The fact that The Orange Box offers five games for the price of one makes it a bargain. Broken down into individual elements, Team Fortress 2 offers solid multiplayer components, Half-Life 2 and its episodes have a compelling single-player story and Portal offers something with unique puzzles. The variety and quality of those titles equal a peerless package deal.

"Team Fortress 2 has this natural built in audience for people who played the first game and thought that we were still making the sequel," commented Lombardi. "When we re-announced it at the EA Showcase in Sumer '06, those folks suddenly reappeared, and over time, their numbers just began to swell. By the time the beta got started, they realized what we were doing differently with the franchise. We play a ton of multiplayer games, some that we make and some that we don't, but our goal was to have Team Fortress 2 deliver a true class based multiplayer experience with a lot of subtle things to help move the bar up, like highlighting someone who has killed you multiple times in a row. We wanted to refine the genre as much as possible.

"One of the reasons for including Half-Life 2 and Episode One, is despite the wide amount of sales on the PC, we knew that there'd be people who were new to it, especially on the consoles. And for the PC guy, they could fall into any of the categories of having played either Half-Life 2 and/or Episode One. So the most logical thing is to just put it all on there. Sure, you could start at Episode Two, and between the opening movie and many of the things brought up in the game you could probably get the gist, but it's just easier this way. It'll mean everyone will have the option to be caught up for Episode Three."

"Not to repeat myself, but The Orange Box was a response to Episode One feedback; they wanted innovative design and unique weapons," emphasized Lombardi. "The gameplay mechanic [in Portal] is making you think about the game world surrounding you. When we got started on it, we weren't sure how or if it'd connect with anything else, but the decision was eventually to make Portal its own separate game universe. Again, the response to Portal has been the one thing that's surprised us the most. I mean, Gabe said it was his favorite title on The Orange Box, but holy cow, the reactions have just been great. It was what the kids out of DigiPen Institute of Technology had a vision for and the great part is that they were able to work with the art team to find something compatible with their vision. That was the beauty of it at Valve; we let them do their own thing. You can talk about particle effects and polygon pushing ability and blah, blah... but the great thing about the Source Engine, is that it allows a variety of visuals [like Team Fortress 2 and Portal].

"Something that lends itself to the different art styles is that we devise the visual aesthetics to complement the gameplay. Usually for games, the story dictates the setting and they make the game based around that. For Portal, we started out with some high sci-fi environment and found people playing with a lot of things that were tertiary to the gameplay, so we drew it back to the point where there's only all there needs to be in the environment. For Team Fortress 2, we gave all the characters different silhouettes, giving people a unique visual heads up. Again, the art style was created to support the gameplay dynamic. The story should give context to the action, not the other way around."

The Orange Box was complemented by both a TV ad campaign and a unique set of web trailers. The TV ads did a simple yet effective job of conveying the contents contained within The Orange Box. The web-trailers highlighted the unique atmospheres of Portal and Half-Life 2, and can be read about in GameDaily BIZ's Ad Watch.

"It's interesting because most of our games before have been advertised in a more traditional style," mused Lombardi. "For Half-Life 1 and 2 we went with the traditional mediums of advertising for games, with screenshots and the like. The Portal trailer really raised a few eyebrows for us; last time I checked, it had about 1 million watches on YouTube. With the character trailers in Team Fortress 2, we've seen a similar sort of thing, with 2 to 3 times more people watching them than the usual trailers. People are showing it to other people and watching it multiple times; it's an interesting piece of content, and turns others onto the game. It's a great way to show off the game and it plays into the collaboration thing. The Valve developers talk about 'co-authoring' the gaming experience; whether people watch the story or blow everything away, they're co-authoring the story. Now, we're co-authoring with these character shorts that are outside the game and lend context to the gameplay."

We had to ask whether or not the series would be continuing, even though the game has released. "We'll definitely have episodes for all nine characters. 'The Medic' will be out in a couple weeks," confirmed Lombardi.

As for the Half-Life franchise, gamers will likely have much to look forward to. "Half Life 2: Episode Three will be the last game to carry the 'Half-Life 2' moniker. After that, it's tough to say whether or not the franchise will go episodic or towards big releases like The Orange Box. One thing's for sure: there will be more for Freeman. Definitely," Lombardi concluded.