Just 7 days after the release of Half-Life 2: Episode One, Valve announces the Half-Life Episodic Trilogy and says the trilogy will conclude by Christmas 2007.
“After spending six years creating Half-Life 2, we decided to build HL2’s successor as a trilogy of episodes,” said Gabe Newell, President and co-founder of Valve.
Valve’s VP of Marketing, Doug Lombardi confirms Episode Three is under development by stating:
“Pre-production is definitely going, and it’ll be ramping up rather quickly now that they’re ramping down on Episode Two”. Valve software developer David Speyrer also discusses moving the player towards the [Half-Life] team’s “ultimate goal” over the course of the episodic trilogy and mentions that a lot of work has gone into “creating a natural progress of topography and climate”.
When asked about the notable absence of an Episode Three trailer at the end of Episode Two, David Speyrer (Episode Two’s project lead) states:
“We’re going to try and do something pretty ambitious for that project. We don’t want to over commit.”
Valve’s Doug Lombardi is asked if there are plans for Half-Life after Episode Three. He responds:
“We haven’t announced anything specific, but Half-Life won’t end at Episode Three – hang on to your crowbars!”
Steam User’s Forum member SiPlus.HWGUY finds 3 files belonging to Episode Three in the Alien Swarm SDK.
A Valve employee responds and says “They were included in the SDK by mistake.”
