Valve has released a news update documenting its progress on Half-Life 2: Episode 2, claiming that work on the title is looking good and that the game is looking very good. The new episode is expected to offer a similar length experience to that of Episode 1 while Valve will also release the new game as part of a pack that will contain the complete Half-life 2 experience; the Orange box will also include the innovative mini-game, Portal.
Valve comments on the development progress on Episode 2 saying, Right now, we're working hard on putting the final parts of Episode Two together. Early on during development we spent a lot of time working on concept art of key areas of the game, so that everyone on the team could share a vision of what the final game would look like.
The developer also released three new concept art images, available by following the Screens tab above, which it uses to challenge gamers by asking us to see how the company turns those images into the actual game that we will experience when Episode 2 releases.The three pieces below are some examples of that work. Once the game is released you'll be able to see how these concept pieces were eventually turned into the final product.