If you were wondering why the new Half-Life game is an exclusive VR title, a documentary has Valve explain why and how Alyx came to be.
The why and the how
The announcement trailer for Half-Life: Alyx arrived. It’s safe to say that this game looks absolutely astonishing. Then again, it’s a VR game. The trailer does make it look outstanding, but that’s because the trailer is a highly rehearsed and edited footage. What will Alyx look like when a standard player starts going through it? Whatever the case may be, at least we got a documentary where Valve explains why Alyx is exclusively a VR title. The most important reason seems to be interactivity.
VR lets this Half-Life title be even more immersive
Half-Life titles perfectly combine exploration, story, puzzle elements, interaction, exemplary art, and more into one epic experience. The devs think VR will enhance all of those elements. One of the things these guys mention is the sense of immersion you get with virtual reality. You get to interact with the environment and everything you find in it a lot more then you would on a PC or a console. Picking up a gun, reloading it, grabbing something from the floor. All of that feels much more satisfying in virtual reality. This is the whole building block for this title. Letting the players enter this fascinating world and giving them a lot of freedom to do whatever they wanted to in it. So, Alyx is an experience best presented in virtual reality, as Valve devs explain it.
A next-level VR experience
Basically, Valve wants Alyx to provide a never-before-seen VR experience. Combat will also be quite fun from what I heard. Open a door, throw a grenade, close the door. It sounds like nothing special, but in VR I bet it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to give you incredible freedom to be creative in combat situations. Alyx is also going to be playable on many different VR hardware like Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, Rift, etc, not just with Valve Index. Although, if you own Index, you get Alyx for free.
While we all wait for Alyx to come out in March 2020, why not brush up our memory with previous Half-Life games?
