Valve teases Half-Life 2: Episode Three
Category: News
Posted: May 31, 2009 at 12:01 AM
Current mood: awesome
By Tom Magrino, GameSpotPosted Oct 14, 2008 12:30 pm PT
Marketing director Doug Lombardi says announcement may arrive later this year, though game is still more than a year off.
Had things gone according to plan, Half-Life 2: Episode 3 would already be old news. After all, when Valve originally said that it would rebrand Half-Life 2: Aftermath as Episode 1 and release subsequent installments on an episodic timeline, the final game in the Gordon Freeman saga was expected to land by Christmas 2007. Of course, Valve ended up releasing its highly acclaimed The Orange Box during that time frame, which included Episode Two along with Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Team Fortress 2, and Portal.
Now, eyes have turned to the long-promised Episode Three. In an interview with gaming blog Kikizo, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi revealed that information on the game may be just around the corner. "We may at the very end of the year," said Lombardi, when asked when Valve plans to announce or show the game.
Although an announcement may be impending, a release date remains farther away on the horizon. "The next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between [Half-Life 2] to [Episode 1], and [Episode 1] to [Episode 2]," cryptically noted Lombardi. Half-Life 2 was released for the PC in November 2004, with Episode 1 following in June 2006 and Episode 2 debuting alongside The Orange Box in October 2007. Doing the math, that would put Episode 3's release date as far off as 2010.
With its multiyear development cycles, the term episodic is a bit misleading, a fact that Lombardi acknowledged. "I think our philosophy was that, we spent six years on Half-Life 2 and upwards of $40 million, and basically 80 percent of the company ended working up on it for a good chunk of that time. And that was just too much; nobody wanted to do that again... I think the goal is to get away from that 'half a lifetime, mountains of money' to produce the next thing, and we've succeeded in that--and maybe we could have chosen a better word to describe what we were doing."
For more on Valve's Half-Life 2: Episode 2, check out GameSpot's review of The Orange Box.
Half-Life 2: Episode 3 may not see release until 2010
By Andrew Webster | Published: October 14, 2008 - 11:50AM CT
With Half-Life 2: Episode 2 having been released just last year, it's a safe bet that we won't be seeing Gordon Freeman in a new game anytime soon. But just long will we have to wait? Well, according to Doug Lombardi, Valve's VP or marketing, it will be quite a while.
"The next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between Half-Life 2 to Episode One, and Episode One to Episode Two," he told Kikizo. And as for releasing any news about the game, Lombardi teased, "We may at the very end of the year."
Using Lombardi's math, we can estimate that the third Half-Life 2 episode won't be ready until around 2010 (HL2 was released in 2004, while HL2:E2 didn't hit until last year). Valve is a developer that is infamous for it's long development cycles, but like most similar companies, is also renowned for its quality, so the wait shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Let's just hope that Episode 3 reaches the same level of quality that the previous games in the series did.
