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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..."
Will it have an ending? Because Half-Life 2 sure as hell didn't.
I actually acknowledge the convenience of Steam for some folks, but requiring Steam-based activation is abhorrent. While I am supportive of any company trying the counter piracy, there are limits to what they should require of customers. I know it's easy to sit here and complain without offering another solution, but it's not my job to come up with a solution that makes customers happy, it is the developer's/publisher's and they would be much better of if they were to work out a more sensible solution. I bought HL2 and I'll probably pay for the addon, but if there were a method that did not require Steam (and were legal) I would use it in a heartbeat. But it is really not all bad, when I reformatted my machine and reinstalled HL2, I only needed to reinstall Steam and Steam did the rest. Now I can play HL2 without the CD and without using a no-cd crack, so I have done nothing immoral/illegal. So it's in interesting blend of freedom and restriction, in my opinion.
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I really hate steam and the direction in which video game distribution is headed
You are solidly in the minority on this though. When polled, the vast majority of gamers say that they would rather download their games, and pay a little less, than get a boxed version, and pay a little more.
In fact, many people would rather download their games, even if they didn't have to pay a little less, just to skip a trip to the store. To those people, downloading + paying less is a double-win situation.
This is often brought up in discussions of Steam, but unless they've changed it in the past few months, this is only partially true. I used ZoneAlarm to keep Steam from phoning home, and I could play in offline mode, but after a few days of this HL2 would complain and refuse to start until it had a chance to update.
So yes, you can play in offline mode. For a while. But eventually you have to be connected to the Internet to play the game.