HalfLife 2: Episode 2 delayed

Booooo, I wanted to play that :'(

HL3 in Q4 07? HL3 or HL2 E3? WTF?

If any of that made sense you've been on Bit-Tech too long :D

Not too fussed atm...havn't played through Ep1 yet. Saying that though, I was hoping to have the Dual Core patch before I start playing Ep1.

I might just wait until Ep2 is released, then play through them both back-to-back. There's so many great games to play through in the meantime though - I've just started FEAR, and have still got Quake 4 and Company of Heroes to go.

lol, It anit no surprise with Valve!

Sad that EP2 delays :'(
But HL3! Extremely interesting! ;)

HL3 or HL2: EP3??

i wonder how half life 3 would continue from the episodic content, would they end hl2 with ep2 or continue them on as completely seperate stories?

awwww yay, cos i just got EP 1 today lololol

Dammit! Another wait.

well if it makes the episode better, why not? at least they arent EA that brings unfinished games...

So it's gonna have taken them a year to make a 6 hour expansion that has no new weapons, re-uses alot of the same textures and has all the same vehicles? Nice....

I don't really care about HL: Episode 2, but the delayed release of TF2 and Portal makes me a sad piggy. :( Then again, I might have ET: Quake Wars to tide me over in Q1!

Maybe HL2 episode 3 has turned into HL3 so it gets extended into a full game. I prefer the long games rather than 6 hours of expansion.

NOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! :(

Like I've said elsewhere:

Valve are the most inefficient developer ever

I could very well see them burning through there "We are 2yrs ahead tech wise, of everybody else" advantage, rather quickly, heh

Aggies

Nooo, I want Portal, For Ep2 I have to play HL, HL2, and HL2 Ep1 first.

no suprise really with valve

I thought HL2: Ep 1, 2 and 3 was valves idea of Half-Life 3?

Originally Posted by r4tch3t
Nooo, I want Portal, For Ep2 I have to play HL, HL2, and HL2 Ep1 first.

You don't really need to play HL1 to get the jist of the HL2 story since they don't carry on from each other that much, it's only in HL2 when the people get given names and stuff. I really reccomend you play them though as they are really good.

Originally Posted by aggies11
Like I've said elsewhere:
Valve are the most inefficient developer ever
Aggies

If your going to say something retarded like that, at least put "in my humble opinion" before anything you say.

In my opinion, any game developer that delays the release of a game should not be judged until the game in question comes out. If its a bad game with lots of bugs and compatibility issues, then yes, they are inefficient. If however (and with valve at least, this is by far the more likely scenario) the game comes out and it has minimal bugs, is brilliantly compatible with even the most diabolical system (I take my machine as the example here) then that developer is in fact very efficient. So what if they over estimated the speed of the release. If anything, I would suspect that their marketing dept had something to do with that.

Originally Posted by TheoGeo
HL3 or HL2: EP3??

i wonder how half life 3 would continue from the episodic content, would they end hl2 with ep2 or continue them on as completely seperate stories?

If ep2 is going to lead into hl3 then it will have to be extremely interesting. Though I think ep3 is implied, anyway they seem content watching people wait for their games. Look at gmod 10, on the gmod website they said it was done since august but for some reason its not for sale on steam yet.

Valve is the ONLY company out there I completely trust with a delay.

I would rather them take there sweet ass time, and develope the story, and the gameplay, along with the other goodies, and I'll be happy to play it when its released.

ya Valve always deliver with the cutting edge stuff so if there has to be a delay Im sure there is good reasoning behind it that all it will do is make us even more great full and improve on the game, hmm ya Im kinda confused to as I have heard that there will be a HL3 and then there are some people saying that HL2 eps1, 2, 3 is Valves version of HL3 so if anyone has info on that to clarify would be great, either way Im ecstatic and cant wait ^^

Originally Posted by will.
If however (and with valve at least, this is by far the more likely scenario) the game comes out and it has minimal bugs, is brilliantly compatible with even the most diabolical system (I take my machine as the example here) then that developer is in fact very efficient.

Then under that logic, if/when Duke Nukem Forever comes out, is bug free, and a good game, that means it it *should* have taken 10yrs to come out. That 3d realms made that game efficiently...

