According to Game Informer magazine, Valve are not planning to ship Half-Life 2: Episode 3 in 2010. Episode 2 was released as part of the 'Orange Box' pack in 2007, alongside Team Fortress 2 and Portal, and word on Episode 3 has been very limited since then, despite the original plan being for all three episodes to be released in just eighteen months following the release of Half-Life 2 itself in November 2004. The magazine goes on to speculate that it's possible that Episode 3 may have even been cancelled and replaced with a Half-Life 3 running on a next-gen version of the Source Engine.
At the same time that this disappointing news has been circulating, an artificial reality game has appeared via the latest Steam updates hinting that further developments on the Portal 2 front may be imminent. The Portal team have been working on the sequel since shortly after the original game was released, despite the departure of original designer Kim Swift a few months ago to work for another company, and it sounds like some sort of announcement or preview is now on the way. A Portal 2 could certainly ease the waiting pains for the release of Episode 3.
Seriously disappointing. Waiting 4 (ish) years for a few hours of gameplay? I can't even imagine how far away Half-Life 3 is.
ReplyDeleteHope it's not as far away as Starcraft II - we'll never see that bad boy!
ReplyDeleteSTARCRAFT II started beta testing several weeks ago, and YouTube is now covered in battle report videos as hundreds of players report balancing issues and discuss strategies.
ReplyDeleteWhen beta ends (it's usually a 3-month process or so), the game will immediately go into production and will appear on the shelves some 6-12 weeks later. So, STARCRAFT II: WINGS OF LIBERTY, will appear on store shelves and on download services sometime this year, possibly even as soon as July-August. Blizzard are pretty lax on release dates, but once a game hits beta the schedule becomes much more reliable.
HALF-LIFE EP 3 is much, much further away than that, I think it can safely be said.
My friend has the Starcraft 2 beta and ive seen him playing it...so that actually IS coming :L
ReplyDelete