Gabe Newell Discusses Episode 3 Delay

[Daedalus_UK]

To be honest, Episode 2 ended in a great way to justify a full blown sequel. In other words Half Life 3 or possibly 4... how does their numbering system work after the episodes?

 

[Abedeus]

Unless they're dramatically reworking the story to include the adventures of John Freeman, I don't see what the big delay is.

I can see it now: Half-Life 2 - Episode 3: Full-Life Consequences

Or maybe that's just me...

NO! This would mean that we would have to do barrel rolls and land and blow up houses with ghost zombies and watch the final boss' eye get shot.

...And we would see the end of story in Episode 4.

 

[Jonny49]

They could of at least talked about it at e3.

 

[Pietato]

They saw the Duke Nukem Forever ZP and decided to take Episode 3 in a new and much more culinary-based direction.

"Off-world colonies."

 

[j0z]

I wish the y would release something, any little bit of info. If nothing else how about the year they are releasing it? But maybe, just maybe, we will all wake up one day, log into Steam, and there it will be, front page.
What Valve needs to do is turn on a suppression field at all the designer's homes. I bet we would see Ep3 in a few months then.

 

[The Political Gamer]

If you read his Twitter page he blames the delay on new food arriving to his office. Go figure. This is his Twitter account. [http://twitter.com/GabeNewell]

 

[RebelRising]

Unless they're dramatically reworking the story to include the adventures of John Freeman, I don't see what the big delay is.

I can see it now: Half-Life 2 - Episode 3: Full-Life Consequences

Or maybe that's just me...

NO! This would mean that we would have to do barrel rolls and land and blow up houses with ghost zombies and watch the final boss' eye get shot.

...And we would see the end of story in Episode 4.

"I have to kill fast and bullets too slow!"

 

[Gladion]

You will never have to worry about Valve making a crap game.

I think that considering how good Valve is at game-making ,and the fact they can balance making L4D2, Epidosde 3, doing updates for TF2, and running Steam

All those things you listed are tasks done by different people. If your company is big enough, you can do it - it's not like Valve is still this small team of ~20 people who all have to keep up with their schedule. Oh, and Valve making a crap game might be unlikely but not impossible, don't be a fanboy. Look at what happened to Rare. When Nintendo had sold them to Microsoft, I thought they were fucking nuts - but it was a smart decision.

helps me believe that they will polish a game to almost perfection, just enough to come back later and add some new shiny thing tht gives more room to grow while fulfilling the last hole. I think thats a little too rambly, but too tired to care.

What about L4D? The only updates they made were
a) Fixing bugs and exploits
b) Adding features that should (and would) have been implemented in the game anyways if they hadn't had to kick it out for christmas.

Valve can do whatever they want. Basically, they are an independent studio and due to Steam are also in a position to make a profit without publishers at all. Therefore, there are no time constraints to Valve's development. So it'll be done when it's done.

It's not like it is the hobby of those evil publishers to pressurise the people they work for, you know. Somebody has to finance it, and even Valve has no limitless money source.
That privilege is reserved to Blizzard and Nintendo only.

 

[KapnKerfuffle]

Lost amid all the kerfuffle surrounding the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2 ...

Wo hoo! My favorite word!

 

[Chaosut]

I'm a fairly cynical person, so whilst i don't ever hold my breath over a video game (except maybe Deus Ex 3, which probably won't even come out till late 2010), i wouldn't mind hearing an update every now and then that actually tells us something; which this one didn't really do. I doubt their doing the DNF thing and just twiddling their thumbs, more likely they are focusing on L4D2. From valve's pespective, L4D was a big hit, so the sooner they release the sequel the better. I don't think of valve as either trustworthy or untrustworthy, i just figure that they're a video game corporation that will do what will most likely appeal to the masses and therefore get the most money. Video games are also a business after all. It seems fairly unlikely that valve are sneakily making Episode 3 as lengthy and ground-breaking as possible. But it's likely to be released sometime in the near future, just whether it's after L4D2 and all it's updates (and maybe even Portal 2, who knows) is another thing.

 

[whaleswiththumbs]

helps me believe that they will polish a game to almost perfection, just enough to come back later and add some new shiny thing tht gives more room to grow while fulfilling the last hole. I think thats a little too rambly, but too tired to care.

What about L4D? The only updates they made were
a) Fixing bugs and exploits
b) Adding features that should (and would) have been implemented in the game anyways if they hadn't had to kick it out for christmas.

Ehh, go back to your L4D2 boycott group you asshole.

 

[Gladion]

helps me believe that they will polish a game to almost perfection, just enough to come back later and add some new shiny thing tht gives more room to grow while fulfilling the last hole. I think thats a little too rambly, but too tired to care.

What about L4D? The only updates they made were
a) Fixing bugs and exploits
b) Adding features that should (and would) have been implemented in the game anyways if they hadn't had to kick it out for christmas.

Ehh, go back to your L4D2 boycott group you asshole.

Just ignore everything I've said before, so you don't have to argue. I don't boycott L4D2, I'll most probably get it. Now go fuck yourself.

 

[whaleswiththumbs]

helps me believe that they will polish a game to almost perfection, just enough to come back later and add some new shiny thing tht gives more room to grow while fulfilling the last hole. I think thats a little too rambly, but too tired to care.

What about L4D? The only updates they made were
a) Fixing bugs and exploits
b) Adding features that should (and would) have been implemented in the game anyways if they hadn't had to kick it out for christmas.

Ehh, go back to your L4D2 boycott group you asshole.

Just ignore everything I've said before, so you don't have to argue. I don't boycott L4D2, I'll most probably get it. Now go fuck yourself.

Well, already did that today so any better advice?

 

[Pendragon9]

"I was gonna start work on episode 3, but I had to complain about how Sony is ruining gaming, which took up all my time."

Not to make this a flame or anything, but if he wasn't doing interviews about what he predicts for the future, we'd have some more episode 3 news.

 

[mrpenguinismyhomeboy]

As one can probably tell by my icon, Valve is my favorite developer, but the decision to release L4D2 before Ep. 3 has pissed me off. I can't think of any other reason for them to do something like this other then a quick funding boost. If L4D2 doesn't have enough substantial changes, I'm gonna be pretty pissed, because then it will just be a map pack for 50 bucks.

But even if L4D2 does have some major changes to the formula, then I will probably be even more pissed, because then I'll be wondering why then aren't putting all this work into Ep. 3. So either way it's a lose-lose situation.

I'll probably buy L4D2 anyway, though...

 

[Frogman54]

Ive stuck by Valve with all their games, and i can proudly stand up and say im a fanboy, because they havent let me down yet. sure they do take quite a while to release games, but all of the games they do release are kickass and have very few flaws. Portal and Half-Life are my two favorite games and ive played both all the way through atleast 5 times. Ive read articles that speculated stories behind the Portal and Half-Life worlds being connected and i think it would be great to see them reveal more about both of the sets of characters pasts. If they need another year or so to polish the game and make the story just as awesome as Portal and Half-Life i gladly give them it and will preorder both Episode3 and Portal2 along with LFD2 when they are near release. Keep up the good work Valve!

 

[Sparrow]

So, by giving us the reason, they've not given us a reason.

Whatever. As long as it's half as good as Episode 2, I don't care.