as you’re probably all-too-aware — isn’t so big on the whole talking thing. Its games and services speak volumes, of course, but while sticks and stones may break my bones, Valve’s lack of words breaks my delicate heart. However, Valve boss Gabe Newell recently warped out of Valve Time and into our humble dimension, and boy did he ever break the silence. Half-Life 3 and, er, wearable computers? Newell and co may not talk much, but that doesn’t mean they’re not great at it.
So then, first up, the obvious question: Where in Dog’s name is Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or Half-Life 3 or whatever we’re calling it now? Newell told Penny Arcade:
"We’re acutely aware of how much we annoy our fans and it’s pretty frustrating to us when we put them into that situation… We recognize that it’s been a long time whereas we have so many games that people really love –- Counterstrike, Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead… and at the same time we want to be making sure that those games and those stories and those characters are moving forward while also making sure that we don’t just get into terminal sequelitis."
"Part of the reason that we backed off talking so much about what was happening in the future is that when we’ve done that in the past, you know, with Half Life 1 it was a year after we originally said it would be, Half Life 2 basically if you go and read the forum posts apparently took us fifty or sixty years to get done so we’re trying to be careful not to get people too excited and then have to go and disappoint them. So we’re sort of reacting in the other direction and saying ‘okay, well let’s have things a little more baked before we start getting people all excited about it.’"