
After Episode One shipped, some members of its team even joined the Episode Two team to help out. The plan for smaller, faster releases didn’t line up with the studio’s ambition for the project, and the scope of Episode Two increased past its original concept.
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Watch our full interview with Valve's Gabe Newell and Robin Walker above.Įpisode Two actually took two years to make – Valve started work on it at the same time as Episode One. “We found ourselves creeping ever forward towards, ‘Well, let's just keeping putting more and more, and more, and more stuff in this game because we want to make it as good as we can,’” he explains, “and then we realized these episodes are turning more into sequels.”


While Episode One was successfully developed in about a year, Casali says “scope creep” became a problem. That plan didn’t work out entirely as Valve had hoped. Of course, I pointed out the irony of him saying Valve disliked going dark for six years when the gap between Episode Two and Alyx ended up being more than double that, to which Casali jokingly replied “yeah, it's like we adjusted to an extreme” after they moved away from the quicker episodic format.īut, regardless of how it ended, a plan was set to develop and release each episode in a year, designing them as shorter additions to the story to keep players satisfied more frequently. We think players are going to prefer that from waiting six years and going through however many delays we went through.’" Let's just bite off little chunks and then release more often. We understand the characters, we understand the story, we have most of the mechanics. That's why we started doing the episodes where we thought, ‘well, we have the stable technology now.

He continues to press on towards the Lambda complex and finds his way in after a vent collapses due to a gargantua’s roar.“After working on Half-Life 2 for six years we decided we didn't want to go dark for so long. After battling a pack of houndeyes, part of the building collapses, which does not harm the security, Gordon, or the scientist, but separates Gordon from the security guard and the scientist. They encounter a still-conscious scientist being infested by a Headcrab, and Gordon may mercy-kill him. The three men open the reactor door and push towards the Lambda complex.Gordon, the security guard, and the scientist push towards the Lambda complex and battle Xen creatures. Headcrabs have found their way into the area, but the security guard defeats them. He soon arrives at the area where the scientist and security guard waited for him. Gordon presses through the area, battling vortigaunts, headcrabs, and zombies.

He meets the security guard who helped him through the area the first time he was there, but (unless the player ordered him to wait for him at another place) the guard is ambushed and killed by Vortigaunts. Gordon also encounters zombies and barnacles, who are killing the last few HECU troops in the building.įreeman climbs out and arrives back at the HECU camp, where more HECU soldiers have arrived, although they are preoccupied with fighting vortigaunts.Upon defeating the Vortigaunts, the remaining soldiers attack Gordon, who defeats them. Gordon soon arrives at the building containing the radio antenna and sends a message to the USNRC.Īfter an ambush by HECU personnel busting through the roof and door of the building, Gordon passes through a maze-like area containing numerous radiation leaks, as well as a dying scientist due to radiation poisoning. He then moves through a HECU camp, battling many soldiers and a few military turrets. He moves through an area populated by headcrabs, zombies, and vortigaunts with the help of another security guard, and then battles HECU personnel, who are executing scientists. To this end, they enlist Gordon Freeman’s aid. He soon meets a scientist and a security guard who wish to enter the Lambda complex and escape, but they cannot open the reactor door until a signal is sent to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC), and the radio antenna must be reconfigured manually. The facility that Freeman is in, is under a heavy bombing. The player takes control of the main character, Gordon Freeman 48 hours after the “containment failure,” and in the Lambda Reactor Complex, according to the caption.
