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Half Life 2 Aftermath expansion becomes episodic

W

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/news/story.php?sid=6144151

Valve Software has revealed to GameSpot that Aftermath, the upcoming expansion pack to the award-winning 2004 shooter Half-Life 2, has been renamed "Half-Life 2: Episode One." When asked whether the name change is indicative of a change in direction for the Half-Life 2 franchise, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi replied, "episodic." When asked the follow-up question of whether the new name meant that beginning of a regular flow of content, Lombardi replied, "yes."

This change in focus may not be surprising to fans of Valve who are familiar with the company's online delivery service, Steam. The company recently announced that it was partnering with developer Ritual Entertainment to produce SiN Episodes, , a series of episodic games on a regular basis that would be distributed online via the Steam service




ugh.
 
Wario64 said:
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/news/story.php?sid=6144151

Valve Software has revealed to GameSpot that Aftermath, the upcoming expansion pack to the award-winning 2004 shooter Half-Life 2, has been renamed "Half-Life 2: Episode One." When asked whether the name change is indicative of a change in direction for the Half-Life 2 franchise, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi replied, "episodic." When asked the follow-up question of whether the new name meant that beginning of a regular flow of content, Lombardi replied, "yes."

This change in focus may not be surprising to fans of Valve who are familiar with the company's online delivery service, Steam. The company recently announced that it was partnering with developer Ritual Entertainment to produce SiN Episodes, , a series of episodic games on a regular basis that would be distributed online via the Steam service




ugh.
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DOUBLE UGH!
 
If priced accordingly I have no problem. If they do end up having a "constant" stream of new HL2 content I'll be mighty pleased.
 
why should it be free exactly? i bought the silver package almost 2 years ago and i think its totally reasonable to start charging now for expansions/add ons.

on another note i think this is great news , i really see episodic games as a step forward for the games industry in general (if there good of course,sin looks crap) cant wait for more hl2 goodness :)
 
It's been known for a long time. I thought the estimate was something like $14 for an 'episode'.

If they can give me 4-5 hours of Lost Coast quality at $14, I have absolutely zero issues with them doing this.
 
Netrunner2k2 said:
Yay, free for me!

Finish HL2, turd. The last hours of the game are awesome.
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I hope gold owners get this for free. I'll finish HL2 a day before Episode 1 comes out.

Bebpo said:
If they can give me 4-5 hours of Lost Coast quality at $14, I have absolutely zero issues with them doing this.
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Same here. But it would be a great bouns for buying the Gold package. But honestly I'm still going to pick this up.
 
Lost coast sized episodes are unacceptable. Not enough time to get "into" the game. Now if we're talking 1-2 hours per episode, for $5 each, I can dig it. Or as someone else suggested, $14 for 4-5 hours.
 
Rur0ni said:
Lost coast sized episodes are unacceptable. Not enough time to get "into" the game. Now if we're talking 1-2 hours per episode, for $5 each, I can dig it. Or as someone else suggested, $14 for 4-5 hours.
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Valve should have not hyped up Lost Coast the way they did. So many people had the impression that it was going to be a full fledged "chapter" in HL2, when it was nothing more than a glorified tech demo with some combat tacked on. Not that it needed to be anything more. It's just that it seems a lot of people now associate Lost Coast with what they can expect from episodic content, and I think that may hurt business a bit in the beginning.
 
They had always planned on having Aftermath be the first of many "chapters", I guess now it's just more official. Now I guess we'll see if they can get them out every six months like they originally said.
 
Rur0ni said:
Lost coast sized episodes are unacceptable. Not enough time to get "into" the game. Now if we're talking 1-2 hours per episode, for $5 each, I can dig it. Or as someone else suggested, $14 for 4-5 hours.
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Yeah, but Lost Coast was free, sooo....
 
It's probably the same as Opposing Force was. 6 hours of HL gaming goodness.




And probably 20 bucks, the same price WE'VE ALWAYS PAYED FOR EXPANSIONS!!!
 
U K Narayan said:
Why the hell is everyone complaining? I thought they previously announced that Aftermath would be released in fragments at a time.
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They previously announced that new HL2-related content would be released in an episodic fashion, with a year's worth of episodes released to retail. This news seems to be nothing more than a name change.
 
