I think the problem with taking that long is that by that time we've all kind of forgotten about the game. Because the Orange Box hit at the beginning of the Holiday "gone gold" artificial rush, I bet their sales aren't as good as they could've been, too. There was a ton of talk about how EP2 was going to be more that twice the length of EP1...but it wasn't. It was much harder, but it wasn't a whole lot longer. Even if you combine the two and add on a 3rd episode of the same length...does that really equate to a sequel? In my eyes it doesn't. Even if they were able to combine all 3 into one seemless game I don't think it does. Why? It's enough time to actually make a REAL sequel instead. These episodes feel a little tacked on just because nothing really important can happen until the 3rd episode. There's something about episodic content that requires the episodes to come out quickly or people lose interest.