By Alec Meer on June 17th, 2011 at 10:19 am.
With Bellevue’s finest opting not to make an appearance at E3 earlier this month, we’ve all been left in the dark THE TERRIBLE FRIGHTENING DARKNESS about what’s next on the plate for Valve, and when we might see it. DoTA 2? Portal 2 expansions? Something, at long, long bloody last, to do with Half-Life?
Well, in August we might find out.
Valve will reportedly (but not yet definitely) be at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany – but whether it’s a full game or related to the previously-revealed Portal 2 DLC remains to be seen.
Obviously, both gamers and cynical headline writers will start bellowing about Half-Life, but personally I would love to see DoTA. After all those big franchise action games screaming for attention at E3, something a little more strategic and oddball is just what the doctor ordered. (My doctor does write a lot of strange prescriptions. Sometimes I wonder if he’s even a real doctor at all.)
17/06/2011 at 10:24 Chris Evans says:
Odd ball you say? How about if they announced Ricochet 2?
17/06/2011 at 10:30 Jubaal says:
or Speedball 3!
17/06/2011 at 10:39 HicRic says:
COME ON FART COPS!
17/06/2011 at 13:01 zeroskill says:
Take my Moneys Valve, all of this! *Throws loads of Moneys* FOR RICOCHET 2. But Hats or gtfo.
17/06/2011 at 15:57 ResonanceCascade says:
I think Fart Cops and Ricochet 2 are both strong possibilities. Stronger than more Half-Life, anyway.
But really, it’s gotta be either Dota 2 or Portal DLC. And I’m leaning toward Dota 2.
17/06/2011 at 17:53 Araxiel says:
I’m telling you: Half Life 2 Deathmatch 2!
19/06/2011 at 04:10 celewign says:
still waiting for Fart Cops
20/06/2011 at 01:25 MikoSquiz says:
It’s going to be Team Fortress 3.
Meet the Medic later this month, Meet the Pyro next month, a half dozen new community maps and a couple of weapons in the updates, TF2 is done, thank you, here’s the next one, it’ll be out 2014.
17/06/2011 at 10:25 Nick says:
If its not Half Life 3 / ep3 I’m done paying attention to any Valve announcements. Too much blue balling.
17/06/2011 at 14:48 Zyrxil says:
You can’t be tired of announcements when they haven’t even announced they’ll announce anything.
17/06/2011 at 22:42 DJ Phantoon says:
I’m pretty sure they have announced that they don’t want to announce anything.
17/06/2011 at 10:26 mkultra says:
new engine incoming
17/06/2011 at 10:36 vodka and cookies says:
Valve don’t do new engine’s they just continually build and integrate other tech into Source as it’s needed. Also Valve don’t aim their games at graphics whores like Crytek and Valve are pretty rubbish when it comes to commercial licensing so there nowhere near as good at that as Epic
Anyway if it’s not Half Life 3 or a completely new game that’s shown then it’s going to be a bit of a letdown. Don’t care for multi-player games so TF2/LFD/DoTA have no interest for me.
17/06/2011 at 10:43 skinlo says:
Gabe said in an interview that they don’t plan on writing an entirely new engine, just constantly upgrading the old one.
17/06/2011 at 10:57 Baka says:
The Layman in me is pretty sure it’s not possible to change the loading capabilities of an engine, but he sure would like to see some streaming and less of those long loading screens in upcoming releases.
Played a round of Alien Swarm a few days before and I have to say, it’s getting pretty ridiculous.
17/06/2011 at 12:24 Malcolm says:
@Baka – why do you say that? – the rendering parts of the engine presumably just obtain resources from some form of in-memory data store. Currently said data store is pre-loaded in advance of the level – it may not be easy to change it to load bits and pieces on demand, but I don’t see why it would be impossible to retro-fit such functionality.
17/06/2011 at 13:30 Baka says:
Well, one of the main reasons for my assumption is the immersion breakingly long loading time after every second testchamber in Portal 2. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved that game, but I reckon if there would be a reasonable fix to Sources loading troubles, it would have been implemented in it’s last Iteration.
17/06/2011 at 14:05 thristhart says:
the kind of decent programmer in me would be surprised if it was impossible to improve the loading, but it would probably require a very large rewrite of the engine code.
