Half-Life 2 - Aftermath

Eurogamer.com has word that the expected expansion pack for Half-Life 2 is already in the works. Reporting on information gleaned from PC Gamer UK, the site has learned that the expansion will be entitled 'Aftermath' and is currently slated for a summer release. Aftermath will deal with the fallout from the events at the close of the PC title as the residents of City 17 make for the hills in an attempt to get to safety. Alyx Vance, heroine and robot wrangler, will play a larger role in the expansion, but the article doesn't give specific details on what exactly her relationship to you as the player will be. From the article: "The reason we're able to do this, and why it's so exciting is because of Steam. If we were doing this without Steam we'd have to put it in a box, we'd have to start figuring out shelf space over a year beforehand. You'd see it six years from now..."

Comments

Wrong Focus

[Obiwan Kenobi]

What? Steam is the only direct-to-consumer internet-based game delivery service. Insomuch as a direct client-to-server experience with direct payment capacity in the client. You trash it because it is the only one available and the only one that has performed.

Like it or not, Steam has been a huge success and through the sale of HL2 (and subsequent server almost-meltdown) they have learned a lot of lessons. I never have problems playing any Valve games, from HL2 to Counter Strike. Any and all patches are applied quickly and easily with no input needed from me.

Call me what you like, but I -love- Steam and being ingrained in the independent game industry, I really like how it has been accepted, sometimes begrudgingly, by the game-buying public and geeks at large. I see its flaws, but I'm more of a silver lining guy myself.

This is the kind of service/platform that independent developers need, not shelf space. Games are becoming risk-adverse, and that means creativity suffers. Don't slam a great leap in technology and delivery. Instead, use it, provide some constructive criticism, but don't dismiss it.

Re:Wrong Focus

[Loco3KGT]

You list a lot of great things about Steam, but you forgot the important one -

I don't play Counter-Strike unless Steam says I can play Counter-Strike. Whether I want to play it or not is a moot point, because the Steam authentication servers have to give me permission either way.

mirror

[winkydink]

here

Re:This means she lived?

[xTK-421x]

Here's the site with the pieced together story: http://fragfiles.org/~hlstory/.

Re:Letting Steam Off

[Chris Mattern]

> You can buy Half-Life 2 in your dead tree packaging

True.

> Steam is just a second method of distribution.

False. You must *register* with Steam, you must be *connected* to Steam. Or your dead-tree package doesn't work.

Chris Mattern

Re:Letting Steam Off

[raygundan]

Not true. Offline play requires a token to be set on your machine, which expires. You occasionally need to reconnect to play offline.

Also, while I was playing the game, there was a fairly severe bug in the process-- the order of events in authentication went like this:

1. check for network connection
2. if present, delete offline token
3. get new token from server

If the server happened to be down, but you left the ethernet cable plugged in, you'd lose your offline token and be unable to play. It locked me out for a solid weekend, and all I wanted to play was a singleplayer physics mod.

This bug may be fixed now-- I haven't played in several months after finishing the game and getting too busy with other things.