Valve drops Half-Life 3 hints

Valve has made its clearest indications yet that something is going on with the Half-Life license. Hidden inside a special video made for the VGAs, featuring Portal 2’s Wheatley, are a series of strange clues. Wheatley didn’t end up winning the ‘Best Character’ category (though Portal 2 did scoop a bunch of awards), but that may not have been the main purpose of the footage.
Smarter chaps than me have found obscure text reading ‘OBSERVATION SATELLITE “LANTHANUM”‘, the latter word of which apparently means ‘to lie hidden’ in Greek. If you actually write that word in the Greek alphabet, it begins Lambda (which is, of course, synonymous with the Half-Life series).
All fairly obscure, you might (wisely) think. But then, there’s also an email going around, alleged to be from Gabe Newell, which reads “Yes, we are announcing something with a three in it [at E3 2012]”.
Of course, since most of Valve’s games are on a third installment this could mean Half-Life 3 (or Half-Life 2: Episode 3), Left 4 Dead 3, Team Fortress 3 or even (though very unlikely since it’s a bit too soon) Portal 3.
When taken in conjunction with the odd messages in the VGA video, some sort of Half-Life release seems most likely.
[Update]: Valve’s “Doug Rattmann” twitter feed is also going nuts, posting weird co-ordinates and the like.
Sources: rockpapershotgun.com, reddit.com