17/06/2011 at 14:57 viverravid says:
Currently building something in Source, and there is a fair bit of the game and engine code that relies on setting things up at level load, and having a set number of certain thingumebobs throughout the entire level from then on.
Streaming is not undoable, but it is a fair amount of work.
17/06/2011 at 19:41 HeavyStorm says:
You can rearchitect your codebase and not stick a 2.0 besides it, so a rearchitectured Source Engine remains the same version… After all, I doubt Source is still the same ever since HL2 / Vampire: Bloodlines.
17/06/2011 at 10:26 SAeN says:
I doubt it will be HL related, they wouldn’t want to eclipse DOTA2 before it’s released/
17/06/2011 at 12:13 bigtoeohno says:
savvy point
17/06/2011 at 10:27 Theoban says:
Half Life Zeroth: Prequel to it all, play as Gordon Freeman as he does his job.
17/06/2011 at 10:45 BooleanBob says:
with a Finishing Up His PhD at Uni/Not Getting Any expansion to follow from Gearbox.
17/06/2011 at 12:35 Bilbo says:
In all seriousness, Gearbox need to get involved… I’d give an arm for an Opposing Force 2
17/06/2011 at 13:07 Raiyan 1.0 says:
Actually a prequel will be more like how a quiet little farm boy (who’s quite handy with a crowbar) once got on the wrong train and into the depths of hell… where everyone thinks he went to MIT and has a PhD.
Edit: This thread has a glaring lack of rareh.
17/06/2011 at 10:27 Crimson Rising says:
I REALLY want more DotA 2 news. I’m not good at those games but love em to death.
17/06/2011 at 10:28 Acosta says:
Mandatory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_cCsFU6pak
(Come on guys, it´s Germany, you know it´s going to be this.)
17/06/2011 at 10:36 Stijn says:
…? That’s Swedish.
17/06/2011 at 10:36 Longrat says:
I was more reminded of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xnNhzgcWTk
17/06/2011 at 11:07 sonofsanta says:
@Stijn: I think it was more related to Germany’s infamous love of awful Euro-trance shite, and the whole Dota/DotA thing.
17/06/2011 at 13:16 Acosta says:
I know it´s Swedish, that was not the point :P
17/06/2011 at 10:28 Darkelp says:
I read Gamescom as Comic-con, and for a few bliss second’s believed Valve were bringing comics to Steam.
Still, always look forward to what Valve has to say.
17/06/2011 at 12:37 Monkey says:
Comics? on Steam? That idea is pure win, and so obvious you wonder why it hasn’t been done already.
17/06/2011 at 13:08 iq says:
If you’re wondering too hard, you haven’t taken a good look at exactly how retarded the comics industry is, today. DC just made headlines because they’re rebooting the entire effing universe, *again*, but this time all of the #1s are going to be day-and-date digital. Or something. Maybe. Meanwhile, Marvel says they’re killing Uncanny X-Men. Because it has to have a 2-digit-or-less number on the cover or else people will be intimidated?
I love comics, love love love them. But as an industry it’s the most retarded collection of fuckups that I’ve ever seen, seemingly eager to fall into obscurity and eventual demise.
17/06/2011 at 13:51 Darkelp says:
You would think with a lot of game-comic cross over’s at least it would be a thought?
Well they’re selling hardware now, so maybe in the future?
17/06/2011 at 10:28 SaVi says:
Beware Valve, we german “Volk” have a loooooooooooooooooooooot of questions for you…
17/06/2011 at 22:24 Dances to Podcasts says:
Ah, but do you hav vhays of making zhem talk?
18/06/2011 at 00:38 Stochastic says:
Hahaha! Oktoberfest!
18/06/2011 at 08:50 Saldek says:
Ach, wir werden “Ventil” Dampf machen! Jawohl!
17/06/2011 at 10:29 kikito says:
Half Life Forever
17/06/2011 at 10:31 Teddy Leach says:
Half Life Taking Forever. Half Life Forever In Development. Half Life For Never.
17/06/2011 at 13:03 zeroskill says:
Yes. But it accually wont suck when its out in 10 years.
17/06/2011 at 10:31 konrad_ha says:
I’ll go out on a limb here and say it won’t have anything to do with Half Live.
17/06/2011 at 10:44 Blandford says:
Yeah, I have a feeling that when Valve will finally reveal something Half Life related it probably won’t be at an expo.
Probably some ARG shenanigans.
