Valve's David Speyrer on Half-Life 2: Episode Three

The launch of The Orange Box brought Valve even more popularity than it previously enjoyed. Half Life fans all around the world are only just beginning to discover the second installment in Valve's episodic trilogy, being introduced to new locations outside of City 17, yet Valve is already talking Episode Three. The company claims it's going to be the ending of the century, as far as the series is concerned, assuring fans that the third installment is a certainty, although Episode Two didn't carry a trailer or any hints leading to it.

"We're going to try and do something pretty ambitious for that project", stated Half-Life 2 Episode 2's project lead, David Speyrer, claiming that the lack of a trailer is due to the company's not wanting to commit to anything yet. "If you look at the Episode Two trailer that we shipped with Episode One there's some pretty radical difference between what you see there and see in finished game," Speyrer continued. "That's really an artefact of making a trailer for a product that's still in heavy production. You just don't know where you're going to end up."

The interview with David Speyrer up on rockpapershotgun.com also reveals the difficult steps a development team has to take during the process of making a game: "I think everyone has a strong interest in the next thing. And when the next thing becomes the current thing, everyone develops an even stronger interest to see it through to its potential, and get it finished and out the door. And then there's always a period of collapse at the end where half the team is saying, 'I can't even think about making games right now'. And then a month later, everyone gets really excited about what to do next and what gameplay experiments they wanted to run and the thing they always wanted to see in our games�"

So, whatever they decide to throw in Episode Three, whenever Valve considers it's alright to roll out a trailer or screens, be sure that the company is dead serious on delivering a final chapter like never before. Everyone's seen a good trilogy ending with Halo 3, so Valve surely has something equally good or even better in mind for their FPS.