'We found ourselves creeping ever forward towards, 'Well, let's just keeping putting more and more, and more, and more stuff in this game because we want to make it as good as we can,'' notes Casali, 'and then we realized these episodes are turning more into sequels.' While Episode One had been successfully completed in a year, Episode Two took double that amount of time to come to fruition. For the fabled episode, 'score creep' is to blame for the lack of a conclusion to the Half-Life 2 story. In a new interview with IGN, level designer Dario Casali opened up about why the company dodged making Episode Three for so long and why Alyx was the natural progression of where the series should go. Half-Life fans have waited more than a decade for this moment, but there's still a burning question among the diehards: What happened to Half-Life 2: Episode Three? Not content to simply let its massively popular Steam marketplace sell other games, the company is making a grand return to the type of experiences that made it a household name.

Yesterday's release of Half-Life: Alyx has ushered in a new era for Valve.

Half life 2 episode one walk through