17/06/2011 at 11:12 soldant says:
Part of me thinks it’ll randomly turn up on Steam one day, completely unannounced, only for Valve to pull it a day later and say “Oh sorry lol”.
17/06/2011 at 13:04 zeroskill says:
They said bazillions of times they are working on Half-life, but they wont reveal anything about it in the near future + Valve time.
17/06/2011 at 13:13 Kaira- says:
Speaking of Half-Life, what’s the last so called “proper news” about it? All I remember is something about Valve researching sign language for Ep3, and that was back in the 2009.
17/06/2011 at 10:33 Kaira- says:
I have a strange feeling that it’ll be much ado about nothing, but we’ll see.
17/06/2011 at 10:34 Unaco says:
Everyone is going to get all hot and bothered for it… people will set up websites with a countdown to the reveal and speculation on what it could be and what it will mean. Numerous websites and magazines and the like will dedicate numerous pages to articles detailing the ‘Exclusive’ details they KNOW Valve will be releasing, about Ep3, L4D3 & 4, HL3, DOTA (what a silly name for a game) or whatever else. There’ll be an ARG, based on Steam, but spanning multiple mediums, with clues and riddles and red-herrings. Games journalists will flock to this gathering and they’ll live Blog the Valve Presentation. We’ll all tune in to the live Streams… and then, they’ll reveal it.
Steam Premium.
Either that, or Gabe will tell us all about the new chair he got, and how he’s going to be buying the same type of chair (with 2 degrees less freedom of movement) for everyone within his line of sight at the Valve offices. And you know what? People will likely take it as the word of Allah.
17/06/2011 at 10:49 Christian says:
No, not chairs, silly.
Hats.
It’s all about the hats (seeing the daily TF2-updates for the last 6 months have all been about hats).
They’ll be announcing a new in-game shop for the previous Half-Life-titles.
Meaning: You will be able to buy an individual hat for each headcrab.
This will be fun.
17/06/2011 at 12:01 Wang Tang says:
Hatcrabs you say?
17/06/2011 at 12:30 Christian says:
All Hail the Mighty Hatcrab!
..or Crabhats.
Although that does sound a bit strange..
17/06/2011 at 18:58 squareking says:
Crabhats!
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/plush/e7f8/
17/06/2011 at 10:36 I LIKE FOOD says:
It´s the new streamlined Half-Life 3, complete with pre-order dlc packs :D
17/06/2011 at 10:51 Teddy Leach says:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HAHA. HA.
17/06/2011 at 10:45 Vexing Vision says:
So, slightly related, do we get a RPS meet-up on the GamesCom going?
17/06/2011 at 11:25 P4p3Rc1iP says:
I’m up for that, though i’ll only be there on thursday.
17/06/2011 at 11:36 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
Definitely!
17/06/2011 at 10:48 rocketman71 says:
Steam 2!!!.
No, no.. Day of Defeat 2!!!.
Perhaps Ricochet 2?
17/06/2011 at 11:10 MonkeyMonster says:
Given the life in DoDS, DoD2 being announced [as long as it wasn't as a horrendous upgrade a CS to CS:Source was ] it would be very well received indeed.
17/06/2011 at 13:04 rocketman71 says:
I’m not so sure about a DoD2, given how Valve has treated DoD:S. Important bugfixes have been done for a couple of years and are still unreleased because Valve doesn’t want to playtest them for a couple of days. DoD:S was the guinea pig for moving Source games to the OB engine, and now everytime Valve adds hats to TF2, something breaks in DoD:S and it takes them days or weeks to fix it.
I love Valve, but their record regarding DoD:S is abysmal. At this time, I’d settle for them releasing the fixes and then never ever again touching DoD:S.
Edit: also, it would be nice to say something about DoD:S. After all, it’s Germany. A lot of the people still playing DoD:S are there. So it would be like Blizzard presenting SC2 in Korea (and let’s forget how they fucked it up later).
17/06/2011 at 10:48 skinlo says:
I bet it won’t be Half Life related, probably DoTA 2.
17/06/2011 at 10:50 Ovno says:
Its new hats, surely that’s all they ever release nowadays…. (other than portal 2, alien swarm, et al.)
17/06/2011 at 11:03 Sami H says:
New hats for Portal 2!
17/06/2011 at 10:56 Jorum says:
Given the damp-squib the Portal 2 ARG turned out to be, you’d hope Valve have learned to manage public expectations a bit better this time.
