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Project Borealis is a non-profit project by the Project Borealis Team that aims to create a gaming experience for Half-Life 2: Episode 3. It uses Marc Laidlaw's August 2017 blog post, Epistle 3, as the story. It will be using Unreal Engine 4. The team since then has been dedicated into creating Epistle 3 and continues to make updates every so often. A release date of fall 2024 was announced in a Teaser Trailer[1], it is unknown if this is for the prologue or the complete game.
Background[]
Following the release of the Epistle 3 blog post on August 25th 2017, a small team, a subreddit, and a website were immediately created for the project.[2]
Development[]
In late August 2017, a team was made to create the game alongside a website and a subreddit.
In October 2017, the first update was released showcasing concept art, music and early models to good reception.
In late December 2017, a second update was released showcasing more progress on the game with more 3D models, concept art and music. It was stated that they wanted to recreate the Half-Life 2 experience fully. Accelerated back hopping, circle strafing, bunny-hopping, and much more is to be added.
In January 2018, it's estimated that over 60 people across the board are working on the project in their freetime.[3]
In May of 2018, a third update was released. This time, in-game animations for weapons and movement was shown. Concept art was also shown, featuring Alyx and a classic houndeye. New compilations of music were released, featuring a remix of CP Violation fromHalf-Life 2.
In August of 2018, the fourth update was released to the Project Borealis YouTube channel. This update expanded on the movement previously seen in Update 3. The main reveal of the update was the newly announced Ravenholm techdemo, with some Ravenholm-themed concept art and music to boot.
During late October 2018, the team released their performance demo, a program that sent specs from the user's computer to the team to further improve the performance of Project Borealis.
In January 2019, the team would publish some of their development software repositories onto GitHub, along with their fork of Unreal Engine 4.
In June 06 2019, the team published a developer blog releasing their C++ movement code under an open source MIT license.
In June 19 2019, the fifth update is released, showing how they have been designing and building levels for the game and their latest progress on gameplay, new concept arts alongside with a new soundtrack are released too.
In February 2020, a visualization video of Project Borealis' development from the very start up to early January 2020 (872 days in 3 minutes!) is published.
In March 2020, a detailed video showcasing their Wind & Air Drag systems that the Programming Team has been working on is released.
In September 2024, a teaser trailer for Project Borealis: Prologue was released.
This article is non-canon. Its subject matter does not take place in the "real" Half-Life universe.
This article has yet to be cleaned up to a higher standard of quality.
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Real-World subjects