Valve Still Working On Half-Life 2: Episode 3
On a recent episode of GameTrailers TV, host Geoff Keighley had a nice little chat with Valve CEO Gabe Newell about what Half-Life fans have been scratching their heads over for a while now. Is Valve still working on Half-Life 2: Episode 3?
The answer is yes.
Keighley asked fans to send him questions via Twitter and one bold enthusiast asked plainly, “Are you still even working on Half-Life 2: Episode 3? When can we micro-invest in it through Steam so it will actually come out?” to which Newell slightly dodged by saying, laughingly, that he didn’t have much to say concerning Episode 3 at the moment, but he would let people know when he did.
He almost got away with it, but Keighley was quick to chime in, “are you still DOING Episode 3?” to bring him back to the real question at hand, and Newell finally responded with “of course we’re doing Episode 3“, to shrug off any more speculation.
So finally we can all rest easy now knowing that Valve is hard at work on the final chapter in Half-Life 2.
But here was also another interesting question about what Valve thought of Project Natal, and if they would ever experiment with this new technology. He replied by saying that, “Yes, we absolutely think these [technologies] are important and it’s an area where Valve is behind”.
This got me thinking about the news on Newell’s recently conducted focus group on sign language to improve upon the animations in Valve’s games; specifically Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Could this also be something being developed with Project Natal in mind? It just made me wonder a bit.
The reason for Newell’s focus group is so that he can incorporate sign language into the back story of Half-Life 2 character Alyx Vance, and be able to pull it off convincingly. Newell states, “[Alyx] had a crush on someone who was hearing impaired, so she taught Dog how to sign so she could practice,” and further explains, “Something happened, maybe, the person is off fighting the Combine someplace else, but that’s why she and Dog would start signing with each other when they wanted to communicate without making noise, or communicate without other people knowing…It gave us the excuse to build the technology for signing.”
It’s all pretty interesting; what Valve is trying to accomplish. But if they could somehow incorporate Project Natal into the mix with sign language, it could certainly be something ground breaking.
