Half Life 3 is like the treasure at the end of the rainbow. Except, there is no treasure, the rainbow faintly resembles a mushroom cloud and the one leprechaun that will guide you there is from those movies (i.e. not very nice). That being said, we know of its existence and one way or another, it will revolutionize the single player first person shooter genre.
However, since Half Life games are known for their other contributions – the first game bringing us some of the greatest mods of all time with Counterstrike and Team Fortess, both which received their own full releases and the second game introducing the Source Engine which has been used to create a new wave of Machinima – what will Half Life 3 do to revolutionize the genre outside of the single player campaign?
If it releases, it will be on Source 2 making it ideal for Machinima. Mod support remains to be seen, but how can it contribute in ways we’ve never seen? Maybe an innovation on Cloud computing or large multiplayer caps we haven’t thought of yet? It will certainly be interesting to see when – and if – it ever releases.