Valve Talks Half-Life 2 Episodes 2 And 3

With the fall release of Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal growing ever closer (check out the new trailer), Valve is finally beginning to release some information about what actually happens in Episode 2 and some information about Episode 3's progress. From the Episode 2 preview: "Looking down the mountainside reveals a scene that immediately demonstrates one of the key elements of Episode Two: expansiveness. Far off in the distance is the semi-destroyed Combine headquarters, with mighty plumes of smoke rising into the sky amidst a shattered cityscape. Arcing up towards the sky from the imposing edifice is brilliant white stream of energy, meeting the cloud layer in a turbulent maelstrom--a 'portal storm,' Alyx notes."

Comments

hopefully..

[Archon-X]

..EP2 will be much better than EP1.

The coolest thing about HalfLife and HalfLife2 was the freedom that you were given. You'd get dumped in a complex or a lab, and you had to work out what to do, and where to go.

For me, at least, HL2:EP1 - there were no alternatives. The maps had a very 'closed' feel to them, there was only one way to go, only one way to do things - it felt very, very static.

Anyone else?

Re:hopefully..

[seaturnip]

Did you play the same HL and HL2 I did? These games were always completely closed and linear. The linear cinematic experience is what those games were all about. This is hardly new to HL2:EP1.

Actually, this is one reason I'm anticipating Portal more than HL2:Ep2. The lab-rat setting of Portal makes closedness and linearity perfectly natural and unnoticeable.

Re:hopefully..

[Bob-taro]

The coolest thing about HalfLife and HalfLife2 was the freedom that you were given.

I have not played EP1 (I will as soon as I can afford to replace my broken gaming computer!), but I would say HL2 gave you an amazing illusion of freedom, while still being a pretty linear story. Even within a level, there was pretty much one way of going through the level, and they did a very good job of steering you that way, while leaving you thinking you could have gone anywhere. I admit I haven't played a lot of different games (I've played the heck out of the ones I have, but I don't have very many), so maybe in HL1 and 2 you had a lot of freedom compared to other FPS games, but I think it's more about how well they designed it to feel open-ended. Maybe EP1 just didn't pull this off as well. I mean, even in HL2, was I the only one who wandered around the basement of the citadel for a looong time before realizing I was actually supposed to get caught in that cable-car trap thingy?

Copy protection?

[Dster76]

I recently bought the holiday edition of Half-Life 2, which included the game and episode one

I was so disgusted by the copy protection techniques (e.g., you must connect to our server before you can play, the software will attempt to connect to our server every subsequent time, you can never resell or return the software once you discover this) that I never played it.

Did enough people accept all this that it didn't matter for their sales? Does this mean Episode 2 will have all of the above copy protection techniques? Obviously I won't drop any more money on such software.

Re:Copy protection?

[rsmoody]

I remember being really pissed about this "feature" at first. Up until I realized that all I needed to reinstall the game, was a username and password and the Steam client. It would download everything for every game I had on my account. This included the Half Life 1 series which only required that I enter my valid serial number one time. Now, as far as copy protection goes, I would much rather have something check the internet once in a while than have me pull out the CD/DVD every time I want to play. Give it a try, you may find that you don't mind it as much as you would think. I have never noticed the Steam client doing anything out of the ordinary. Also, you can still play the game without it connecting, just either firewall Steam, or disconnect just before running Steam. It will try to connect, then go to offline mode and will not, that I know of, try to connect again later. I like this copy protection WAY better than the other forms and never thought that I would. I would think that you could sell it, but the next owner would need to have the username and password to your Steam account and all your games are lumped together, it's all or nothing. So, that would be a negative to you I would think. One more positive is that it will check for updates and get them for you, that's nice to me. My .2

Re:Copy protection?

[Ford Prefect]

Did enough people accept all this that it didn't matter for their sales? Does this mean Episode 2 will have all of the above copy protection techniques? Obviously I won't drop any more money on such software.

You mean you actually spent money on buying a boxed copy of a computer game? Come on, it's 2007 - digital distribution has been around for years!

