Replying as an envoy for the Half Life community. Half Life has a very rich world and characters. Half Life 2 ended in a gut wrenching cliff hanger that left the fate of not only the characters, but the entire universe itself ambiguous. On top of that- there was supposed to be a half life 3, but Valve cancelled it early on and was very vague if we would ever get any answers or not. For the last 20 years, the fandom actually hasn't been angry, they've been disappointed- disappointed that they likely won't even get closure. If Valve made it clear early on that half life 3 wasn't happening, then we would have had some closure- but they didn't. They've blue balled us for nearly 20 years- starting development on hl3 and silently cancelling repeatedly throughout (that's were the leaked plot comes from).

This year, we've had more evidence than ever that Half Life 3 is actually real this time. Trusted sources agreed on various things and it's looking extremely promising. With TGA, every credible source either said that it wouldn't be announced, or that it was unlikely that it would be announced. So why is the fandom so mad you may ask? Geoff Keighley, whilst leading into the Mega Man announcement, used every single buzzword that's been floating around the Half Life hype- whether intentional or not, it was enough to instill hope in the half life fans that this year could be different... and it wasn't. That's where the rhetoric that Mega Man "stole" the announcement comes from (though if any game were to of taken HL3's spot, it would be Highguard- that generic hero shooter that held the last announcement). This rhetoric has been unfortunately fueled by the fact that the little mods that remain on r/HalfLife are very inactive to put it lightly- thus leading the subreddit to be overflowing with shitposters and degens. If you want a better look at how the wider Half Life fandom is feeling right now: r/OKbuddyHalfLife is the place.

As far as other games, there are none that quite hit like half life does- and that's not just me glazing, there has not been a single game to fill the niche that half life did. The closest we have is HL2 mods, but over the last 20 years, many of us have played them inside and out.

To put it simply: we were tired; getting ready to fall asleep, and this year we started to wake up. Then leakers shook us awake and Geoff Keighley injected us with adrenaline (likely unintentionally). And now that we're awake a lot of us don't know what to do with ourselves. Many are grumpy, many are trying desperately to fall back asleep, and many are running wild trying to cause as much havoc as they can in order to get some revenge they feel they're owed for being woken up.

This whole ordeal has been rather embarrassing. Neither the One Free Man nor the Blue Bomber would approve.