News HalfLife 2: Episode 2 officially delayed

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 ^^

 

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

 

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.

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?

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."

 

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.