The next round of Valve goodness is on its way from Bellevue, Washington, home of the prominent developer. According to interviews with Gabe Newell, Valve's head honcho, the High Dynamic Range lighting extravaganza Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast will be with us late October, and the next installment of Half-Life 2 itself, called Aftermath, should be with us shortly.
Hopefully, Aftermath will make up for what was a sub-par finish to the original game. Like the Lost Coast level, Aftermath will feature HDR lighting. It picks up from where the original left off and, according to a June 2005 interview with Valve programmer Robin Walker, Aftermath plans to work hard on increasing the interaction with NPCs and the roles they play. Walker admitted in the interview that the game didn't spend enough time with the major characters, leaving them a little underdeveloped. Maybe some of this hard work will go into making the lacklustre party system worthwhile.
Otherwise, it's all looking good, the new chapter reportedly providing five hours of gameplay. With luck, there won't be any delays and we'll be able to continue the HL2 adventure in short order. If you want to check out more info and screenshots on Lost Coast and Aftermath, visit the http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page Developer Wiki .
On an unrelated note, http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Gabe_Newell%27s_PC Newell's PC runs a pair of 7800 GTXs in SLI. Looks like NVIDIA is good enough these days for Half-Life 2, a surprising change of heart after Newell made it quite clear last year that ATI was the way to go if you wanted to play the game at its best.