I don't think Half-Life's story could be adequately expressed in any medium other than what Valve accomplished, mainly because I personally don't feel the narrative itself is all that thrilling so much as its expression, namely the set pieces and narrative beats it takes you through via play. Half-Life's narrative density comes from the worldbuilding, environmental storytelling, signature cast, and the combined working towards an thematically distinct and and evocative mood.
I don't want to read or watch the end of Half-Life, I want to see the events unfold before me as I am a partial passenger to them, and at times influencer. I want to scrawl over contextual aesthetic cues and scattered background audio, context formed after the fact and disjointed yet wholly relevant to the narrative as a whole. I want to play the journey Freeman has embarked on, seeing what he sees and knowing that what I know is all he knows. Even in a narrative that's pretty contrived of standard science fiction tropes it's the journey that works so well with Half-Life, and not experiencing that journey and its many deliberate mysteries and plot thread baiting just wouldn't be a Half-Life worth reading or watching.
But it'll never happen. Valve and the Half-Life fanbase are caught in a rock and a hard place. Reality is Valve are under no obligation to make more Half-Life. Nobody purchased a season pass, so there's no outright financial investment. I firmly believe the strongest creative works are made with passion, and Valve has no coherent direction for the Half-Life franchise backed by a mass of passionate workers (probably just too few) to see the final through. If they don't want to make it, and they don't, it won't happen. On the other hand Valve did construct and market the post-Half-Life 2 chapters as a three part trilogy, left on a loaded cliff hanger, baited a third entry and...we have nothing. The upset and frustration from these fans who aren't entitled to a new game but understandably feel mislead is just as a valid.
It's too little, too late though. I can't imagine any scenario other than Valve burning themselves out collectively with the series, trying new things, and steering the company as a whole and general production interest towards "community" titles and online games. Portal 2 was the last big hurrah for Valve single player games, a break from the Half-Life normality, and there's no sight of anything even similar on the horizon. I don't doubt that there's threads of Valve staff still passionate about Half-Life, but when your work culture encourages large cliques and leadership driven sustainable projects it's easy to have smaller passion projects never gain traction, only to fizzle out and die. Even when they're passion projects based on a monumental franchise. There's no evidence to suggest the people with the most sway and influence at Valve care about seeing a new Half-Life through, and so here we are. The continual talent bleed of predominantly single player experienced developers is the thick plume of smoke form the fire.
Half-Life's dead, baby. At best we'll get kitschy, gimmicky crossover junk in whatever social driven multiplayer game comes out in the future. Make sure to pre-order Left 4 Dead 3 to unlock Gordon's crowbar. And did you see that lambda symbol graffiti? Half-Life confirmed!!!
