Valve announces Half-Life:Alyx, new flagship VR game

[brandonjclark]

Via PC Gamer:

It's official, Half-Life: Alyx is happening. Valve's long-awaited "flagship VR game" will be revealed to the world at 10 am PT/1 pm ET on November 21. The tweet comes from a relatively new account—created June 2019—with a small number of followers, and this is actually its first tweet. It's also odd that Valve would make such a big announcement over a channel that so few people were paying attention to. The official Steam Twitter feed, to compare, has 5.2 million followers. But it's verified, and the tweet has been retweeted by a few Valve folks, so we're confident it's legit: A new communications channel for a "new" kind of Valve, maybe.
We'll keep you posted.

I'm pretty sure I said this was going to happen awhile back. They'd tie their new HL game to VR to sell systems. And they are apparently making three of them (cough cough).

[Korolev]

Valve had to make the new Half-Life a VR game without 3 in the title just to get Gabe Newell's approval to make it.

Still, I'm glad Valve's making games again, even if it's VR.

[vallor]

Nice, $800 to scratch the half-life itch and its gunna be a VR game.

In the years since the first HTC and Rift there have been very few good VR games and none I would rate as killer apps.

I'm not sure slapping on the Half-Life branding is going to make that big a difference.

[brandonjclark]

Originally Posted by vallor

Nice, $800 to scratch the half-life itch and its gunna be a VR game.

In the years since the first HTC and Rift there have been very few good VR games and none I would rate as killer apps.

I'm not sure slapping on the Half-Life branding is going to make that big a difference.

I would agree except that the Portal collider demo thing they did was amazing. I can totally imagine an entire game of that quality.

[SpectralThundr]

Valve is so insulting to HL fans. So glad I'm not one of them.

[RAV]

Right now I kinda think that the killer app is less about home use, and more about setting up an "adventure park", where someone uses an entire hall, and prepares it with a parkour of physical obstacles, visually translated into VR, and in which an entire group of people can play together. You would pay entry fee, and that's how the business would work.

You probably thought about the following yourself already, but I describe the scenario anyway:
The VR is wireless of course, and spans across a large area, so you can actually walk through the game field freely, and touch things. Imagine for example it would be a dungeon crawler. The fun thing is, it would be actual walls on the field, real walls, but very simple walls, with possibly an overlay of padding, to soften accidents. And of course, you have an entire team of players on the field. The actual physical reality would be extremely simplified, just to provide the basic haptic feedback, but what you see through VR would be this crazy elaborate world of fantasy. They probably even could make simple monsters, which are basically drones or robots rolling around through the maze, all just cushioned stuff, and whenever they hit you with whatever, bumping into you or shooting softballs at you, which you would see like a crazy demon spitting fireballs, you lose HP until you game-over, etc. The equipment you carry would also be simplified, just so you got something real to hold, but visually translated in game to something cool.

Anyway, maybe someone will still come up with a fun home use.... but I think eveyone sees that the best potential is in actual Theme Park style use of the tech.

[Ghostblaze]

Personally no interest in this. Why can't they make episode 3? Its not like they don't have the resources?

[brandonjclark]

Originally Posted by Ghostblaze

Personally no interest in this. Why can't they make episode 3? Its not like they don't have the resources?

I'm sure they'd cop out and say that they want to transform the experience and bring something new.


But if they don't give people a reason to keep using Steam while their competitors improve on their own offerings they're eventually toast.

[RAV]

Man, one thing I will say about Steam is, it made gaming on Linux finally worthwhile. I don't know if you guys noticed in recent times, but Valve put enormous effort into improving Windows emulation and fully integrating it with Steam running on Linux. Which means you can play pretty much any Windows game on Linux no problem. I know it's hard to believe, considering the past promises vs reality, but is true. It's really good now. If you haven't tried it in a while, give it a shot, it's day and night difference to the past. So for this thing alone, I'll have to respect them. Without them, gaming on Linux would have never gotten where it is now, a completely viable gaming platform. Also kudos to AMD and their open source driver support, it's awesome.

[brandonjclark]

Originally Posted by RAV

Man, one thing I will say about Steam is, it made gaming on Linux finally worthwhile. I don't know if you guys noticed in recent times, but Valve put enormous effort into improving Windows emulation and fully integrating it with Steam running on Linux. Which means you can play pretty much any Windows game on Linux no problem. I know it's hard to believe, considering the past promises vs reality, but is true. It's really good now. If you haven't tried it in a while, give it a shot, it's day and night difference to the past. So for this thing alone, I'll have to respect them. Without them, gaming on Linux would have never gotten where it is now, a completely viable gaming platform. Also kudos to AMD and their open source driver support, it's awesome.

I ran an Ubuntu laptop for about a year up until last March and was surprised how well the gaming had come along.


Of course, I now run Win10.


The only reason I was gaming on Linux is because my laptop sucked and I needed every bit of juice it had.

[Terran]

I couldn't possibly give less of a shit about Valve's gaming development any longer. I think they should spend their time and money making Steam relevant again. Their sales and service have sucked for years now. Half Life 3 has been a running joke for long enough that any interest I ever had in that went from little past zero to the 'STFU I'm sick of hearing about it and it's no longer funny or relevant' zone.

[karaliusbronius]

Can't wait for the adult mods lol

[Sensei-X]

Looks decent, no plans on getting a VR set-up any time soon but to those that have one it should be entertaining. Still disappointed there's no HL3 coming any time soon from the looks of it.

[BadIronTree]

https://www.half-life.com/en/alyx/vr#owner

[Mad Max RW]

Voice acting really sucks.

[brandonjclark]

Anyone getting the vibe that HL:A is just an intro game to the upcoming HL3:VR?

Think Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes.

They should've named this Half-Life 3: Prologue.

I think....

[vallor]

Not impressed though it's cool they are giving it to Index owners free. It doesn't look like they've really innovated on any of the standard VR FPS/Adventure schemes; course maybe it'll be 10x better because of the Valve polish or because the IP will make the short comings disappear.

The thought of diving into their spendy VR hardware for this game isn't appealing. I was way more excited for the EvE tie in with the Oculus launch.

[Chimpbot]

Originally Posted by brandonjclark

Anyone getting the vibe that HL:A is just an intro game to the upcoming HL3:VR?

Think Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes.

They should've named this Half-Life 3: Prologue.

I think....

It's apparently set between HL1 and 2, so it likely wouldn't work as a direct lead-in to HL3.

[brandonjclark]

Originally Posted by Chimpbot

It's apparently set between HL1 and 2, so it likely wouldn't work as a direct lead-in to HL3.

ermm, good point. I guess the crux of it is still believable, that HL3 will come out as a VR game.


I think it depends a lot on how Alyx does.