Valve Releases Some Half-Life: Episode 2 Details

Junaid Alam

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Valve Releases Some Half-Life: Episode 2 Details

Episode 2 is scheduled for a fall release and will feature higher production values than its predecessor, Valve says.

In an interview with Gamespot [http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2episode2/news.html?sid=6169501&om_act=convert&om_clk=multimodule&tag=multimodule;picks;title;2], Valve employee Erik Johnson revealed some intriguing details about the next installment in his company's vaunted Half Life gaming series.

Episode 2, slated for release sometime this fall on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, will be the second "episodic" release following the debut of Half Life 2 itself in December 2004.

Johnson said gameplay for the Episode Two storyline clocks in at around eight hours, or two hours longer than Episode One.

It will also take the player through a wider variety of environments, as evidenced by some of the recent video clips and screenshots depicting leafy outdoor terrain. Episode One, in contrast, started out in a very polished-looking indoor setting, but later returned to the more familiar territory of zombies, buildings and streets.

Johnson also noted that Gordon Freeman will be traveling in style:

There will be a new vehicle in Episode Two. The buggy from Half-Life 2 was built by a group of rebels that was clearly skilled at welding together a tube frame but was a bit lacking in the horsepower department. In this episode you'll be driving a car built by someone with a lot of knowledge of older American hot rods.

The Valve employee further said the company has made incremental graphical enhancements over Episode One - dual core support, a new particle effect system, and cinematic physics - because of its episodic release system and survey data from Steam users.

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Bongo Bill

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It's hardly worth calling them "episodes" if they can't stick to a regular release schedule, 's what I think. But I'm probably just bitter that I don't get to play Portal yet.
 

Andy Chalk

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I think Valve may be at some risk of episoding themselves into irrelevance. I loved HL2, and it was completely worth the crazy-long wait, because when it showed up I got an entirely new game that rocked my world from start to finish. It was awesome. Ep1 was good in spite of its "more of the same" nature, because I installed it, fired it up, played for a couple hours, and then finished it off midway through the next afternoon. It really didn't bring much new to the table - and don't tell me that "HAY GUYZ LOOK YOU CAN DO EVEN MORE REPETITIVE CRAP WITH THE GRAV-GUN NOW" is somehow Earth-shatteringly new - and it was over almost before it began. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Now, I'm not honestly all that interested in the release of Ep2, because it won't be anything more than a few more hours of a game I've already played - certainly not something worth waiting almost two years for.

I don't have any real problems with episodic releases in general, but I think that in order to make that sort of system work, you have to keep making with the content: new stuff every six months, say, less if you can swing it, a bit more if you're really going to bring something special to the party. Valve's insistence on massive engine overhauls and technology upgrades sounds nice on the surface, but the delays inherent in making such major changes while at the same time developing new content are unacceptable. Valve should save such sweeping technological changes for an entirely new game, and in the meantime focus on getting the HL2 material out the doors and into the hands of gamers. We should be playing HL2 Ep3 by now, not waiting around for Ep2 to arrive.
 

ChickenOfDoom

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There should be a petition to release Portal as a standalone purchase.

I didn't get Episode 1 and don't really care about Episode 2; cinematic first person shooters aren't that interesting to me right now. If you've played one you've played them all, as it's the same basic concept. A physics based puzzle game, on the other hand, interests me greatly, especially one with the kind of atmosphere seen in the Portal trailer.
 

Andy Chalk

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I will be extremely surprised if Portal doesn't surface on Steam fairly soon after its release.
 

Bongo Bill

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Malygris said:
I will be extremely surprised if Portal doesn't surface on Steam fairly soon after its release.
It'd surprise me if they don't sell the game after releasing it, too.

It'd make more sense than releasing it without selling it, after all.