In the last couple days, there has been some new buzz around Half-Life Alyx, the exclusive VR title coming from Valve in May. This title is highly regarded as the best title that will come out in 2020 and the announcement of the game resulted in the Valve Index being sold out nearly everywhere. In celebration of the game coming out in just two months now, the development team has done a few things for the community.
Most importantly, the development team is doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) this morning. It was scheduled for 11 AM EST, but the Reddit thread through r/HalfLife has yet to be posted. As for some of the burning questions and answers we get during the AMA, we will be posting and writing about those as they materialize.
Update: Hours after publishing this article, Valve announced that this game will not be seeing any delays. During the AMA today, the development team said that “With the exception of some tweaks to the absolute final scene, the game is done. Lots of us at Valve, as well as playtesters, have played through the entire game multiple times.”
They went on to say that “Right now we’re primarily polishing and fixing bugs, which is where we’d hope to be at this point in the development cycle. We’re confident we’ll hit our intended release. We let the Valve Time happen before we announced the game.”
Free Half-Life
In another form of celebration, one that seems much more fitting, Valve has made all Half-Life games free-to-play on Steam. This means that all seven (!) titles will be playable for anyone with a Steam account. This is including the Half-Life 2: Episode two that left people on a cliff hanger all the way back in 2007. Finally 12 years later, the team is going to release the next game with some answers.
The upcoming game isn’t named ‘Half-Life 3’ like many thought it would be. Instead, the game is going by the name of ‘Half-Life: Alyx’. This could mean many things. It could very well mean that this VR exclusive game isn’t going to cover the whole story and answer all of the questions. This would make sense, as VR isn’t as mainstream as Valve would yet hope. With that being said, if this game is imperative to the story, you could see thousands and thousands more of headsets be sold within the next year.
This would be an incredible marketing idea on Valve’s end. Although none of this is confirmed, it seems to be leaning in the way of the game being important to the story.
(There are rumors of this game being set between Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2, but that has yet to be confirmed)
New Art
There is some new concept art to look at, but it isn’t anything that is going to curb your excitement for this game. If you are looking for a new gallery of photos from the newest Half-Life, you won’t find it here.
What you will find is one picture from the upcoming game. That is below.
In a Reddit post from u/Cryziel, he comically removed the arms to keep up to par with the theme in VR games of no arms. You can see that below as well. For more VR news and gaming community updates, make sure to check back at VRGear.com.
