Half-Life Episode Two Details Unveiled

[malware]

Electronic Arts and Valve, today announced final information about Half-Life: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2, two of the most anticipated action games this year. Representing multiple platforms, the Black Box will ship for the PC and include Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2. The Orange Box will ship for the PC, PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system, and Xbox 360 videogame. It will include all the content of The Black Box, plus the original Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. The Black Box and The Orange Box are targeted for release in Fall 2007. For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com.

Source: Shacknews

[ktr]

Yup...today it was announced that the game is pushed back from summer07 to fall...

[kakazza]

God, I am so waiting for Portal.

"There's a hole in the sky, through which things can fly"
Most bestestest sentence evar (in that trailer anyway).

[1Strive]

Did someone say EA!?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo!!!


I hope EA is not really involved. What happened to Serria and STEAM?

Anything EA touches turns to CRAP. BF series, MOH series, C&C series, all started off good and turned to CRAP. Bad support and buggy games.

In short, I hate EA and their dominance over the PC game industry.

RELIC RAWKS!

Later,
SSgtSTRIVE

[EastCoasthandle]

I just don't like the sound of EA with anything from valve. It always start off as EA publishing...

[Pinchy]

Cant wait till these games come out

[Misiowiec]

Sorry but am I the only one who is not that excited about this? I mean, it takes Valve like a year between the HL Episodes but which time the industry has moved on. Personally I'm looking forward to new games, with new graphics, enemies and concepts. Bring on Crysis, STALKER, QuakeWars and a host of others!

[Pinchy]

You cant expect Valve to re-design their engine for every release.

I personally like it how it is; it has great gameplay, the graphics are good IMO & it can run on less powerful computers, so everyone can play. On top of that, its generally pretty cheap, around 30-35 AUD for the whole episode..you cant expect em to make a whole new engine for that

[Random Murderer]

oh, great, ea ruined hl2:ep2 as well. thanks ea.

[C.Ash]

What about Lost Coast?

[C.Ash]

Originally Posted by Misiowiec

Sorry but am I the only one who is not that excited about this? I mean, it takes Valve like a year between the HL Episodes but which time the industry has moved on. Personally I'm looking forward to new games, with new graphics, enemies and concepts. Bring on Crysis, STALKER, QuakeWars and a host of others!

I agree. Episodes one, two and three make up Half Life 3 u can say, except that the episodes are around the same graphical level as Half Life 2.

[Pinchy]

Originally Posted by C.Ash

What about Lost Coast?

What about it ?

Originally Posted by C.Ash

I agree. Episodes one, two and three make up Half Life 3 u can say, except that the episodes are around the same graphical level as Half Life 2.

Just a question, what would you guys prefer; how it is now or new graphics (so a whole new engine) BUT with prices going up and creation time taking longer?

[erocker]

I will take EA over steam any day. Steam is the worst pile of shit ever. With EA I pay for a game and it works (even though sometimes it sucks), and with steam I can barely get my computer to connect with thier crappy servers. Steam is anti piracy, multi-marketing bull. So instead of buying anything that is on steam, I have to go find it legally or illegaly elswhere.

[Lazzer408]

I cant wait I cant wait I cant wait I love HL2

[Lazzer408]

Originally Posted by erocker

I will take EA over steam any day. Steam is the worst pile of shit ever. With EA I pay for a game and it works (even though sometimes it sucks), and with steam I can barely get my computer to connect with thier crappy servers. Steam is anti piracy, multi-marketing bull. So instead of buying anything that is on steam, I have to go find it legally or illegaly elswhere.

Never had a problem with it.

[C.Ash]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

What about it ?



Just a question, what would you guys prefer; how it is now or new graphics (so a whole new engine) BUT with prices going up and creation time taking longer?

What do u mean "What about Lost Coast"? Its amazing..

And No, ur wrong. Half Life 3 would take as much time as the three episodes put together, so it would be about the same ammount of time for the same ammount of content.
And it also wouldnt cost more than the three episodes together - it would cost LESS.

