Left 4 Dead Is Responsible for HL2 Episode Three Lateness

Half Life 2 is one of the most compelling games ever made; it broke the molds of conventional shooters and gave the player a unique environment in which to act through a variety of ways. When Valve, the developer and publisher of the game, announced that it would release episodic content for the title, a lot of people thought that it would mean a shorter period between titles. But they were wrong, Valve took even more time to release the first two episodes for the game and now the third and final one doesn't even have a concrete launch date, a year after the release of the second one.

Of course, in the end, the long wait was definitely worth it because Valve released truly brilliant titles which developed the HL2 story line even more, but it wouldn't hurt if they hurried a bit with the development cycle. Recently, Doug Lombardi, one of the executives from Valve, has talked about the long wait between the second and third empires and its causes. Because Valve doesn't have enough employees for the big number of demanding projects like Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2, Half Life fans are still going to wait some time for the third installment in the franchise.

“So I mean, we're taking more time because it's a more ambitious project. We also sort of had Left 4 Dead become this big thing in the middle of it that we wanted to spend more time on, and you've just got a lot of stuff that we spent this year doing with Team Fortress 2 updates and what have you. So there's just a lot going on, and then an ambitious project on top of it caused the schedule to move out a little bit from the delta of the last three releases in the franchise.”

While the commitment for bringing only quality titles which offer a great experience is good, it wouldn't hurt if Valve brought more people to the company. Its profit has been increasing more and more, partly because of The Orange Box game set, which included HL2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2, and their digital content distribution system, Steam.