Fans of Half-Life, this news is for you. In case you missed it, Project Borealis was unveiled in 2017. Essentially, this would be a fan-made effort to turn former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw’s Half-Life 2 Episode 3 synopsis into a playable game.
Marc Laidlaw’s idea was for Half-Life 2 Episode 3 to have a sort of gender-swapped fan faction vibe that would see physicist Gertrude Fremont make her way to Antarctica to investigate the Aperture Science vessel Borealis.
If none of this is new to you and you’ve been following Project Borealis, you’ll remember that the script was completed in May of 2018, and we even got a look at some early, incomplete footage of new maps a year later.
However, since 2020, the game has been mostly silent. The last update came in 2022, in the form of a crowbar lying in snow posted on X.
Loading….pb_twn_5y pic.twitter.com/UhFEcS6mlm
— Project Borealis (@Proj_Borealis) August 25, 2022
Now, that all changes thanks to a brief new teaser for Project Boreal: Prologue, taking players back to the newly snowed-in streets of Ravenholm. The teaster in question consists of some short clips of Ravenholm, the most famous level in Half-Life 2, except now it’s covered in snow. The headcrabs are the furry Arctic type we first saw back in 2017.
The YouTube listing for this teaser describes Project Borealis: Prologue as a fan-made gaming experience set before the events of Project Borealis, which does not yet exist as an actual game. Project Borealis is made in Unreal Engine 5 and not Source, which also means that the team has had to recreate all the core Half-Life 2 elements: movement, physics, combat, and, of course, its ambience.
The reason for the Project Borealis: Prologue is that, when released, it will serve as a demo, a bridge between the familiar and the unknown, to gauge fans’ reactions to the project and ensure the team is on the right track.
As of this writing, little else is known about the project, but we know that more information on Project Borealis: Prologue will be released sometime in the coming weeks. There is also no release window for the full Project Borealis, but more news is on the horizon soon as well.