Chet Faliszek opens the above video by explaining, “This is not saying that something’s happening, not trying to allude to anything. I’m going to talk about some stuff from like 10-plus years ago. I’m not trying to say anything. OK?” Because if you were a writer on Half-Life 2’s episodes (as well as the Left 4 Dead games, the Portal games, other Valve projects, etc.) the internet will interpret anything you say as a confirmation that Half-Life 3 is in the works and will be announced at whatever unassuming videogame showcase is on the horizon, no matter how unlikely.

Faliszek is carefully and specifically replying to a comment claiming it would be “incredibly easy” for Valve to make Half-Life 3: “The plot could go anywhere.”

“Here’s the thing,” Faliszek says. “For some people it could, but for others…” As Faliszek pointed out in another video, there’s a modern fannish obsession with deep lore that he doesn’t share. He’s more of a character writer, interested in how people react to things in the moment rather than the things they’re reacting to. And he quite fairly doesn’t want to have to deal with people who care deeply about the sacred texts complaining about trivia.

“When people ask me, ‘Oh man, don’t you wish you could?’ No! No, I almost never want to touch something that already has some kind of lore, or some kind of back history about it, not even like Left 4 Dead or anything. I don’t want to touch anything old. I don’t have to have people who remember stuff better than I do yelling at me about changing some history of lore from 50 years ago at this point.”

Faliszek mentions that at one point he spoke to Bungie about working with them, “But all their games have this, they have so much lore, they have so much lore, and I’m like, that lore terrifies me. I have no idea, I don’t know that much lore about my own life let alone your game’s. I don’t want to have to write inside of that. Any sequel to me is just a disaster nightmare that I never want to do. So I’m not going to.”

In case calling the thought of sequels a nightmare wasn’t enough, he finishes by reiterating his disinterest in returning to Half-Life. “No, ” he says, “I don’t want to touch that with a 10-foot pole. Or even a grav gun separating me from that 10-foot pole. A grav gun to a 10-foot pole, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it with Dog’s arms.”