G-Man’s voice actor rings in the new year by dropping a cryptic tweet grenade promising ‘unexpected surprises’ into the starving Half-Life 3 fanbase

There are certain, well, certainties in life. Death and taxes are two of them, while the fact that Half-Life 3 is probably never coming is a fitting third. Despite a bevvy of occult rumours and whisperings, prayers and sacrifices to the periodic table have never borne fruit. Silksong, for all its despair and mania, can’t even hold a candle to the long, 21-year old flame that fans of Half-Life 2 have been holding for the sequel that never was.

But hark! What’s that cresting yonder hill, a cryptic tweet from G-Man’s official voice actor? Could it be that the end-times are finally upon us? Is the rapture finally come? On the 31st of December 2024, at 10:00PM—basically at the crack of the new year—Mike Shapiro, voice of the beloved and cryptic G-Man, tweeted a slow-pan of the cover art from his music single Best Long Dog.

Tagged #Valve, #Half-Life, and #GMan, what really has engines revving and copium machines flooded is what’s spoken within, as Shapiro’s dulcet tones give way to the stilted delivery of G-Man, his voice like cracking ice on an ancient lake: “Another year already. Good to see and hear from so many of you. May the next quarter-century deliver as many… unexpected surprises, hm? As did the millennium’s first… Then again, time is fluid. Like music. See you in the new year.”

The game’s fan subreddit is already in full conspiracy mode. One particular post notes that the window featured in the Best Long Dog cover art has a trio of numbers—197, the only stable isotope for gold. In other words, the only version of gold without a half-life. The actual length of the video, as sleuth loamiferous points out, is also 197 seconds exactly. 197 days is also the length of time between Best Long Dog’s release on YouTube after Shapiro’s last song, Magnetic North, came out.

I am barely chipping the surface of the iceberg when it comes to the numerical alchemy going on at the moment (Shapiro also updated the playlists for his three songs very recently) but considering the exactness of the number 197 showing up three times, I’m absolutely starting to believe there’s some dark sorcery going on here.

This also isn’t the first time that Valve has teased a Half-Life game with ARG shenanigans. In fact, Half-Life 2 had a similar amount of tomfoolery when a decrypted photo of a whiteboard led to a secret website, leading fans on a treasure hunt. If Valve does have something baking in the oven—Half-Life 3 or not—it wouldn’t shock me if it was working with Shapiro to put a new ARG together. Could this be the fabled Project White Sands? Only time will tell. Then again, time is fluid. Like music. Or so a little bird told me.