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Originally Posted by Rage Against the Machine
do you know why it's taking them so long to finish Episode 3? Are they making a new engine or something? cause damn, if it's only 3 hours of gameplay like Episode 1 and 2 it shouldn't be taking this long.
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They are not making a new engine; however they are tinkering with it quite a bit for Half-life 3. It is a 7 year old game engine and they are trying to do something revolutionary with it for Half-life 3.
It is not the gameplay or the story they are working on, it is how they can use this final installment to do something revolutionary. Look at it like this:
The original half-life: Started a revolutionary way of first-player story telling and no cut scenes.
Half-life 2: Refined first-player story telling and introduced the gravity gun (which introduced a whole new way of level manipulation and importance).
Portal: The portal gun. Showed gameplay could be more important than graphics/a hero's story (chell never speaks)/complex narrative plot. This step reversed a trend that was in the making (rising popularity of those god awful final fantasy games).
Portal 2: Created a world in which the environment told more of the back story than actual words did.
So Valve is sitting on a predicament, which is why you are probably going to be waiting awhile. They are looking for something groundbreaking that will (like their other games) shatter your notion about gameplay and design while keeping with their original engine (which is still a bit buggy).
Also, my friend who is a fairly good source for all this info says his theory is that valve is going to come out with a much bigger game than we expect. And it is going to be more of an Half-life 3 than a half life episode 3. But he also says who know? so take that as you will.