Don't get me wrong, a delayed game is infinitely better than an unfished one being released. However that doesn't mean a developer has license to delay as much as they want. There is a certain amount of time that developing a game *should* take if they did it efficiently. Valve, by far and large, would seem to take longer than that.

Just because there games are excellent, doesn't mean they couldn't produce the same calibre of game, in a bit more timely fashion.

Aggies

I bet valve dont like paying its employees overtime to work weekends. Thats why its delayed :p

Originally Posted by oddball walking
Maybe HL2 episode 3 has turned into HL3 so it gets extended into a full game. I prefer the long games rather than 6 hours of expansion.

I do prefer longer games, but I wouldn't mind episodic content if it were more reasonably priced. If I pay $20 for three, six-hour segments of gameplay, that does not add up to the $60 I originally payed for thirty hours of gameplay. It's still way longer than say, Max Payne 2, but not up to par with HL2's price value.

Originally Posted by aggies11
Then under that logic, if/when Duke Nukem Forever comes out, is bug free, and a good game, that means it it *should* have taken 10yrs to come out. That 3d realms made that game efficiently...

I agree. I mean, I like Valve overall, but they're far from perfect. It's some kind of miracle than an engine like Source, which is essentially the original HL engine with Havok and ATI shader code tacked on, works as well as it does. A tribute to their programmers, even. Though I'm sure the engine's source could use a big overhaul by Code Refactoring Man.

But, a year for a six hour game? No way. Also keep in mind they have the entire engine and most of the assets already complete. It really should not take them that long. There have been bigger mods released in a shorter period of time, and that's saying something, as they do it for free. Raven developed Jedi Outcast in about a year. Not the greatest game ever (something I still attribute to LucasArt's one year deadline), but it was a hell of a lot of content for one year. A year for six hours worth of levels where most of the work should be done? Well, you see where I'm going with this.

By the way, the above assumes that the work on Portal and TF2 is independent from EP2 and wouldn't be causing this delay. If it were TF2 or Portal that is causing the delay, I would be a bit more understanding. Although hasn't TF2 been kind of Valve's DNF for years now?

In any case, I'm not upset or anything. When I saw the article I just rolled my eyes a bit. I was looking forward to EP2 since it's going to be one of the few newer games that will run on my system. I'm trying to get back into Oblivion now, but it refuses to run over 20-30 FPS, no matter what the visual settings (which implies some pretty poor graphics engine design if you ask me). But I digress...

I think episode gaming is not all its cracked up to be, if this is what
we have come to believe about episode delays then be prepared for
hl3 about 5 or 6yrs away!!!

Episode play is fine as long as it takes you at least 10 hours to play to the end. I think the delay is because: (and i am speculating here):

1) The new source multicore code.
2) New dx10 code into the source engine.
3) Release timing. The best time to make a release happen
4) More/extended gameplay.

I also think a 2nd quarter release is the best option, dx10 cards are more mainstream, not to mention vista's release. Most of the 'other' games are allready released. So no mayor other release is in the way.

Or maybe they foresee delays to HL3/HL2:E3 and want to spread the time waited between releases? :p

I'm most annoyed about not being able to play Portal though.

Valve: Why can't you release a demo of Portal?

Give Exite Mod a go. It's a Portal clone, obviously not as polished as Valve's but it's a start!

http://www.exitemod.com/

Well at least this delay gives some time to upgrade.

This seems to be a good time to inform everyone who has not heard of "Valve Time."

Originally Posted by Skill3d
well if it makes the episode better, why not? at least they arent EA that brings unfinished games...

amen!

Valve does tend to be late, but their released stuff does tend to be very polished. Look at Jedi Outcast; it was finished in an year, but that game had some very bad level design.

Yay! Only one more delay to go then! I predict that around May/June time they will announce the next delay, which should push it to around November.

I know it will be worth the wait, but waiting 18 months for another 5-10 hours of gameplay is too much for me. As someone who isn't particularly bothered about engine updates, this whole thing has put me right off the idea of episodic content. Hopefully other developers will see how annoyed we all are, and stick to regular expansion packs.