(And honestly, who can blame them?)īack when hope still existed for Half-Life 2, the gaming industry was a very different beast. We weren't only robbed of a conclusion that left us hanging we were also robbed of another experience from Valve's most creative and fruitful era-one they've since left behind to rest on their laurels count their Dota 2 money. But instead of sneering derision towards a misguided IP that had gone stale before Y2K, in the case of Episode Three, the joke is squarely on us. While many wonderful experiments would spawn from the technology and brainpower behind Half-Life 2, its long-awaited final Episode has now taken the role of the Internet's new Duke Nukem Forever joke. Unfortunately for us, only part of this prediction came to pass.
With Episode One just a week away, it seemed as if Valve would finally close the curtain on this acclaimed FPS, and move on to bigger and better things by the time 2008 kicked into gear. On May 24, 2006, Valve announced Half-Life 2: Episode Three-the true finale to 2004's Half-Life 2-would launch in December of 2007.