In a recent interview, Doug Lombardi has revealed that there are currently no plans to release a sequel to The Orange Box’s Portal in 2008.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Lombardi said that the Seattle-based developer wanted to do something new with the idea instead of just churning out more of the same right away.
“In typical Valve tradition, it won’t be Portal with different colours,” said Lombardi.
“I think that when you hit something like that, you have two choices: you can quickly replicate it and stick it out there – do the opportunistic thing and cash in on it – or you can do the crazy thing like we did after Half-Life was so successful and go off and try and say, ‘Okay, that was revolutionary, so its successor has to be equally as revolutionary.’”
Lombardi then went on to point out that he knows people want more of the original game, but that Valve feels it would be boring to just remake the original straight away.
Lombardi described Portal as something of an experiment – one which definitely payed off judging by the critical acclaim that the game received. Lombardi did admit that the process of taking so long to make the right game could be painful though, pointing to Half-Life 2 as a perfect example. The sequel to the original Half-Life took six years and more than 40 million dollars to develop.
