Half-Life 2: Episode 3 may not see release until 2010

[Gwarsbane]

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thum...ase-until-2010

A few links at the above url

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.

So much for the cheaper, faster, better that the episodic content was suppose to be. So far it hasn't been cheaper, it hasn't been faster, and I have no idea about better cause I don't play single player, but judging how they seem to be ignoring HL2DM it doesn't seem to be better.

[v3rtigo]

The long time for EP3 would only be justified if it was as much of an upgrade from hl1 to hl2. And if it was at least as long.

[CaLeB-]

That wasn't a surprise for me; I was already expecting this, maybe even longer.

[GeoKill----->]

Yeah same here

[Doctor Zyo]

Originally Posted by GeoKill----->

Yeah same here

[Ihmhi]

Originally Posted by GeoKill----->

Yeah same here

[Mooga]

It's Valve. It takes them many years to pull out a game... but they generally do a very good job

And it looks like they updated the Source Engion again with L4D... I'm just hoping for quad core suport. Althought dual core suport is better then nothing...

[BinaryLife]

Originally Posted by Gwarsbane

So much for the cheaper, faster, better that the episodic content was suppose to be. So far it hasn't been cheaper, it hasn't been faster, and I have no idea about better cause I don't play single player, but judging how they seem to be ignoring HL2DM it doesn't seem to be better.

Well it is cheaper, better remains to be seen, but in comparison with how long it took them to make HL2 since HL1, it is clearly faster. "Fast" however, is a different story all together.

Sort of a math recap though, just to be sure. 1998 to 2004 is 6 years. Episode 2 (2007) to 2010 is 3 years... ok good, so half the time. Therefore, I expect a game at least half as long as Half-Life 2 or I will be dissapointed.

To tell you the truth though, so long as the price remains low and the game doesn't suck, then I wont really care too much about it. The only thing I would say is that marketing wise it's a bad idea to take so long as the engine they've designed is rapidly being out dated. I know they set up an allowance for changes and updates such as HDR and newer shadowing effects/particle effects but with engines like Crytek and the Unreal engine Source is rapidly becoming old. Hopefully they can add enough features to it to compensate for their time delay and the resulting freeze impact it will have on their engine.

[greenday5494]

Originally Posted by BinaryLife

Well it is cheaper, better remains to be seen, but in comparison with how long it took them to make HL2 since HL1, it is clearly faster. "Fast" however, is a different story all together.

Sort of a math recap though, just to be sure. 1998 to 2004 is 6 years. Episode 2 (2007) to 2010 is 3 years... ok good, so half the time. Therefore, I expect a game at least half as long as Half-Life 2 or I will be dissapointed.

To tell you the truth though, so long as the price remains low and the game doesn't suck, then I wont really care too much about it. The only thing I would say is that marketing wise it's a bad idea to take so long as the engine they've designed is rapidly being out dated. I know they set up an allowance for changes and updates such as HDR and newer shadowing effects/particle effects but with engines like Crytek and the Unreal engine Source is rapidly becoming old. Hopefully they can add enough features to it to compensate for their time delay and the resulting freeze impact it will have on their engine.

i agree. the main problem with source, everything is very static... you need to recompile all the time, the shadowing sucks, and crysis's facial expressions far surpasses source's.

[FrenchToast]

Binary, your math is flawed. From HL1 to HL2 there was far more work than from Episode 2 to episode 3, unless they're completely rebuilding their engine from scratch.

[BinaryLife]

Originally Posted by FrenchToast

Binary, your math is flawed. From HL1 to HL2 there was far more work than from Episode 2 to episode 3, unless they're completely rebuilding their engine from scratch.

My math being flawed and you disagreeing with Valve's time usage are not the same thing. However they spent their time that's how long it took. The point of showing you what I did was to say that they have yet to take as long as they took to make HL2, a full game, than they are in making this episode, not a full game. So as long as the time frames are shorter, they are "Faster."

So yes, they did more between hl1 and 2, and of course that takes more time and sort of explains that time usage around and away. But until it takes a total of 6 years or more and the production of EP3 is not as different from EP2 as HL2 was from HL1 then your point is completely moot.

[Circuitous]

Originally Posted by FrenchToast

Binary, your math is flawed. From HL1 to HL2 there was far more work than from Episode 2 to episode 3, unless they're completely rebuilding their engine from scratch.

Actually Source was already being worked on while HL1 was in development.

That's actually how the engines got their names: HL1 code went to /goldsrc/ and everything that wasn't ready yet went to /src/

They never stopped.

[greenday5494]

^yes, very true. i think they finished their facial system in 2000, and most of their shader system in 2002.

[FrenchToast]

Originally Posted by Circuitous

Actually Source was already being worked on while HL1 was in development.

That's actually how the engines got their names: HL1 code went to /goldsrc/ and everything that wasn't ready yet went to /src/

They never stopped.

So that only adds to my point.