The Orange Box

The Orange Box is a video game compilation containing five games developed and published by Valve. Two of the games included—Half-Life 2 and its first stand-alone expansion, Episode One—had previously been released in 2004 and 2006 as separate products. Three new games were also included in the compilation: the second stand-alone expansion, Half-Life 2: Episode Two; the puzzle game Portal; and Team Fortress 2, the sequel to Team Fortress Classic.

Description

The Orange Box features five complete games compiled into one retail unit: Half-Life 2 and its two continuations, Episode One and Episode Two; Portal; and Team Fortress 2. All of these games use Valve’s Source engine. At its launch the game was priced similar to other AAA video game releases of the era, with it costing $49.95 on PC and $59.95 on console in the United States. Through the Steam platform for the Windows version, the games can collect and report in-depth data such as where the player’s character died, completion time, and total victories in multiplayer modes.

This data is compiled to generate gameplay statistics for Episode One, Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2. Although Half-Life 2 has the largest proportion of Achievements, there are 99 spread across all five games, exceeding the 50-Achievement limit that Microsoft maintains to feature the most Achievements of any Xbox 360 product. These Achievements include killing a certain number of monsters, finding hidden weapon caches, or other tasks specific to each game.

All the games on The Orange Box except Half-Life 2 (on consoles and on PC prior to its 2024 20th anniversary update) contain in-game commentary that can be enabled, allowing the player to listen to the developers discuss the creation and purpose of particular sections and components of each game. This has been a feature of every Valve game since Half-Life 2: Lost Coast due to the commentary’s popularity in that game, according to Erik Wolpaw, lead writer for Portal.