Valve reveals Half-Life 2 expansion plans

Valve has revealed it has several Half-Life 2 expansion packs planned which will tell the stories of several key supporting characters in the soon-to-be-released PC blockbuster.

Talking to Eurogamer in a recent interview, Valve's Doug Lombardi said: "We’re definitely going to continue to work in the Half Life universe. We definitely want to expand some of the stories of Al and some of the other characters that we’re introducing in Half Life 2".

The Seattle-based developer pulled in Gearbox to augment the original Half-Life, but Lombardi indicated that Valve wants to keep content creation to itself this time around. "The team really wants to do it themselves - at least initially," the Valve marketing director told Eurogamer.

"We had a really good experience with the Gearbox guys and they did a really good job (on the Half-Life expansion packs) [but] I think this time around folk are really really invested in the universe this time, and since we do have the engine that's going to take us hopefully through a few iterations we don’t have to sort of roll the team off to get working on the new engine.

"So I'd say at least the first couple of things that you see will most likely be from Valve... beyond that who knows?"

With Valve having signed with Activision for "future content" it looked possible that Vivendi would miss out on any of the lucrative expansions, but Lombardi confirmed: "The Half-Life stuff is with Vivendi," making it look increasingly likely that Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2 could well be the first new products to emerge as part of an almost forgotten publishing deal that has thus far yielded just Day Of Defeat.

Read our full interview with Doug Lombardi here, or you can watch it for yourself in movie form courtesy of Eurofiles.