What I think many of us have suspected for some time now has been confirmed. Gabe Newell has confirmed that Valve are working on Source 2. Ambushed by a group of 4chan members on his birthday, they presented Gabe with a physical Mann Co box as his birthday present for which he had to pay the usual fee you need to pay to open the boxes which amused me no end. Gabe being Gabe took it all in good humour and after the celebrations, spent some time answering their questions which gave us some very interesting information.
In the rather long and poor quality video posted on YouTube, Gabe confirms that; “We’ve been working on new engine stuff for a while, we’ve just been waiting for a game to roll it out with”. And to make sure there was no doubt to the answer, as is so often the case with Valve and their vague updates, another question was asked if it was an entirely new engine or just an extension to Source and Gabe confirmed it with a simple “yeah”. In addition to all of this, he also mentioned a sequel to Ricochet which everyone has taken to be the codeword for the next instalment of the Half Life series.
It’s been widely known now that Valve may have been working on this since the Source Filmmaker was released. Fans were quick to discover a number of what appeared to be Source 2 files which included references to the current engine as distinguished between Source 2 along with Source 2 tool icons. Valve are notorious for burying these little hints and clues into their files which fans love to dissect and debate about their meaning endlessly. As we have seen in the past, all you need is just one Half Life 3 reference somewhere and the internet goes crazy with speculation.
If you care to listen to the full video, it’s attached below. As mentioned the quality is fairly poor so it’s not always easy to hear what’s being said.
[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fl4s9T79n0″]