Gabe Newell been talking about the Valve sequel everyone wants, Half Life 2: Episode 3, in terms of the Valve sequel no-one wants, Ricochet 2. With almost audible air quotes around each mention of a possible follow up to Valve's year 2000 disk-lobbing multiplayer arena title, Newell told Seven Day Cooldown that the silence surrounding the next Half-Life is intended to spare fans from the unpredictable "twists and turns" of Valve's iterative development style.
"We'd like to be super transparent about the future of Ricochet 2," said Newell, "but the problem is that the twists and turns that we're going through would probably drive people more crazy than being silent about it until we can be very crisp about what's happening."
Earlier he also said "we always have this problem, when we talk about things too far in advance we end up changing our minds as we're developing stuff. 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."
SDC asked Gabe if Valve's fluid "work on what you want" approach to management style (captured nicely by the Valve employee handbook that surfaced over the weekend) has caused people to move away from the project to work on other things.
"No," he said. "Everyone who's working on Ricochet 2 continues to work on Ricochet 2."
What would you like to see from Ricochet 2?
