Episode Three set in the arctic, Valve hints

Don't go calling it confirmed, but Valve gave us a very strong hint that Episode Three will be a climactic battle in the arctic when we visited them in Seattle recently.

The arctic base is glimpsed in Episode One.
The battle takes place at the arctic base we see Mossman reporting in from during Episode One, and the battle that takes place there is described in great detail in Valve's Half-Life 2 coffee-table book, Raising the Bar. It was intended to be the climax of Half-Life 2 itself, but was cut when the game's scope was scaled back. So it makes perfect sense that Valve would want to flesh it out in the final episode of the post-Half-Life 2 trilogy, when they've got time to do it justice - Episode Three has been in development for as long as Episode Two already.

After some futile probing about the details of Episode Two's plot (I came away with "Someone somewhere on the internet is right" written in my notes), I went all-in and suggested that Episode Three would be the huge arctic conflict described in Raising the Bar. And rather than yet another "You'll have to wait and see", PR man Doug Lombardi said "That would be exciting, wouldn't it?"

Taking that as a yes, I told them they gave away too much in Raising the Bar. Doug agreed: "We figure if you're paying $25 for a book, we ought to give away something."

The full story is in our hands-on preview of Episode Two, part two of the comprehensive Valve playtest in the latest issue of PC Gamer UK. Episode Two is due out at the end of September this year, and if their release schedule so far is anything to go by, Episode Three could be 18 months after that. So, uh, keep this to yourself.

via cvg