Failed Experiment
By Vod_Crack 2 Comments
Episodic Content was introduced due to some criticism from fans and from critics that the biggest games out today takes years and years to develop and everyone just wishes the sequel to their favourite game franchise gets made in a year or so but that hardly ever happens and when it does, it usually isn't too different too the last game (that's a completely different topic altogether, so I will stop there). So those brainboxes at Valve Software, developers of the amazing Half-Life games, thought after the release of Half-Life 2 that it would be a bit of a drag if Half-Life 3 took another half of a decade to come out. So they came up with Episodic Content. I believe Half-Life 2 Episode One was originally meant to be called Half-Life 2 Aftermath which shows that they really wanted to show a new way of putting out game content and Valve have been very successful with this in recent years due to their Steam Digital Distribution service. Valve wanted to continue the adventure of Gordon Freeman and do it in small chunks released around 6 months of each other. I am not sure if Half-Life 2 was the first game to have this type of structure but I do know that SiN Episodes: Emergence was released around the same time (more on that later). My intial thoughts of this? I thought, damn, that would be fucking great! For those who don't know, Half-Life is my favourite game of all time and I shit myself when a new one comes out so I was obviously pretty excited by Valve's plans of continuing the game I love so much.
But honestly, it didn't really work out the way I wanted to. When Half-Life 2: Episode One came out, I didn't actually buy it right away but I bought it a month later (cerca July 2006) and I very much enjoyed. The new interaction with Alyx Vance and the new gameplay mechanics involving her was new and it continued the story very well. None of the Half-Life 1 style different perspectives (though I liked that a lot). I think that was around the time Valve announced Portal and showed the trailer off to everyone and it was very much exciting and intriguing at the same time. There was also the new Team Fortress 2 stuff revealed, showing the characters in the new graphic style. I was especially excited about that since Team Fortress 2 had been delayed about 20 times before that and I honestly thought that game was in purgatory along with Alan Wake, Duke Nukem Forever and that untitled Wild West game for the PlayStation 3 which I think was maybe a sequel to Red Dead Revolver. "What does this mean?", I wondering as I was thinking about Episode Two's fate but then it was announced that Episode Two wasn't going to be a stand-alone product anymore, the two new games Portal and Team Fortress 2 were going to be sold with the new episode in a package known as The Black Box. There was also The Orange Box announced but that was also for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 and had both Half-Life 2 and Episode One for good measure. But it was a damn shame that the game got delayed so many freaking times! The Black Box was even cancelled after a while and I have to say, that still bugs me as I basically bought Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One again! But anyway, The Orange Box was delayed so many times that it eventually came out around October 2007! To be fair, there were rumours going around it was going to even be released in 2008. And for this reason alone, this is why I think Episodic Content should die. The whole concept of making smaller games and being able to release them faster seems like a cool idea but in reality it doesn't work! And if you look at the SiN Episodes, they got canned altogether so currently there is Episode One but there is no Episode Two or Three to continue it, it just ends there. This is because many of the developers at Ritual Entertainment left and the game really could not have went on. If Ritual had made a big sequel to SiN then this mess would have never happened!
So that is my little thoughts on Episodic Content and you are willing to leave your own thoughts! I will speak again soon, Ross.
Here is a scale of the times of when the Half-Life 2 Episodes should have came out and when they have come out
Theory Reality
Episode One: Release Summer 2006 Episode One: Release June 2006
Episode Two: Release Winter 2006 Episode Two: Release October 2007
Episode Three: Release Summer 2007 Episode Three: Release TBA 2009?!