March 2020, but then everything went quiet, suggesting another fan game had met an untimely demise. However, the project’s social media feed briefly came to life in 2022 with a short video of a crowbar placed in the snowand now two years later, all systems are finally working.

In September, news broke that Project Borealis had been reborn in Unreal Engine 5 and that Icebreaker would soon release a ten-minute prologue, set before the events of the full game. And now that the Prologue is here, it takes players to a version of Ravenholm “transformed by time and the elements.” According to his Steam page“The once familiar city is now buried under a layer of snow, hiding the past and new dangers beneath its pristine surface. As you navigate through this hauntingly beautiful landscape, you will encounter reimagined classic enemies and completely new secrets hidden in.”

Icebreaker calls Prologue a “condensed, standalone gaming experience featuring a first look at the upcoming full Project Borealis game.” It promises “fully updated visuals,” a “faithful recreation of iconic characters.” Half-life 2 movement and gameplay mechanics”, and an original score. And as for why Icebreaker decided to release this small part of its larger project, studio head Postulio recently says PC GamerThe decision to use Unreal Engine 5 instead of Valve’s Source engine had required recreating the movement, physics, combat and atmosphere of Half-Life 2, and the team wanted “to make sure we were on the right way.”

“It also gave us an excuse to refine our own internal processes as a community studio,” Postulio added, “until we ended up with a pipeline capable of producing a ‘finished’ product.” A little more detail about the project and its future direction can be found in Project Borealis’. Recently released Update 6 developer videoand the Prologue itself is available for free download on Steambut requires a copy of Half-Life 2 to play.

So it’s a bit of an intriguing time for the legendary first-person shooter series. Not only is Icebreaker exploring a possible future for Gordon Freeman, but it is widely rumored that Valve could return to the series itself, with August bringing reports a “full-fledged non-VR Half-Life game” was in the works. Don’t expect there to be a “3” in the title.