was working with sign language and on a deaf character. Newell said that Gordon's companion, Alyx Vance, had programmed her pet robot, Dog, to use sign language, inspired by a deaf person she had a crush on. "Epistle 3" After Laidlaw left Valve, he posted a short story titled "Epistle 3" on his website in 2017. The story, described by the Verge as a gender-swapped "fanfic", features characters with names similar to Half-Life characters, such as "Gertie Fremont" for Gordon Freeman. Substituting the characters with their Half-Life counterparts, the story sees Freeman and the Lambda Resistance travel to the Arctic to board the Borealis, a ship with extradimensional technology that allows it to erratically travel through time and space, where they confront a myriad of alternative versions of themselves from different timelines. The group seizes control of the Borealis and set it on a collision course with the heart of the Combine empire. They rig it to self-destruct upon impact, annihilating the Combine's home planet and crippling their forces, but the explosion is not sufficient to destroy the Combine or their Dyson Sphere. Alyx is abducted by the G-Man. Gordon is rescued by the Vortigaunts just before the Borealis explodes, transported into the far future, with most of the Resistance dead and the success of their uprising left uncertain. Laidlaw described the story as a "snapshot of a dream I had many years ago". Journalists interpreted it as a synopsis of what could have been the plot for Episode Three. Alternatively, it may have been intended for Borealis, another project led by Laidlaw. The designer Robin Walker denied that the story had been Valve's plan for Episode Three, and said that it was likely just one of many ideas by Laidlaw. Development Valve announced Episode Three in May 2006, planning to release it by Christmas 2007. Concept art surfaced in 2008. Valve released little information in the following years; though Valve still discussed Half-Life, there was no clarity on whether further games were coming. In March 2010, Newell spoke of "broadening the emotional palette" of the series, and said the next Half-Life game may return to "genuinely scaring the player". In 2011, he said: "We went through the episodes phase, and now we're going towards shorter and even shorter cycles ... For me, 'entertainment as a service' is a clear distillation of the episodic content model." That year, Wired described