Half-life 2 Episode 3 Hints in Alien Swarm

There are a few hints in the editor that seem to link to episode 3. Steam forum member, CrowbarSka breaks it down for us:

Those entries are for info_nodes, which HL2’s AI uses to navigate the environment and use it properly (e.g. soldiers lining up against cover, antlions burrow points, etc).

This suggests Ep3 will use a ‘blob’ enemy. The ‘brain’ part is one of several functions: shake, fire, brain, spit, swarm. Indicating some of its possible behaviours. There’s no guarantee this would make it into the final game though, but its interesting nonetheless and to be honest I’ll lap up any Ep3 information at this point.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Ep3 assets can be found in Alien Swarm. The ice wall texture, particle effects and many of the props are likely to be reused art assets to save production cost/time (further supported by the fact that AS is free). I’m sure we’ll see the beautiful new lighting and other visual effects, as also seen in Portal 2. I would put money on this being a sneak preview of some of the new things to come. Whether it was Valve’s intention to ‘drop clues’ so to speak, or whether they were just saving on the workload, I can’t say.

I’d be very interested to see whether Valve incorporate the Left 4 Dead AI Director in any way in Ep3.

Source: steampowered.com