The Half-Life: Alyx trailer was released on the 21st of November. Since then, there hasn’t been much buzz around the latest Valve VR game. It doesn’t release until March, so you likely won’t hear much for a few more weeks. Outside of their AMA on Reddit, we haven’t gotten any new information.
In an effort to generate some nw buzz and hopefully uncover some details about this game, we broke down the official game trailer. This wasn’t your typical ‘watch passively while scrolling on twitter’ break down. This was a ‘pause each scene and try to uncover anything new’ type of breakdown. We aren’t sure if what we found is common knowledge or not, so we will be sharing it with you below. If you find anything that we missed, or want to give us some insight on what Valve is doing, let us know in the comments below! Without any more waiting, let’s jump right into it.
(Instead of showing each scene and what it means, we’ll headline important parts and show where they appear throughout the trailer, piecing it together so you don’t have to)
Interaction with Everything
One thing we noticed very early, and many others did too, was the ability to interact with the world around you. A lot of VR games, even the ‘high-end full games’ only make some objects important to you. That means you can’t interact with them and with your virtual hands. This makes the immersion go down. It also allows you to know what to do and what not to do much faster. The opening scene you move a garbage can. What if you wanted to move it to the left instead of the right? We are sure you could’ve.
When you are looking for shells for your pistol-shotgun hybrid, we see everything you touch move. Beyond that, some stuff you didn’t touch still moves. This shows an insane amount of detail, something Valve has always been known for.
Another example of extreme interaction is the scene at 0:50. This shows your character shooting a propane tank and killing an enemy in the process. Although this is available in other games, we are certain you’ll be able to pull this off in the most crucial time without any outside prompting or problem.
New Grabbing Mechanics
One of the struggles inside of virtual reality as a whole is grabbing objects. If your close-quarter movements struggles, its likely that your grabbing will also be bad. As long as you have one or the other, you’ll be just fine. HLA hasn’t shown us exactly how we are going to be moving inside of tight spaces, but they have shown us how they are going to allow us to grab things inside of this game.
Along with the typical ‘put your hand on the object and grip’ option, it seems you will have the force, or something very similar. At 1:19 in the trailer, it seems as if you use the force and a grab & pull motion to bring the device to you. It seems not only helpful, but very intuitive as well.
You see this motion earlier in the trailer when you get your first gun. It pulls the gun towards you as you put the clip in. This doesn’t seem as needed, but it means this will be an option for grabbing no matter where you are in this game. So if you can’t get your VR legs as close as you want to grab the object, no worries. Use your nice force grab and carry on with your HLA killing.
Movement Options
We already know of three different movement options that this game is going to give us. You can find those on the website for the game. They are teleport, shift, and continuous. Each does exactly what they sound like. Inside of the game trailer, it seems as if they are rolling with the continuous option. It looks great, but will it play great?
We are assuming that your be using one of the joysticks to roam around while you can only turn your head to rotate. If that is the case, the games movement is going to be awesome. Even if you don’t pick the continuous option, many people will find the other two options to be incredibly comfortable. Lucky for users though, it can change whenever you need it to.
This game is going to have a lot of action though, so before you get into the thick of it all, make sure you are setup exactly how you need to be. Whether it be continuous or the shifting method, make sure you know the ins and outs before the gunfire picks up.
Attention to Detail
The attention to detail in this game is second to none. Not only are you able to interact with everything in your path, you see everything in crystal-clear resolution. Obviously this is going to change from headset to headset, but in the trailer, and in the Valve Index, the visuals are simply stunning.
It could be the chicken on the head or the power lines, the detail is going to blow you away. This is going to make for a game that is widely known as the best-looking VR game. Along with that award, the detail will carry over to the gameplay.
During the AMA on Reddit, the development team said that the game was basically done, just needing some touch ups along the way. It has been played all the way through multiple times, and they were simply fixing and polishing some scenes. If the version we saw was the unfinished version, we couldn’t be more excited for the actual game when it releases in March. For more VR news and gaming community updates, make sure to check back at VRGear.com.
