Inside LAN-O-THON

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Orange box is finished.

In an interview posted on the web today, Gabe Newell himself said that all thee games were done. The Half-life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal box will be released on Steam October 10th at 12:01 (Pacific time). I quoted some of my favorite parts:

Game Informer: So how are things going with the development of the Orange Box?

Gabe Newell: Good. We ship to retailers on October 9. October 10 at 12:01 we let it go on Steam, and it’ll probably show up at retailers Europe on the 12th.

GI: Are all three of the games pretty much finished?

Newell: Yep.

GI: So you’re just bug testing, and everything is in its final phase?

Newell: Yes.

GI: Will it be available separately on Steam?

Newell: We’re going to announce specific stuff. But we’re probably going to have a bunch since there are no shelf-space issues on Steam, so we’ll have a bunch of different offerings. All the multiplayer products, all the single player products…So we’ll just try to figure out the most popular ways that people will want to buy it.

GI: Obviously, with Episode Two, I don’t want to get any spoilers out there. The tone seems to be, at least with what we’ve seen of the trailers, a lot darker. Like, this could be the Empire Strikes Back of the Half-Life trilogy. Do you think that’s safe to say?

Newell: Yes. I think that we tried to make it darker and also have more of an epic feel so that’s translated into the settings and some of the events that have happened. It’s got to be dark before it gets better! (laughs) That’s the rule of trilogies. This is the middle act. This is where all of the problems get worse. The depth of your problems becomes much clearer before everything gets resolved in the third act.

GI: To you have a target date for Episode Three?

Newell: No, we don’t have a target date.

GI: That’s probably a safe answer. (laughs)

Newell: If we did, would it matter? (laughs) Have we done right yet?

GI: No. (laughs)

Newell: I think a target date is when people can start yelling at us with more ammo. (laughs)

[Read More]

A new video of HL2.2 was posted online ****contains spoilers****.

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