It's been more than a year now since I booted up this computer for anything seriously game related. HL2 still sits on my list of games to purchase for my Xbox. As the $50 or less beats the hell out of the $500+ to update my PC to properly accept HL2 and other more extravagant titles.

Online content delivery and such have been part of my life ever since the day I purchased my $50 Live Starter Kit.

But now there's even more HL2 to be had, and that bothers me that I'm eventually going to have to cave and plop an "obscene*" amount of money on my aged PC.

*Obscene according to my wife and family
 
For Valve, specifically, this is a good idea. They take so damn long getting content out, it would be a nice change of pace to have constant content coming from them in the form of HL2 episodes.
 
U K Narayan said:
Why the hell is everyone complaining? I thought they previously announced that Aftermath would be released in fragments at a time.
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I think Aftermath is the first episode, not Aftermath is split into episodes...or did I get this wrong?
 
Dachande said:
Why should anyone get this for free? The Silver and Gold packages aren't full of endless free shit.
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You know when Half-Life 3 comes out in 2010, there's going to be some angry Gold account owners. :lol
 
Uh, Aftermath was always supposed to be the start of HL2 episodal content.

Draft said:
Valve should have not hyped up Lost Coast the way they did. So many people had the impression that it was going to be a full fledged "chapter" in HL2, when it was nothing more than a glorified tech demo with some combat tacked on.
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Valve had nothing to do with the impression stupid gamers had of Lost Coast. Valve always called it a tech demo, and frequently pointed out that it was not a full fledged expansion.
 
The Guivre said:
As the $50 or less beats the hell out of the $500+ to update my PC to properly accept HL2 and other more extravagant titles.
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I wouldn't go so far as to say my computer runs it properly since I have to cut back on some details (I think it looks a bit better then the XBOX version), but my $500 Emachine runs it quite well. Unless your computer is ancient, $500 for an upgrade is a bit much since you can buy an entire computer that can play it for that price. Not that I'm trying to refute your point... Any upgrade will set you back over $50
 
AltogetherAndrews said:
Uh, Aftermath was always supposed to be the start of HL2 episodal content.



Valve had nothing to do with the impression stupid gamers had of Lost Coast. Valve always called it a tech demo, and frequently pointed out that it was not a full fledged expansion.
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Plus it was free...
 
Javaman said:
Unless your computer is ancient, $500 for an upgrade is a bit much
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1.47 AMD with an ATi 9550 and 512RAM

It limped along through the Battlefield 2 demo. I shudder to think what would happen if I tried to load up HL2.
 
Draft said:
Valve hyped up its release for MONTHS.
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Yes, as a tech showcase demo, not as a full fledged HL2 expansion pack. Don't blame the developer just because people don't know how to differentiate between the two. Valve had nothing to do with this.

The Guivre said:
1.47 AMD with an ATi 9550 and 512RAM

It limped along through the Battlefield 2 demo. I shudder to think what would happen if I tried to load up HL2.
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HL2 is not very demanding at all, and very scalable. You should have no problem running the game at medium quality.
 
AltogetherAndrews said:
Yes, as a tech showcase demo, not as a full fledged HL2 expansion pack. Don't blame the developer just because people don't know how to differentiate between the two. Valve had nothing to do with this.
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Yes, they did. A tech demo is a pretty boring thing that gets release quietly for the hardcore crowd. Lost Coast was this whiz-bang ooh neat lookie here thing that they talked about FOREVER, even friggen demoing it for magazines and websites.
 
Draft said:
Yes, they did. A tech demo is a pretty boring thing that gets release quietly for the hardcore crowd. Lost Coast was this whiz-bang ooh neat lookie here thing that they talked about FOREVER, even friggen demoing it for magazines and websites.
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Again, they never talked Lost Coast up as an expansion. Quite the opposite; Valve always maintained that it was a tech demo, with a playable component, and not an expansion pack. They were demoing technology, not content. I was never disappointed in Lost Coast because I knew what to expect. And the only reason I knew what to expect was because I actually bothered with listening to what Valve itself had to say about it.
 
The developer commentary was a nice touch. Personally I couldn't give a shit if the new stuff is episodic or not, I just want it NOW! Or soon, or at all... whenever... please? Fuck this, I'm going in... where's that rootkit.
 
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