Everybody knows that Half Life 2 episode 1 had 4 hours of gameplay tops, yet Valve's Doug Lombardi says that ep. 1 had to offer around 6 hours of gameplay. Now, HL ep. 2 is getting closer and closer to the finish and the developers are trimming down the time for its release. But they assure fans that ep. 2 is going to be an 8 hour long game (single-player).

Doug Lombardi's exact words were: "Episode 1 was about six hours of gameplay, and Episode 2 will be closer to eight hours of gameplay. Episode 1 took 18 months to complete and Episode 2 will end up being about 13 to 14 months, so we're trimming it down. I think we'll get closer to a year and be on a 12 month cycle. We'll see how it goes after this trilogy is done."

So, if we're to compare the two episodes, regarding gameplay time, the second one is going to be somewhere close to 5 hours tops right? OK, now that we got that out of the way, what's "we'll see how it goes after this trilogy is done," supposed to mean? What, is ep. 2 some kind of test? People pay hard cash to play these games, they shouldn't mess around offering 4 to 5 hours of play after such a long period of development.

Remember, Valve will be releasing the long-awaited Team Fortress 2 later this year (fall maybe, no specific date has been made official yet) via special Half-Life 2 bundles: Orange Box and Black Box. Until then, let's hope that ep. 2 plays at least 7 hours and that it doesn't translate ep. 2's gameplay time.