Episode 3 Discussion and Information.

Half-Life Series
#1141

Correct, however ignoring Episode 3, they already ARE working on several projects:
-Portal 2
-Mac porting (though I don’t know if they’ve really even done any releases lately)
-PS3 porting
-The continued added content to TF2
-General product support

Their resources are finite, and it looks like they’ve got a lot on their plates as it is, and considering the amount of hype they drum up for all of those things, yet absolutely NOTHING for Ep3, it does make it look like that they took it off the stove, entirely.

#1142

Just because you haven’t heard about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. A casting call for Portal 2 was leaked a year or two before the ARG even started. They were working on it that entire time, and we heard nothing of it. Besides, their resources may be “finite,” but they still have a lot of them.

#1143

:3

#1144

if you watched interviews from portal 2 made at e3, you would know they have a pretty big team. From what i remember they mentioned 350 (!!!) full time employees, out of them 50 ( will go up to 70 if needed ) working on portal 2 ( 7-9 on portal 1 !! ), which is a full game. So lets say 20 ppl for dota clon, 100 for ep 3, 30 for l4d expansions and so on, and we have a lot of ppl left. They may actuallly be working at hl3 at the same time, since i dont know what those 300 ppl are doing otherwise.

edit; hmm, wikipedia says 225 ;/ So meybe they arent working on anything afterall besides e3 afterall ;( then again wikipedis has tendecy to be full of shit ;f

#1145

And the rest on marketing :smiley:

#1146

… I just reckon they don’t know how to end it. Alot of pressure to create the most epic ending for the most epic game… :3

#1147

They should hire the people who have played the most hours on the HL2 franchise so far, ask what they think it should end like. :3

#1148

i think they are more afraid the game wont hold a candle compeered to new shooters by its own with dated gameplay, and overused and clunky gravity gun with havoc engine that dont impress anymore, sure ep 2 worked since it was w hole package with tf2 and portal, but if it went out by itself it would probly tank. By now almost every new fps copied hl mechanics and made them better. Probly redesigning the old gameplay to feel fresh is delaying the game not the story and how the end it;f
Im sure we will see a redesingned gravity gun and a new physics engine ;f

oh man that would be the worst idea ever, if somone plays only hl2, that person would probly know nothing about goid storytelling in books and movies, and about good gameplay mechanics in other games ;]
It would probably end in requests for nude alyx ;d

#1149

True.

#1150

Hmm, maybe I’m wrong but somewhere in this forum there was an interview (?) with a guy responsible for the HL story and he said that it was finished a long time ago so I don’t think that’s the problem.

As for the “refreshed gameplay” I would suggest porting some stuff from Force Unleashed like Euphoria and Digital Molecular Matter, these technologies give loads of fun… :wink:

#1151

Maybe it should end with all endings the fans thought of so far. That’d be suprising.

#1152

The longer the wait the better it will be?

The longer the wait the more we’ll be disappointed?

I dunno, why is it taking so long!

#1153

A new nice art about gordon can chill us out.

#1154

There’s no EP3 until after Left 4 Dead 2:Episode 1 is released.

#1155

Oooooh we all saw what has been done by you.

#1156

God, enough with the “more L4D” jokes! It was funny the first few times, but now it’s just annoying.

#1157

its funny couse its true, those are not jokes O_o

#1158

I recall Laidlaw (HL’s writer) saying that while he’s got the story arc pretty much written out, it’s still open for expansion/modification wherever they please. Hell, he didn’t have the whole Combine thing planned out, or had even THOUGHT of it, when he wrote the story for the original Half-Life.

I DO hope they add a couple new weapons or something, the ones they have got tired halfway through HL2.

#1159

Yeah, they were so lazy adding in weapons like the gravity gun, bugbait, and AR-2. You’d think they’d at least be able to come up with something original :wink:

#1160

Gravity gun got old quick. “Oh hey, another see-saw”. It’s still amusing, but it can’t really hold its own as the main event for the whole game plus two add-ons.

Bugbait was fun, though was only made useful for a very limited time in very limited contexts. They should at LEAST make more use of it.

The AR-2 kinda sucks. It’s too inaccurate, chews through ammo like it’s going out of style, can’t hold very much (a problem with ALL the weapons of HL2), and for the most part is just a glorified assault rifle with an interesting, but seldom-available secondary attack.

The other weapons are completely bland, and hold a fraction of the ammo they did in HL1, and generally feel less useful. The weapons were only HL2’s strong point for the first hour, after which they got tired, and no alternatives were available.

Then again, history shows a lot of people are perfectly happy with Counter-Strike, which has an EXTREMELY boring arsenal, so I dunno maybe I’m the weirdo for wanting some spice in my killing devices.

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