Half-Life 2: Episode Three
Could it be gaming’s biggest flop?
by exterminat
©2011 Nicholas Laborde
Video game development is an extremely long and difficult process. In the case of some titles (Splinter Cell: Conviction), the entire project must be scrapped and redone, causing an unusually long development cycle.
You’re all familiar with Duke Nukem Forever. When it releases this June, that will be the culmination of over fourteen years of development (although “development” is debatable based on how much you know about the case). There obviously comes a point, and when Duke Nukem Forever releases, our focal point of delays will have to be moved elsewhere for criticism.
Where will it move? Half-Life 2: Episode Three. It’s not humanly possible to live up to the expectations it has set itself up for.
Time, Dr. Freeman?
Before I begin my foray into yet another topic of vague interest, let’s have a little breakdown of interesting statistics, as of the time of writing.
Significant Titles In A Series That Have Released During Episode Three’s Development
- Mass Effect 1 and 2 (and possibly 3, if EP 3 takes any longer, completing an ENTIRE TRILOGY OF GAMES)
- 3 Call of Duty titles
- Battlefield: Bad Company 1 and 2, along with BF3 if prolonged
- Fallout 3 and New Vegas
- Halo 3, ODST and Reach
- Assassin’s Creed, AC 2, and AC: Brotherhood (and possibly 3, completing ANOTHER TRILOGY)
- Killzone 2 and 3
But these are just outside series that have been released in the ongoing duration of Episode Three’s ‘development.’
To add even MORE insult to injury, let’s take a look at the ones released by Valve themselves:
Titles Valve Have Released During Episode Three’s Development
- Alien Swarm
- Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 (plus Mac versions in 2010)
- Portal 2
- Half-Life 2 and expansions for Mac
- Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source for Mac
- Portal for Mac
Oh, and let’s not forget this final part…
Titles Currently In Development At Valve During Episode Three’s Development
Keeping all of that in mind, let’s wake up… and smell the ashes.
Wake up, Dr. Freeman
It’s obvious that Episode Three is not in full development, simply from the statistics presented above.
The curious thing about the title, though, is that we have had NO official confirmation of it, other than going along with the fact that Valve stated there would be three episodes.
Something that you may be asking yourself right now may be “Why don’t they just release Half-Life 3 instead?”
Well, my reader, the purpose of the Episodes was to release content in a smaller amount of time so that the fans would not have to wait an eternity for a full-blown third installment.
The Episodes ARE the third installment.
With years of darkness surrounding the title, the massive Valve fanbase has been eagerly anticipating the third and final release of the Half-Life 2 story arc.
Hints abound in various Valve titles, and can be analyzed a dozen different ways.
The first and foremost of hints presents the only concrete mentioning of the title. In the Alien Swarm SDK, there are files that have Episode Three in their name.
Nothing of importance, but it gave us slight reassurance that some technical work is actually going on at the mysterious Valve headquarters.
The second hint would lie within Portal 2. At the end of Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the mysterious ship Borealis was discussed. And it lies inside of Aperture Science, the competitor of Black Mesa.
During Portal 2, you can go to the actual docks where the Borealis was. A life buoy rests on the catwalk near it, with the word “BOREALIS” on it.
Valve obviously wants us to vaguely understand that Episode Three exists. But the million dollar question… is anything actually happening with Episode Three?
Hiatus
Valve has vocalized that they want every Episode to be a showcase of fresh content. Taken directly from the Episode Three wiki,
Valve has said that they intend for each episode to highlight a major new feature or gameplay design element. In Episode One, this was the interaction with a well developed NPC, along with full implementation of the Source’s HDR lighting system. In Episode Two, this was creating large outdoor environments, high scale battles previously unseen in the Source engine, performance and rendering enhancements to the Source engine to accommodate multi-core processor architecture and a new cinematic physics system to create large physics-based events. According to a video involving Gabe Newell and two interpreters discussing deafness and video games with a small audience of hearing impaired people, it seems that part of Episode Three’s new gameplay and new Source engine features will include a deaf character and that the game will include better support for hearing-impaired players.
