Why would they go in this direction and not do HL3?
Half Life 3 is dead and as a
massive Half Life fan, I honestly hope it stays dead. It'll never live up to the hype that we've all built in our heads around the game and without the original team, I believe it'll just feel like an empty shell of what it could have been. Valve does seem like one of the few companies left that aren't mandated by investor timelines, but I still don't have high hopes for them being able to pull that one out and delivering.
That being said, I only heard of Deadlock because some gaming "journalist" recently was blocked from playing because they wrote an article about it, but the catch was that they technically never signed the NDA. They claimed they "pressed Escape" and backed out of the NDA without ever clicking "OK" so they were allowed to talk about it, so while Valve couldn't legally do anything against them, they simply blocked them from playing in the end. A lot of people were saying their first impressions was this game is Overwatch in the TF2 universe but despite some people thinking that might be someone talking shit, I saw nothing but praise for the game.
I don't care for Overwatch styled games, but I do hope this is a resounding success and spurs Valve into creating games again and while I don't want them to try for HL3, I would absolutely love a L4D3.