The Half Life 3 Conundrum.

[Neekoolawous]

Is it just me or am I hearing Valve throwing around the words Half Life 3, more than they should be saying Half life 2 episode 3? As a distant observer of Valve's severely time dilated work ethic, it occurred to me that there is a possibility that they are building HL3 and have scrapped Episode 3?

One reason I can think of is the engine issue. HL2, episode 1 and episode 2 were all on the same engine, but around the release of episode two the engine really started to get dated. I think that they might have tried to switch engines halfway through episode 3 and it either they weren't happy with it or it didn't even hold together.

Either way this is clearly speculation, but what I'm asking is, If Valve released HL3 and not episode 3, how would you react? Perhaps I'm overreacting a bit.

(Personally I would be pissed. I NEED CLOSURE DAMMIT.)

 

[Ravnican]

I believe they're going to wrap it up with Half-Life 3 instead of releasing a third episode. They must have realized that they are not cut out for episodic gaming and need more time to finish their games. I understand this way of thinking when it comes to Half-Life since they probably don't want to do anything bad to their main franchise.

Important note: I played Half-Life 2 and it's two episodes on late 2010 so I haven't been waiting as long as some of you.

 

[Beryl77]

I don't see why you would be pissed. Of course the game will have a closure. It will continue where ep2 left off, the name doesn't matter. Valve isn't stupid to just suddenly start a new arc, that wouldn't make sense and they know that. So, I couldn't care less about the name. The game will have the story and length that Valve desires, whether it's called hl3 or Freeman's frosty adventure.

It's true that they've said, the episodic model didn't quite work but they've also said that it hasn't failed yet.
Well, whatever it will be, the graphics engine isn't the reason. They've stated that they don't plan on making a Source engine 2 or anything like that in the near future. They'll continue to polish the Source engine like they've been doing for years.
Also, it's definitely not dated yet, just look at Dear Esther and you can see what the source engine is capable of doing.

 

[ResonanceGames]

Valve said in April that the episodic content model has been replaced by "games as a service." It would be ridiculous to release an expansion pack after all these years anyway. I highly, highly doubt that episode 3 is still in development.

 

[Neekoolawous]

The problem is, would the third episode be the same length as the others, and as a result of scrapping the episodic model, would they just release HL3 being the length of an episode or a full game?

 

[Evil Smurf]

Valve is too late in timing to release half-life 2 episode 3 for it to matter in the scheme of things, it has gorn the way of Duke Nukem in the way I stopped caring about it.

That said, I too would like them to finish it