It didn’t help that various concepts were made that never really captured the depth of what the team wanted out of a sequel. After Half-Life 2, according to Casali and IGN, Valve knew they were invested in the development of Source 2 and couldn’t go really go back to Half-Life until the engine was complete.

Source 2 was in development alongside Half-Life 2 and HL2 Episodes 1 and 2.

“We want to make that same Half-Life 2 mistake again of working on Source 2 and the next Half-Life game at the same time, because that created a lot of pain the first time we tried to do that,” Casali explained. While various reasons such as “scope creep” forced the team to take longer and longer on episodes that were supposed to take a year to make a piece, Casali also spoke to the factor of working on Source 2 at the same time as Half-Life 2 as definite issue. Following the launch of Half-Life: Alyx, Casali spoke to a number of factors regarding the delay of any and all Half-Life games for years on end following the launch of Half-Life 2: Episode 2. Half-Life 2 is one of the most celebrated games of all time, but the stress of creating Source 2 created issues as the studio tried to move on to new projects, and Valve Level Designer Dario Casali recently revealed that was a big part of why a new Half-Life game didn’t happen for a long time after Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was done.Ĭasali recently opened up in an interview with IGN posted on March 23, 2020.

The plan was to produce a new and powerful engine alongside a benchmark of gaming. When Valve began work on Half-Life 2, they simultaneously began work on Source 2.

Half life 2 source 2