Boxed versions of Valve games now (for the PC, anyway) just contain compressed, encrypted data files to save you a big download. Once installed, they're the same as versions of the games purchased online - they need to be decrypted and authenticated once, and after that you can run Steam in its offline mode if you're that paranoid. The only reason I can think of buying stuff offline now is when market forces conspire to put the boxed version on super-special offer. I believe the boxed Episode One was available very cheaply in the USA - but was astoundingly expensive in the UK, so we got a much better deal buying online over here.

But then, you're just the usual troll whingeing about Steam whenever Valve is mentioned. Carry on!

Re:Copy protection?

[JimboFBX]

its called steam. Its a system of copy protection that not only is a convenience and not a problem, but it helps stop hackers too on online multiplayer games by blocking them from all games on their account if they cheat. And "subsequent" does indeed mean that yes, you ARE asserting that you needed a connection every time. Honestly I think your just a big liar though; nobody buys something and complains about connecting to the internet as some issue and thus wastes their money. Nobody is that much of a wheeny.

Re:Copy protection?

[Cowclops]

It sickens me to see all the people complaining about steam. "OMG GEORGE ORWELL 1984 BLAH BLAH BLAH THEY IS GONNA SPY ON ME."

How about people actually TRY it and see that it works excellently. Now instead of a game being tied to the physical media or being tied to a single computer, the game is tied to YOU (your account). You can go to a friends house with the cache on a DVD or just spend the time downloading it and bam now you can play it there too. The only catch is that if you want to play it offline, you have to save your username and password on that computer, thus making sure people don't just install it on like 20 different computers and select "play offline."

Nothing like going to work and playing TFC on my lunch break with about a 20 minute download beforehand.

Tying the media to you instead of to a disc that can break means you can play the game on any system anywhere as long as its not playing on more than one system at once. I'd say thats a win-win situation for us and valve.

I tolerated ignorant complaints about steam before they rolled it out, but now there is really no excuse to complain about a system that works quite well.

And I'm sure if valve ever went out of business and you wanted to play their games, they'd probably just release one last patch to steam that eliminates the internet check. Not that valve is gonna be disappearing any time soon.

Re:Copy protection?

[jonesy16]

There are some other advantages to the Steam platform that helps Valve out if you can get over the paranoia of them "spying" on you. One example I can think of was that, through Steam, Valve was looking at the load times for HL2 on different users computers and noted that the time was highly affected by the fragmentation of the game files. As a result, they now defragment the game files in the background without the user noticing or having to run Disk Defragmenter on their own. They also use the system to identify parts of maps where players get stuck for long periods of time to help them in designing levels. All of these sorts of things are "good" for the consumer.

I also agree with another child post that the ability to enter your game key once and never have to touch the CD's/DVD's again is a major plus. Now each time I switch computers or upgrade, I just log on to steam and it downloads and installs all of my games overnight.

Re:Copy protection?

[Fweeky]

"How about people actually TRY it and see that it works excellently"

I've bought plenty via Steam, but this is going a bit far; it works (mostly), but it's not exactly the most well written of applications. It takes ages to start up (~10s) and authenticate (another ~5-15s), it eats massive quantities of CPU for no apparant reason, bits of it break and remain broken for extended periods of time (all my third party Source mods just say "Sorry, this game is unavailable" unless I launch them from desktop shortcuts now), there's no opportunity to accept/reject patches or roll back when things go wrong...

Stardock Central is rather more friendly; it actually looks and feels like a real application, starts in a second or so, asks me nicely before installing patches (while giving me useful changelogs for them and letting me install betas without fiddling with obscure command line arguments and restarting), lets me roll back to previous versions, uses about 1/3rd the memory or less, doesn't occasionally dead/livelock, and doesn't leave daemons running as SYSTEM all the time even when you close it.

Re:Copy protection?

[rsmoody]

That's a valid concern, however, you can still run Steam without internet access, it just runs in an offline mode. They don't FORCE you to connect to play the games. Also, since the HL1 stuff was pre steam, if you bought it back then, you can still install from CD. So, I think you are still OK if Valve shuts down, just run in Offline mode.

Re:Allocation of Resources

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Different skill sets for different things. I suspect episode 2s models and most of the maps are done. Only minor tweaks left, which don' t require 24/7 mappers, so they move onto episode 3 while the rest finish off episode 2. Simple logic tells you this.