Half-Life 3 confirmed

[Lynk]

Ted Stokes: With the ending of Episode 2 going directly to help the feeling of "must play Episode 3 now" could you give the current estimated date for Episode 3's release?

Doug Lombardi: We haven't announced a date for Ep Three just yet.

Ted Stokes: Are there any current plans after Episode 3 to have a Half-Life 3?

Doug Lombardi: We haven't announced anything specific, but Half-Life won't end at Episode Three - hang on to your crowbars!

That clears up any confusion, in recent months people have been unsure if the game will end at Episode 3.

[timbob]

so there will be a 3 and a 4, maybe more, good stuff!

[phreak]

It's a popular enough series, I don't see why it would end now :P

Just like there will be another Halo, it makes too much money.

[Slim Trashman]

Woo! HL3 should be pretty sick.

[Nite]

they could go up to Episode 10 for all I care, the Half-Life 2 storyline is awesome so far :D

I think it would be a wise move to stay on the Episode series for Half-Life 2 and wait until they build a new game engine for Half-Life 3

[Slim Trashman]

Maybe they will be building a new engine for HL3 ;)

[Lynk]

Same, hopefully it'll come with a new Counter Strike. :o

[Slim Trashman]

Yes! I really would love a new Counter-Strike. I'd like to see an even larger variety of weapons in CS tbh.

[Shadow Conception]

That would be orgasmic. New CS ftw. :)

[Piggus]

Don't expect to even see the game for at least another four years though. Valve has their own way of developing, and it often takes much longer for them to develop games since to them just about everything needs to be perfect (if you don't believe me, play EP1, EP2, or Portal with commentary turned on.) To put things in perspective, Half-Life 2 took six years to make, and they expect that Half-Life 3 will take even longer. That's why they're doing the whole episodic thing to begin with.

They've got a lot of work ahead of them if they can match the incredible quality of Source with a new game engine, but I can't wait to see what they can come up with.

[Olin]

They're more than likely developing Half Life 3 right now. As soon as the last episode comes out, they'll be putting devotion into the story and you'll have HL3 quicker than you thought.

[Nite]

thats a good point piggus, the Episodes are just to give something for the consumers to play while Half-Life 3 is being developed, smart move, a seperate team to work on both

[Slim Trashman]

Basically what Rockstar did with the PSP stories series, they developed the stories games while they developed GTA IV to keep us interested.

[Pivotto]

i read somewhere that episodes 1 - 3 are half-life 3, and that they really should've called them Half-Life 3: Episode 1, etc. i think it was on the wikipedia page, i'm pretty sure Gabe Newell said it in an interview, and i heard they were going to do up to around 6 episodes.

[Piggus]

If they did did six episodes, I don't think they could push the Source engine that far and still keep up with current games. It would work if their dev team was bigger, but Valve is insanely slow at bringing out products. Episode Six would probably come out in 2015 or so, and by then we'd be in the middle of the next generation of consoles and PC hardware. Playing a Source game then would be like playing HL1 today. :P

[Pivotto]

hmmph, well i don't know, i could've sworn i read an interview with Gabe Newell where he said that.

[Xan]

I also remember him saying that Pivotto. Said instead of a Half Life 3 they were going to give out Episodes so it wouldn't take as long to develop the entire game at once.

Read it way back but this is only what i can remember

[Pivotto]

yeah i'm pretty sure it was on wikipedia or some shit, so who knows, but that's exactly waht i remember him saying, cause if they were to have stopped at half life 2 and started on half life 3 instead of doing episodes, it would take forever.