Gabe Newell talks Half Life 3

On a recent episode of the Seven Day Cooldown podcast, the head of Valve Software was probed with a slew of questions about the Half Life franchise.  Then the interviewer took a new approach to extracting information from Newell.

“My final question and the question in the back of all your fans’ minds and everyone has been waiting to ask you for a long time: When can we expect the release of Ricochet 2?”

For those unaware of what Ricochet is, it’s an official Valve mod for the original Half Life, released way back in 2000.  A mod that was fairly bad, actually.  One that would in no way be highly anticipated by fans of the franchise.  However, Gabe answered the question.

“In terms of Ricochet 2, we always have this problem that when we talk about things too far in advance, we end up changing our minds as we’re going through and developing stuff, so as we’re thinking through the giant story arc which is Ricochet 2, you might get to a point where you’re saying something is surprising us in a positive way and something is surprising us in a negative way, and you know, we’d like to be super-transparent about the future of Ricochet 2.  The problem is, we think that the twists and turns that we’re going through would probably drive people more crazy than just being silent about it, until we can be very crisp about what’s happening next.”

Seems like Gabe has put a lot of thought into this 12 year old mod, and its potential sequel.  It’s likely that Gabe was alluding to the development process that Half Life 3 or Half Life 2: Episode 3 is undergoing.  While he never came out and said it in the podcast, many are taking it as Valve’s offical statement on the highly anticipated sequel and continuation of the franchise.