Widescreen Gaming Forum

In my opinion, Portal IS the best singleplayer part of the package, if you assume that most have played Half Life 2 already. I loved Portal, and it had a bigger effect on me than the Episodes. That said, I really did enjoy Episode 2, but it was too short, and they explained bugger all. Either they need more than just a third episode, or a full game sized episode 3 to satisfactorily explain it.

I agree with most of that except for needing more explanation. Have you only played Episode 2 once? You may find more things in it after looking closer.

One of those things is the fact that Aperture Science is involved in the Borealis. Some speculate that means the significant power there that needs to be destroyed is the portal gun from Portal.

If that's true Episode 3 could be filled with great puzzles using the portal gun. I'm thinking much if not most of Episode 3 will take place inside Aperture Science labs and the Borealis. I certainly hope will get to use that chopper a lot on the way there though.

I played through very slowly, and I'm sure that I saw everything, or at leats everything important. I feel that a satisfactory ending can not be done with another episode of the same length, unless the entire episode is one great big exposition, while you play.

yeah, portal is hilarously fantastic. the ending made it all worth it...its addictive.

EP2 was great too not as entertaining though.

valve was talking about a deal with EA perhaps with a larger team available we could have more games faster?

*only dreaming.

I am thoroughly disappointed that Episode 2 was not epic length compared to Episode 1 like they claimed it would be. Your link to that hilarious review pointed that out at the beginning, although rather quickly. I think he referred to it as the original idea of it being epic length getting "kicked in the head."

I have read Valve say that they're writing advanced architecture for AI, physics, and effects for quad cores that will be used in Episode 3. If they want to prove themselves cutting edge in that regard they'd better give us something epic length and very compelling in Episode 3. Perhaps something more epic than episodic.

It's the wait time that will suck. If it's gonna be in another 2 years. And they're gonna still be using the already dated Source engine, just think of how redundant it's gonna look and feel. This episodic thing has been one big ferk-up imo.

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Formerly eZ`

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For the length of the 'Episodes' and the amount of time spent waiting for the next one (combined with the total price of them)... Episodic content is really just a way to milk gamers of money. ;)

Ep3 is supposed to be in parallel development, so they should have a least a year of dev time in already.

Valve does need a few lessons about releasing faster and having their game levels load faster as well. I miss Q3 where you could just click the ASE shortcut and be in game and playing inside of 10 seconds, whereas TF2 takes ages to load a level.

To give some credit to Valve; They make take forever to make games, but what they make is spectacular.