Half-Life 2 will be a traditional sequel as it continues the storyline established in the original. Many old characters will come back such as the G-man and Alyx, ofcourse a background will be provided for them and such. Valve has said that there will be no fighting on alien turf this time. The Black Mesa complex will star the setting again, but it won't be the only place for action. Outside of the complex is the rest of the fictitious European city known only as City 17. The city has details of many modern societies, besides the fact that everyone has some high-tech clothing on. Undoubtedly you will notice a difference in the games graphics. They are far superior to that of the original and include incredible detail, going far and beyond basic standards to set another level beyond comparison. Another note worthy thing is the lip synching put in place for the characters. Characters like Alyx can actually be seen smiling, frowning, grimacing, and accurately forming every syllable of her dialogue. Human characters are not the only returners, many monsters have returned such as the headcrabs and ceiling hugging barnacles. They look unmistakably similar to their original incarnations, just much more detailed and greatly enhanced to show a wide range of motion. Some new creatures have emerged too, including a number of gigantic insectlike creatures reminiscent of the Klendathu bugs from Starship Troopers. Ofcourse, the Black-Ops are still all over this, so expect them to come back as well.

   The gameplay will be much the same. Like previously stated, Half-Life focused on scripted suspense events. Some of the commando squads were ingenius by using flanking maneuvers and flushing Freeman out of his hiding places with grenades; an impressive display of AI. However, the things are still scripted, meaning that things were set up according to a time. Enemies would pop out shooting you while a timer was set for more to fire at a certain projected point of where Freeman would be. Half-Life 2's new AI engine is so integrated that gameplay sequences will take surprising turns, no matter how many times you play them through. In one scene, Freeman is being chased by an enormous strider. Freeman bolts under an overpass, hoping that the strider would be unable to proceed -- but then the strider bent down and continued it's pursuit. Valve explains, "The strider knew that it could get past the bridge only by crouching." A more startling example is when Freeman ran and hid from a heavily armored alien soldier. The door was shut tightly and Freeman hides in a corner -- but then a hand smashes through the glass, a probe is released into the room, and then the door caves in from the alien smashing it. Valve explains that the player again failed to hide, proving the games AI to be far beyond what we've seen before. The "rag doll" effect was also taking into place, borrowing this concept from the popular Hitman series. The effect works for deaths, when the enemy is killed against a wall for instance, it will smash against the wall and eventually slide down into a slouching position, much like a rag doll would.

   Half-Life 2's engine was designed to be scaleable. Valve built the engine so low-end systems could run the game well. The minimum specs for the game should be around a 700MHz Pentium III processor with a TNT graphics card. However, when run on a 2GHz Pentium 4 machine with a GeForce 4 card, it performed nicely. Basically, the game is very flexible for all types of players and on virtually any type of computer available since 2000. Not much is known on the weapons and what Freemans new moves will be, but expect more details soon. Expect Half-Life 2 sometime in late 2004, probably around September or October.