GC: Episode Two in Q1 2007

By Tom Bramwell Published 24 August, 2006

And Portal might've been in HL2.

Valve's Doug Lombardi has said that Half-Life 2: Episode Two and its entourage of Team Fortress 2 and Portal will be released next year. Most likely in February.

Speaking to Eurogamer at Leipzig this week, Lombardi blamed it on "Valve being overly aggressive on our dates". "We're aiming for Q1 right now and we're really far along in the playtest stage."

"You know, our thing is always that we're trying to make really good experiences and so we're going to manage to that rather than the schedule."

He also said that Portal - which looks ace, by the way - might even have wound up being part of Half-Life 2 if things had been different.

"To us, the Portal gun is similar to the gravity gun in Half-Life 2, and had we been doing episodic back then it would've been great to put out something like Ravenholm as an episode of its own and let people play with the physics and then say, well, now what are we going to do with the physics based on what we saw from people playing with it?" he said.

"We'll be able to get a lot of feedback and say, okay, how are we going to use this in Episode Three or in future versions of Half-Life single-player or multiplayer? We'll be able to make more educated decisions about how to progress that sort of technology, which we think really can open the gameplay as much or perhaps more so than the gravity gun and the physics did."

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (15) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Freek #1 6 years ago

    It's not verry episodic anymore is it when you only release one episode per year??

  • Kazzahdrane #2 6 years ago

    True, but compared to every 5 or 6 years I think it qualifies as such.

  • Freek #3 6 years ago

    Those 6 years include making a brand spanking new and pretty awsome game engine though.
    Now that they have it they are making a new game with it rougly every year. Same as everybody else is doing.
    Wich is fine, love Half Life. But pretending that it's some new revolutionairy way of doing game developement, is prehaps stretching the truth a bitt, don't you think?

  • Zero Beat #4 6 years ago

    Surprise, surprise!

  • cheze #5 6 years ago

    and not to forget the originators of PORTAL ....

    [link url=http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardrop.html
    ]http://ww w.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/nar...[/link]

    a mod of the old halflife 1 engine. Its a bit naughty when they fail to mention where the idea came from, as it can give false impressions.

  • coojam #6 6 years ago

    Looks like the Portal Gun is going to be given to Gordon in Ep 3 then.

  • Kiigan #7 6 years ago

    a mod of the old halflife 1 engine. Its a bit naughty when they fail to mention where the idea came from, as it can give false impressions.

    Hardly. They hired the guy responsible and bought the idea from him. Valve own it - there's no deception there.

  • Kiigan #8 6 years ago

    One annoying thing about the delays is that they've said repeatedly in interviews that Episode 2 started development at the same time as Episode 1, with a different team working in parallel. Why the delays?

    Also, a while back when EA announced they'd be doing Episode 2 for consoles, most of us at the time said (posting on Eurogamer) that there's no fucking chance whatsoever of that making it out in 2006 - therefore the question was "will they delay Episode 2 on PC to concide with the wildly optimistic console 2006 released date - which no-one really believed in outside of Valve and EA - or will they launch the PC version as planned with the console versions much later?". Well, now we have our answer.

    Valve do really really great stuff, but it is hard to get on board with this episodic approach when they are such ridiculously lengthy delays between each episode.
    Edited by 1 at 24/08/06 @ 14:29

  • smelly #9 6 years ago

    >and not to forget the originators of PORTAL ....


    Who all now work for valve.

  • smelly #10 6 years ago

    Valve do really really great stuff, but it is hard to get on board with this episodic approach when they are such ridiculously lengthy delays between each episode.


    You'd prefer they rushed each one out and not play tested them fully to make sure that they're fun and well polished?

  • Freek #11 6 years ago

    I'd prefer it if they'd just not bullshit us about it instead of promoting the imposible.

  • WhyMeeeeee #12 6 years ago

    just been watching this on youtube,

    http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=ach6tSA2big

  • Kiigan #13 6 years ago

    You'd prefer they rushed each one out and not play tested them fully to make sure that they're fun and well polished?

    Yes, I'd much prefer that. That sounds brilliant. Where do I sign up?

    Of course, I'm being sarcastic. I love how you automatically reach for the predictable false dichotomy. This isn't an "either / or" situation.

    What I WOULD prefer is, if Valve applied the same awesome level of professionalism that is exhibited throughout their products to their scheduling. Everyone with half a brain knew, back when EA announced they'd be doing the console ports of Episode 2, there was no way we'd see Episode 2 on ANY platform in 2006. Ultimately, this episodic approach is only going to fly if the gaps between episodes is reasonably short, and frankly if it was anyone other than Valve we'd all have lost interest by now.

  • Royal Fool #14 6 years ago

    Hardly. They hired the guy responsible and bought the idea from him. Valve own it - there's no deception there.

    Exactly, Valve liked the idea so much that they hired the team. Portal is very much an evolution of the original idea these guys had, but with far more powerful technology under the hood.

  • Ulgen #15 6 years ago

    "Elf needs Portal badly!"