I might be an outlier, but I'm extremely attached to the Half-Life series and while it's difficult to not get HL3, I'm also not currently disappointed in any game in the series. If the only thing I have to be disappointed in is the release cadence, then I'm probably okay with that?

Someone in a Reddit thread pointed how Valve's structure reduces the fragility of a product by not basing it on one vision and that their games are based on a pretty pure collaborative effort. A writer becomes inherently less influential on the final product, but their individual contribution is more passionate and worked. One could argue for hours about the approach, but I think the results speak for themselves.