Half-Life 2 expansion on the way

Afermath's the name...

The only thing that could surprise the world concerning an expansion pack for Half-Life 2 would be the announcement that it was coming out next week. Unfortunately this will not be the case, although this month's PC Gamer splurges out the detail on this now confirmed release. Covering a stupefying ten pages, (longest preview ever, covering more pages than the actual HL2 review itself) the magazine article goes into quite some detail over what this eagerly awaited extension will offer.

Tilted Aftermath, the story will focus on filling out some of the characters from Half-Life 2, such as Alyx and Dog. Taking place after the closing events of Half-Life 2 in City 17, Aftermath will start with our heroes escape from the now crumbling and out of control metropolis. The crippled Citadel has launched into space and the aliens barriers have fallen, making the city easy picking for a variety of strange creatures who previously had to make do with pressing their noses up against the force-fields. Valve are keeping most of the story close to their chest, including the identity of the characters that players will control. It appears that the previously vaunted Alyx and Dog episodes have been ditched in favour of making Alyx a more proactive companion, fleshing out the characters and making the expansion less of a solitary experience than the parent game. "It's kind of ironic that despite so much of the theme of Half Life 2 being about other characters and other people, you spent most of the game alone," said Valve designer Robert Walker.

Valve are remaining coy over just about every aspect of Aftermath, and this includes the manner in which the game will be released. There's plenty of speculation that it will be a Steam exclusive, but considering the raft of difficulties and ill-will that the Steam delivery of Half-Life 2 generated it's debatable whether the Steam delivery service is mature enough to handle the task. The article shed precious little light on this, with the Valve interviewees seeming to indicate that the expansion wouldn't exist without Steam, a somewhat confusing position to take considering the wild success of the two expansion packs for the first Half-Life, both of which came in shiny CD format.

And while there are few surprises in the preview, the touted summer release date will no doubt raise the hackles of all those gamers stung by Valve's now infamous 'liberty with the truth' when setting out release dates. Regardless, Aftermath is guaranteed to make a big splash on the gaming world when and however it finally makes it was onto our hard-drives.

By Sam Gibson