Half-Life 2: Episode Three Not Coming out for a While


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Kikizo: Well, **** happens though, and you had warned me in our last interview to expect that someone wouldn't be continuing with us on the journey by the end of the game and... I was like, who's it going to be?!

Lombardi: Yeah, we teased enough so that we would hopefully get you to the end, and then you could find out! But the other thing that played into a lot more people finishing it - my hunch is that more people finished Ep2 than Ep1 -was because we got back to the variety of gameplay that was in Half-Life 2. I heard from folks who felt like Half-Life 2 was like three or four games in one, and we did that intentionally; there were five specific places where we said in this place you're going to do this, in this place you're going to airboat, a lot of gravity gun in this place, in this place you're going to fight a lot of striders... and then at the end we're just going to send things over the top. And I think Ep2 went back to that winning formula, whereas Ep1 was kind of you and Alyx fighting in the city streets the whole time. I don't want to **** all over Episode One and say it was a one-note thing, but it wasn't as varied in the gameplay as Ep2 was, and I think that's one of the things that keeps people going, is that variety.

Kikizo: When are we going to start to hear about Episode Three? Because the gaps seem to be quite long based on the first couple of episodes.

Lombardi: Yeah, the next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between HL2 to Ep1, and Ep1 to Ep2.

Kikizo: Won't you announce or show anything on Episode 3 this year?

Lombardi: We may at the very end of the year.

Kikizo: What do you think about the distance between the episodes, though? Is there a benefit to having a longer wait?

Lombardi: I think our philosophy was that, we spent six years on Half-Life 2 and upwards of $40 million, and basically 80% 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. There was this trajectory with Half-Life 1 costing a lot less than that, and taking two years or whatever it took. HL2 was six years and a lot more money, so if we were to keep going down that path it was going to get more expensive, and take even longer. And what we wanted was an alternative to that. We wanted to deliver the games more quickly, and we didn't want to be taking the risk of $40 million or $50 million to make the thing, because at that point you're like, "oh my god we have to sell 2 million copies or else we're ****ed", right? [laughs]

So I think we were successful in that it's been less than four years since Half-Life 2, and we've gotten two episodes out; each of them had new technology, each of them had new gameplay - arguably Ep2 had more new gameplay than Ep1, but I think that we were successful in giving players more time with Freeman, more time with Alyx, giving them new experiences, telling them more of the story, in a much quicker fashion. I mean, "episodic" conjures up this notion of television where it comes once a week for 12 weeks or whatever, and so maybe there's a better word for what we're doing! You know what I mean? But 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.

Source: http://games.kikizo.com/features/valve-dou...nterview-p3.asp

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kinda defeats the purpose of a shorter games in several "episodes".
I mean, "episodic" conjures up this notion of television where it comes once a week for 12 weeks or whatever, and so maybe there's a better word for what we're doing!
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Reminds me of what Yahtzee said...episodic games are meant to be cheaper, shorter, and released quicker, and whilst Valve have done points 1 and 2 perfectly they still struggle to do the third right :p

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Reminds me of what Yahtzee said...episodic games are meant to be cheaper, shorter, and released quicker, and whilst Valve have done points 1 and 2 perfectly they still struggle to do the third right :p

The quality worths it. The Episodes, specially the second one, are great.

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Quote - (Sethos @ Oct 14 2008, 18:09) *

kinda defeats the purpose of a shorter games in several "episodes".

Quote -

I mean, "episodic" conjures up this notion of television where it comes once a week for 12 weeks or whatever, and so maybe there's a better word for what we're doing!

It's still a 'real' episode whether they like it or not, they are extremely short and have a development time of big-budget games - How the hell does that fit together?!

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we spent six years on Half-Life 2 and upwards of $40 million, and basically 80% 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. There was this trajectory with Half-Life 1 costing a lot less than that, and taking two years or whatever it took. HL2 was six years and a lot more money, so if we were to keep going down that path it was going to get more expensive, and take even longer. And what we wanted was an alternative to that. We wanted to deliver the games more quickly, and we didn't want to be taking the risk of $40 million or $50 million to make the thing

I don't see why they can't scale back full games by licensing the engine. I'm sure that would have made up a really good part of that 6 year development cycle for HL2. I mean they did it for HL1, the episodes are using an existing engine (admittedly their own), so why not in the future release full games and if you need a new engine license one and then just add in the bits and pieces needed (like the facial system).

I mean thats a bit redundant to say now that they have Source at their disposal, but I always hear them barking on about how long HL2 and I can't help but think thats only because they took the long route. The engine leaks ect didn't help either. I mean it's not like every developer has 6 year turn around on full releases, hell many successful game series run on about three year releases.

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Well valve is famed for delays. but they are also famed for quality and great games. i guess a little wait wont do us any harm. after all there are other things to do in the meantime.

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Let's be a little patient, shall we? With the giant cluster**** ending they put in Episode 2 and all the ambiguity surrounding the Half Life 2 games they should definitely take their time to bring the plot together beautifully.

I do have to say that their acquisition of the Portal team was a lucky coincidence. How they got some innovative puzzle game to fit in the Half Life plot was pure genius (Y)

One thing that remains to be seen is how far they're taking the Source engine before it's time to rework a new version of it. The engine's aging nicely and still offers the best scalability of most modern game engines to date.

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I don't see why they can't scale back full games by licensing the engine. I'm sure that would have made up a really good part of that 6 year development cycle for HL2. I mean they did it for HL1, the episodes are using an existing engine (admittedly their own), so why not in the future release full games and if you need a new engine license one and then just add in the bits and pieces needed (like the facial system).

...

Starting over on a new engine would take more time than using their current engine, and there's no reason to scrap their current engine as it's working fine for them.

Personally, I don't mind the wait, EP2 was good and I know EP3 will be good too.

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Eh. Gives me time to work on Ep 1 and Ep 2. I started on Ep 1 after getting The Orange Box and working my way through HL 2 again, but Ep 1 stalled because I was also working on beating SP modes of 3 or 4 other games (despite the fact that for all of them except GTA4, I'd beaten them before, just not for a while). I should get on the episodes again though. HL2 is a great series.

-Spenser

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I'll be happy as long as they deliver a quality game, regardless of how long it takes to develop (only to a certain extent of course). We don't want another Duke Nukem now, do we?

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I still have to sit down and finish HL1, I've attempted it 3 or 4 times but always get side tracked and lose my saves.

I did the same thing with HL2, owned it for 3 years or so, and I've only completely finished it once, but started playing it 20 times or so :p

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TBH, as long as it's not a 5 year wait, they can take as long as they need. As much as I'm itching to see how the ep1-3 arc ends, they need to take their time and not rush it. It's Valve, just like Blizzard, they can take as long as they want, they've got a hell of a lot to tie up, and they've gotta make sure it's right.

Plus following on from the Orange Box? How do you do that? CS2, Portal 2 and HL2 EP3 would be awesome, they really set a precedent there, just hope they can follow it up well.

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Well it will be worth the wait, no doubt. Still, was kinda hoping it was coming soon still :( as I'm really looking forward to the third (and final?) chapter. Oh well, I'd rather a quality title then a rush job cause people are complaining it's taking too long.

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