By Katie Williams | Jun 27, 2012

Holy sugar! I'm sorry. I shouldn't start my day with an implied swearword, but you'll understand -- wake up to something like this, and all semblance composure and eloquence is out the window, with "this," of course, being the most news-like thing to come out of Valve for quite some time... An unofficial Valve fansite has received and posted what it claims are leaked pieces of concept art for Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Deep breaths now.

ValveTime says:

These fantastic images have been sent in by an anonymous visitor to the site from an unknown source. Despite that, we have no reason to believe they aren't real.

One could argue that perhaps they are just generic Half-Life 2 concept art of concepts that never made it into the final game. But there's plenty of evidence here to suggest they are post Episode 2.

That "evidence" includes hints of Xen, the crashed helicopter in an icy environment, and Alyx wearing her father Eli's jacket. Actually, I'm seeing lots of evidence that somebody at Valve really likes Alyx, because that sure is a lot of redesigns she's undergone.

"We wouldn't post anything unless it was 100% confirmed," says someone from ValveTime in the comments, defending against viewers' skepticism. "Sometimes we post things with a question mark at the end. This isn't one of them."

The full set of leaked Episode 3 art has been posted on the ValveTime Facebook page, but here's our pick of the most intriguing. What do you think? Real Episode 3 leakage, or has a very skilled artist just decided to troll the gaming world today?

What Do You Think?

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