In my opinion, I think the reason for this unbearable wait is because Valve is either vastly upgrading the Source engine, or creating an entirely new version.
Every single Valve title has highlighted an advance in the technology, and as stated above they not only want to release this iteration with new gameplay elements, but with vast technical upgrades as well.
But with every massive undertaking comes the risk of unprecedented failure.
Prepare for unforeseen consequences
At the rate we are receiving information about the title (which is zero, by the way) and from the way Valve speaks of it (which is about bar-none), development could go as far as 2012. That would be five whole years between the previous installment and the new one!
Half-Life to Half-Life 2 was six years, and that was a monumental leap forward in terms of technology. Just think about that in this context.
When a piece of entertainment goes this long without any official word (bear in mind that as I said earlier, the game hasn’t even been officially announced), one word slowly creeps into our mind: cancellation.
To say that Valve would cancel Episode Three would be absolute heresy! There’s no reason for them to, and in all likelihood it won’t happen.
But from the information we have and the rate at which it is being announced, it’s fair game (no pun intended).
What else could Valve possibly introduce to make Episode Three innovative, and more importantly, stand out above the rest?
I have a very strong feeling that all of this tension and anxiety building up among the fans is leading to an overdose.
The cause? Hype. It’s a funny thing; no other entity can make or break a game like it.
Over so many years of development, how lengthy will be the title be? How much will it advance the main story?
Will it set up for a Half-Life 3? Will it be on both PC and consoles at release?
What new could it do? What possible innovations could Valve bring forth?
How will the connections to the Portal universe be executed? Will it be more than a cameo?
These burning questions are quite literally killing us. My only underlying hope left for Episode Three is the fact that Valve is the only company who could pull off something such as this.
The one free man
E3 2011 is drawing near. And as I clearly said here, Episode Three is of the utmost concern not only to me, but to the entire Valve fanbase as well.
Will Gordon Freeman’s journey ever truly be finalized?
Will the Borealis actually come into play?
Will the whole nonsense behind portals in the Half-Life universe revealed?
Only time will truly tell the fate of Episode Three.
I don’t know about you guys, but I will be hoping that of all the threes we will see at E3 this year, Episode Three must be one of them.
©2011 Nicholas Laborde
xxxxxx
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Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, E3 2011, Editorial, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | Alien Swarm, Duke Nukem Forever, episode 3, games, gordon freeman, Half life 2, Half Life 3, Half Life: Episode 3, half-life, Half-Life 2 Episode 3, Portal 2, Valve, Valve Corporation, Video game
When has valve EVER said that they are working on Epidode 3 or half life 3 for that matter? Never. Right now, it does not exist. Nobody will have any knowledge of it existing or not.
So, who knows, maybe they’re developing a new engine and are merely waiting for that to be done when they release the third. Idiots assume that they are already working on it but simply dont want to release the game.
Just because all those games came out in that time, doesn’t mean the game itself was being made at that time. It literally has no significance. Like Gran turismo 5, some goon would actually believe that since 2004- after Gran turismo 4 was released- they had started to develop THE Gran turismo 5.. No.
The anticipation for the game is false, valve have never announced shit, and there is no reason to create hype as hype will already be there. By the way, for a game like half-life, people are looking forward to finishing the game to see what happens in the story. The story is one of the biggest factors that drive the game.
Nobody plays half-life and says that running around shooting combine is the funnest thing they have done, they play it to finish a story. By the time half life 3 comes out, only the fans that truly want to see what unfolds in the story are sticking around. Nobody else.
Try this back in 2008 after Orange Box was released, direct from Lombardi’s own mouth – rather cryptic, but an indicator that there is work being done. Check it out in full here
Although an announcement may be impending, a release date remains farther away on the horizon. “The next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between [Half-Life 2] to [Episode 1], and [Episode 1] to [Episode 2],” cryptically noted Lombardi. Half-Life 2 was released for the PC in November 2004, with Episode 1 following in June 2006 and Episode 2 debuting alongside The Orange Box in October 2007. Doing the math, that would put Episode 3′s release date as far off as 2010.
