I watched the full documentary now. It’s clear they were burned out of Half Life when they started with Episode 3. The idea to deliver a new episode every 12 months wasn’t creatively sustainable. So they put it on hold while they worked on L4D and other projects.
They didn’t try. They did one then it was years before episode 2.
You have to actually make episodes before declaring it a failure.
I watched the full documentary now. It’s clear they were burned out of Half Life when they started with Episode 3. The idea to deliver a new episode every 12 months wasn’t creatively sustainable. So they put it on hold while they worked on L4D and other projects.