Original SiN: Source in the works

Ritual will probably re-release the first SiN on Steam, giving gamers who missed it the chance to experience it for the first time and gamers who cried about the bugs, threw it away and played Half-Life instead the chance to go, "This is actually pretty good. I'll seriously consider purchasing your next product."

What's more, the developer is "playing around" with the idea of porting the game to Half-Life 2's Source engine in the same way Valve has been with Half-Life, Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat. For those straining to keep up, this general unity between the devs is an off-shoot of the deal to release an episodic follow-up to Ritual's SiN through Steam, Valve's downloady-games-on-demand service.

Speaking in an interview with a SiN fan-site, community relations manager Steve Hessel suggested it was more than just an idea, too. Quoth he, "we're replacing assets where it is appropriate, so the SiN grunts are replaced with the SiN Episodes grunts and you get the new weapons. Some of the gameplay is also being adjusted to work with the new tech. We don't have a release date at this point, but we'll probably talk more about this at a later time."

Hessel also offered some more details on the first of the SiN Episodes, Emergence, claiming that it would "hold its own" graphically, feature physics-based puzzles to go with the now-expected dynamic physics engine stuff, could include secondary playable characters (perhaps JC or new-girl Jessica), and may well grow beyond an initial run of episodes depending on its popularity. So, er, there may be sequels.

What there won't be, however, is a demo version of the first episode, although videos "and the like" are "definitely planned". Multiplayer, meanwhile, is still being considered. "One of things we're thinking about is asymmetrical multiplayer, which, unlike traditional team-based multiplayer, has the two sides doing completely different things," he suggested.

We shall see (and always, when we do see, we will see through the character's eyes, Half-Life-style, you see, si?) when SiN Episodes: Emergence pops up on Steam in "late fall 2005", which roughly translates as "around the time the leaves that you haven't bothered to sweep up start rotting and your neighbour pops round and complains because she's a fussing busybody who should never have retired and looks older than her own mother".