Despite the four-year (!) cliff-hanger I’ll not hope of it being EP3.
Does EP3 still even exist? Maybe they decided to turn it into a full-length game HL3.
17/06/2011 at 11:11 Corrupt_Tiki says:
Title should have been: Valve say something! In August Will say something else!
Maybe too long? I Don’t know :3
17/06/2011 at 11:17 Theory says:
The first of Valve’s new Portal 2 chambers came out yesterday, but nobody seems to have noticed.
17/06/2011 at 12:46 Creeping Death says:
Not made by Valve and not available to everyone so no one cares :P
17/06/2011 at 11:18 Monchberter says:
Is asking after Half-Life 2 Episode 3 or half-Life 3 officially an internet meme now?
One that will live on long after they do actually release it / them?
17/06/2011 at 11:35 McDan says:
Alec has finally let the alt-text get to him and has clearly gone mad. Any valve announcement will be looked forward to by me, looks DOTA-ish to me.
17/06/2011 at 11:43 mrwonko says:
Hmm… not exactly news, already read that on the German website “Half-Life Portal” all the way back in February…
Anyway I’m really looking forward to visiting the Gamescom this year. I’m pretty sure Valve’s got something big planned.
17/06/2011 at 12:05 johnpeat says:
I for one welcome our new ‘least newbie friendly game on earth’ overlords…
Let’s be honest here – DoTA (or whatever else you want to call it) is going to be VERY hard to make into a game which doesn’t cause players to treat less experienced/fortunate/focussed players like dogshit.
Imagine L4D but you’re forced to take along a clown wearing bells and a flash light on his hat – that’s playing any of the DoTA games with anyone who’s even slightly not with-it :)
I’m actually hoping they manage a decent single-player take on the format – if nothing else if will mean people can practice without screwing everyone else up :)
17/06/2011 at 12:17 pakoito says:
DotA2 Beta on October-November.
17/06/2011 at 13:33 HaZiLLa says:
I don’t understand all the speculation, Valve said ages ago they were previewing DoTA 2 at comic-con..
17/06/2011 at 15:35 shoptroll says:
I thought Valve was one of the co-sponsors for the PC Gaming Party at E3 alongside Nexon and another company (oddly wasn’t Blizzard/Acti or EA I think).
My guess is DotA 2 and maybe the real Portal 2 DLC. Hopefully some details on that Big Screen Steam UI they were talking about at GDC would be nice too.
17/06/2011 at 17:30 Hawkyy says:
Looks like I have to book my holiday and a flight early this year. Cologne it is!
17/06/2011 at 17:41 thedeadface says:
I don’t care unless whatever it is; has hats, but I would guess it’s too just show off DOTA2…?
17/06/2011 at 18:57 nyck says:
What about a game about the Seven Hours War? : Game Length: 7 hours + multiplayer :P
But srly, I don’t think HL will be announced in the GamesCom, if HL3 would be at least 50% done, they would announce it at the E3
17/06/2011 at 21:08 dariuskeel says:
Why would they go to Germany to announce Half-Life 3? It’s definitely DotA 2.
18/06/2011 at 06:39 Kevin says:
Well didn’t Valve have a bunch of Episode 2 demos going for Leipzig way back in the summer of ’06?
18/06/2011 at 17:44 Ogrecakes says:
Well, August isnt to far off the bat, and Meet the Medic still hasnt been released.
I mean, the Medic is German, right :o You cant disclude that as a possibility, though valve wouldnt go for something as simple as that, I think the anouncment will Have to do with Dota 2, though i would love to see the portal 2 DLC, which IS coming out on august…
18/07/2011 at 17:53 Nethlem says:
@dariuskeel
Why wouldn’t they?
Just because most US people like to pretend that the only important videogame related conventions happen on their continent doesn’t mean that it’s the truth :P
GamesCom had it’s fair share of reveals and new game announcements over the years, it’s to Europe what TGS is to Japan and what E3 is to the US. Not to mention that it’s the only event of it’s kind that’s actually public and not just “press only”, that really helps with revealing new stuff because you’ve got actual customers there and not just the usual press and industry types.
But other then that: Of course it’s gonna be dota2, after all it’s valves current project. Wouldn’t make sense to draw attention away from dota2 by announcing HL3/EP3.