I think we've seen here about 200 different threads, with about equal time between "It's delayed" and "It's still on-time".
So far as I'm aware, the last official statement from Valve in this topic was about a month ago at ETCS, where they said they were still on-track for the 30 Sep 2003 release.
Now, Valve somehow managed to be churning away at HL2 for nearly five years (okay, closer to four and a half, but hey) without anyone leaking that fact. The only reason anyone had to even suspect there would be a sequel was the ending of the original Half-Life. Valve never made any announcement whatsoever about HL2 until the 2003 EEE.
This leads me to believe that it is, in fact, possible that Valve may be able to pull off not announcing when the game goes Gold, but rather may at one point in the next few days, announce "Oh, right, it was gold on the 20th. Go play and have fun on the 30th." This is basically what they did with HL2 in the first place anyhow.
That said, it is rather near the currently-official release date, and mum's been the word. It's equally possible that it will in fact get delayed. However, I lend absolutely no credence to the myriad "I talked to a guy at EB who works with a guy that went to a conference where he heard it was delayed" stories.
I'm very hopeful that it'll release on time, and personally, I'm optimistic about it, but I won't be entirely shocked if it is delayed.
But please, for clarity's sake, the posts about "I talked to a guy who heard from a guy" are entirely useless.
So far as I'm aware, the last official statement from Valve in this topic was about a month ago at ETCS, where they said they were still on-track for the 30 Sep 2003 release.
Now, Valve somehow managed to be churning away at HL2 for nearly five years (okay, closer to four and a half, but hey) without anyone leaking that fact. The only reason anyone had to even suspect there would be a sequel was the ending of the original Half-Life. Valve never made any announcement whatsoever about HL2 until the 2003 EEE.
This leads me to believe that it is, in fact, possible that Valve may be able to pull off not announcing when the game goes Gold, but rather may at one point in the next few days, announce "Oh, right, it was gold on the 20th. Go play and have fun on the 30th." This is basically what they did with HL2 in the first place anyhow.
That said, it is rather near the currently-official release date, and mum's been the word. It's equally possible that it will in fact get delayed. However, I lend absolutely no credence to the myriad "I talked to a guy at EB who works with a guy that went to a conference where he heard it was delayed" stories.
I'm very hopeful that it'll release on time, and personally, I'm optimistic about it, but I won't be entirely shocked if it is delayed.
But please, for clarity's sake, the posts about "I talked to a guy who heard from a guy" are entirely useless.
