The age-old question of video games: when is Half-Life 2: Episode 3 coming out? If I had a nickel every single time someone asked that question, I would be so rich, I could make my own Half-Life game by now. What is even more frustrating is the lack of answers the video game universe gets from Valve and its employees.
Earlier this year, news.com.au tried to reach out to Valve Software writer Chet Faliszek to answer that question and got nothing but some playful runaround, refusing to answer questions about Half-Life by faking issues with the phone connection. Faliszek also playfully alluded to the G-MAN being Gordon Freeman from the future and the great grandfather of Alyx Vance. We don’t think he was being serious, but Valve sure does love messing with our heads.
And don’t expect to get any information out of Managing Director Gabe Newell. If you do a quick google search on what he has to say about Half-Life and its development, you get a lot of useless information. And since it was recently April Fools Day, you get a lot of exciting, but FAKE, information as well. Now that Portal 2 has been released and Valve has more free time on their hands, all we can hope for is for some concrete informatiom to be released at E3 2011. But don’t hold your breath at this point.
There is a lot of fans out there that like to try find clues about Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and its release date, info, and possible plot. An example of this was with the release of Portal 2. Once the achievement list was released for Portal 2, there has been some speculation that the achievement “Ship Overboard”, where players have to find a missing experiment, was a reference to the Borealis. If you remember from Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the Borealis was a science vessel that Aperture was working on in the game. Players so far seemed convinced that this is the most concrete evidence that we are on the horizon of Half-Life 2: Episode 3 being released. Or at least that it’s now Valve’s main project.
We all know how much fun Valve likes to have with their marketing. Just look at the Portal 2 ARG . It’s great to see companies that like to interact with their consumers so much. But, the incredibly vague hints about their biggest hit is getting kind of old for me. Just give us at LEAST a timeframe or year when the game will be out. If you drag it on too long in this fast paced industry, people will start to lose trust that it will ever be coming out and move on. But, I guess there strategy is working. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this article…