[vrdublu]

Originally Posted by erocker

I will take EA over steam any day. Steam is the worst pile of shit ever. With EA I pay for a game and it works (even though sometimes it sucks), and with steam I can barely get my computer to connect with thier crappy servers. Steam is anti piracy, multi-marketing bull. So instead of buying anything that is on steam, I have to go find it legally or illegaly elswhere.

Well you're in luck, cause this is a computer forum, don't hesitate to ask us on how we could all help you put together a decent enough computer so that you too can enjoy HL2, btw step (1) get high speed internet cheap ars. heheeh.

[evil bill]

Apparently Valve are working on making the Source code Multi-threaded following the higher than expected adoption of Multi-Core CPUs - I guess this has been taking up their time.

[ktr]

EA published valve games since hl2...and all of the games were great. all ea is doing is making the cd's putting it in a box, send it to retail and markets the game. but i did read about ea and valve are working together on porting the game to consoles...and from what i have read, this is the thing that is causing the delay.

[InfDamarvel]

Originally Posted by erocker

I will take EA over steam any day. Steam is the worst pile of shit ever. With EA I pay for a game and it works (even though sometimes it sucks), and with steam I can barely get my computer to connect with thier crappy servers. Steam is anti piracy, multi-marketing bull. So instead of buying anything that is on steam, I have to go find it legally or illegaly elswhere.

With steam I never need a disc to play a game and I can play it anywhere. In fact about me and 2 other friends all share the same steam account. Once 1 person buys a game we get to play it lol.

[freaksavior]

YEA i'm gonna buy it for my xbox 360 i want to play Portal, that looks awsome!

[WarEagleAU]

Alls I can say is, if they keep pushing it back, its gonna be a bad ass game when it does come out.

[ktr]

Originally Posted by WarEagleAU

Alls I can say is, if they keep pushing it back, its gonna be a bad ass game when it does come out.

of course

i cant wait for TF2!

[Pinchy]

Originally Posted by C.Ash

What do u mean "What about Lost Coast"? Its amazing..

And No, ur wrong. Half Life 3 would take as much time as the three episodes put together, so it would be about the same ammount of time for the same ammount of content.
And it also wouldnt cost more than the three episodes together - it would cost LESS.

About lost coast: i wasnt sure whether you were refering to the graphics or its requirements. I agree, it looks mighty great.

About the episodes: I wasnt refering to HL3, i was trying to say "imagine they created a whole new graphics engine for the episodes". If that was the case, each episode would cost 3 times as much and an engine takes a hell of a long time to code

[Lazzer408]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

About lost coast: i wasnt sure whether you were refering to the graphics or its requirements. I agree, it looks mighty great.

About the episodes: I wasnt refering to HL3, i was trying to say "imagine they created a whole new graphics engine for the episodes". If that was the case, each episode would cost 3 times as much and an engine takes a hell of a long time to code

That reminds me of Duke Nukeem Forever. lol. Ever wonder why they call it forever?
I imagine it's very difficult for the game developers to predict where the hardware industry will lead. If I started designing a game from scratch, bassed on todays technologies, and then in a year or two the industry takes a leap forward, I would feel my final product would be labled "visually disappointing" because it didn't make use of the latest and greatest hardware to it's full potential. I have learned to accept this and I don't judge a game by it's screenshots on the box when I go browsing games at Walmart. I give them the benifit of the doubt. Halflife2 is a good example. Although some aspects of the game are visually stunning, when it gets down to the nitty gritty and you look closely at things, there's very little bump mapping. They used textures that look like there bump mapped. The explosive barrles for example. Alot of things in that game look like they spent alot of time on them and other things, like the trees, look like total crap. Almost like they ran out of time. HL2 made my jaw drop at first but halfway thru it started to feel old like they could have done much much better with the graphics but I still love it.

On a side note. Has anyone seen some of the maps people are creating for the old Quake 3 engine? Holy %$@# they look good! I'd buy it now if it was on the shelf.