Speaking to games site Eurogamer.net at this week's Leipzig games convention, top PR man Doug Lombardi has revealed that 2: Episode 2 will be out in the first quarter of 2007 - hopefully February, we're told. Episode 2 is expected to come bundled with Team Fortress 2 and Portal, with Lombardi revealing that the team are well into playtesting the new instalment at the moment.

"You know, our thing is always that we're trying to make really good experiences and so we're going to manage to that rather than the schedule," he explained apologetically on the firm's sometimes unreliable approach to release dates.

"To us, the gun is similar to the gravity gun in Half-Life 2, and had we been doing episodic back then it would've been great to put out something like Ravenholm as an episode of its own and let people play with the physics and then say, well, now what are we going to do with the physics based on what we saw from people playing with it?" the PR man also revealed. He added that feedback from Portal will be useful in determining to what extent such technologies will be used in future episodes and games - the aim being to 'open up the gameplay' further. More on this as we get it.

By Luke Guttridge