The same could be said of Deus Ex, Duke Numkem Forever as well as several other LONG term game episodic titles that have had long gestations between episodes. Most games of this nature have a 3-5 yr break between episodes, espically if the story is being extended or using rebuilt or new engines. Such ast the two mentioned above. Even Mass Effect 3 has had significant time between number 2 and the upcoming number 3.
Not everyone forgets about a game’s storyline, it’s often like a book that is a best seller. Readers will often wait years between releases, yet won’t have to re-read the prvious one to get uptodate with the following one. It’s called memory retention. Sad fact is, many younger gamers do not have much of that, and suffer from the “Instant Gratification syndrome” that is so prevalent in todays society.
[Ed; Hint to readers/commentors - always break up your comments into smaller bite-sized paragraphs so readers can - well - read the comment. As one large block f text is usually avoided, and your thoughts are then missed by fellow readers.]
What I was saying was that, even though they were talking about it as early as 2008, doesn’t mean they have been working on it since 2008- present. They could have started writing out scripts and stories, they could have started planning and schedules.
They even could have started creating the game, but chose to stop and release it with a new engine, OR maybe choose to release portal 2- maybe to connect the games- or maybe just for references.
That last bit didn’t really mean much either, I know people dont forget storys like that, and I wasn’t saying that they do. What I was saying was significance to the player. If You were a massive fan of Fallout right now, and they released the next game in 4 years, would you still be as big of a fan to actually pay to play it?
You may, much like many people, but there also people that wont. People that have passed fallout and don’t really care anymore. Yes, they will be able to tell you what happened in the story, some at least, but they may not have the same desire to play.
Valve doesn’t want to lose gamers, and its important for them to release it as soon as they can. but im not part of valve, the longer people wait the more the people who dont really appreciate the game will begin to leave, and it will leave people who really do appreciate it, Whatever the game is, to finish the story.
The bare minimum turn-around for a decent title is between 18 – 24 months – nimimum, even on major franchises. The average is 36 months (3yrs).
However, most other studios that carry large titles often have more than one team working on the same title, but different iterations – at the same time.
The usual time span is that the second teams take over around the halfway to 2/3rds mark in a titles evolution, and begin the following iteration. This allows the studio to come out with the following iteration around 12 – 18 mths after the release of the earlier iteration.
Which is how titles like CoD, MoH, Sports titles, etc etc run. SO it “seems” to us, the end user, that the development time is much shorter than we believe. So when a title starts taking longer than that period, in general, most gamers wont to know what’s going on, why hasn’t it been released yet? etc etc.
Thing is, many studios do NOT operate in that fashion, and leave one team working on one title for continuity and uniformity reason. So between title releases, there’s also a break for the team, allowing them to just do normal things, take time off with family etc, then come back and begin anew on the next iteration.
Their time frame is not as rigid as those pushed to make funds urgently, which Valve certainly are not, and can then simply take their time in developing their titles, as their reputations hinge on the end result.
SO the time frame of the release between Episode 2 and 3 is not new within the game development world, and if anything, is quite ‘the norm’ actually.
Personally, I’d rather have a developer take their time in producing their games. There are litterally hundreds of other titles out there to keep me well ockupied with hours and hours of game-play to keep me happy from now until well into the future, even without ANY games being released.
One of the sadest things of the last two generation of gamers is their impatients for releases, yet at the same time, they are in an unprecedented period of game releases that has never been so huge in all of gamings history. Yet they see it as ‘normal’, as they ‘expect it’
So there’s around 30 odd titles being released each month, not incl all the mobile gaming apps of course, so the gamers choice is totally oversaturated. So if a decent developers decides to take 3-5 yrs to build it’s following iteration, more power to them. Only now, the guys behind PREY have gotten close enough to start publically discussing their next iteration, Prey 2, same as Max Payne 3, which has been in production for almost 5-6 yrs, both at the previous developers, and in the new developers hands.
And the time taken is certainly worth it, given what I’ve seen being delivered to my email inbox.
SO give em a break, I’m sure if you were working at something you were putting your heart and soul into, you’d rather that the bosses and powers-to-be allow you the time to do it right, not have to add an update the day of release because you’d been pushed to deliver on a tight schedule.