Something I’m a bit obsessed about is upscaling. But I’m also obsessed with trying to piece
together the levels of Half-Life Alyx from what we’ve been shown already. Don’t worry,
I’m not going to spoil anything because I’ll only talking about stuff that Valve
has already given us. So let’s go! Half-Life has to start with a train sequence.
It always has. So Alyx starts on a train- which will move in a straight line to limit
nausea, then after she gets off, she’ll walk about City 17 as part of gentle tutorial
stage, similar to Half Life 2. But in VR. She’ll get to play on the swings and to
feel the repressive nature of the Combine presence.
She does something to upset them and THIS happens. We can see in this early screenshot
that Alyx has normal hands without all the stuff attached to them, so maybe this is from
the first ‘chapter’ of the game before she even gets a weapon. Which is why she’s
surrendering instead of shooting them. Some how she meets this guy who you MIGHT
think is Australian, but according to the Youtube comments section, he’s from New
Zealand and there’s like, totally a big difference between these things. He has managed
to evade detection by dressing up like the Combine. HMM that sounds familiar! And soon
he takes you away to his lab to share with you his plan to take down the Combine. There’s
just one small issue with this- their big creeping wall’s in the way!
He tells her that the only way to get past this is by going underneath it, by using the
train tunnels to get there. There is the small problem of it being infested with aliens...
But don’t worry, because he’ll be with her every step of the way! …over the radio,
of course. He then sends her off to save the world, but then remembers he’s forgotten
to give her a weapon and almost kills her in this sequence.
Then she heads off to the train station again because she loves trains just as much as Valve
do, and THIS second chapter (Which we can see from the pause menu here) begins. The
other big give-away is how much guidance she’s given over the radio as she learns the basics
like how to stab herself with this thing. And how to stab herself with this thing. And
so on. Also, she’s screaming and questioning everything
she sees, and if I’m honest that’s going to get real old, real fast. We didn’t have
this problem with Gordon. I’ll let her do it for this first proper chapter of the game
but if she carries on like this for much longer then it’s going to start annoying me. Imagine
if in speedruns, Alyx screams in terror at a headcrab as she shoots past it at a hundred
miles an hour. Or asking if a needle’s for injecting herself with while in her other
hand she’s clutching a chair that’s angrily vibrating before it violently glitches out,
launching her over a three-storey-high wall. Early monsters include the zombies, and these
barnacle creatures. Look, there’s a whole family of them here! How cute. She kills them
all and moves on. You can see near the end of the IGN trailer
that it gets more alien-y as she enters a zone that’s infested with alien stuff. There’s
a cliff-hanger where the player gets attacked by a headcrab, but clearly it doesn’t get
the player because it bounces off this thing and probably flops pathetically off the right
of the screen instead. I believe the laundrette bit we saw in the
first trailer takes place just after this. She then has to fight her way up through this
building to reach the surface again, which will take us to the second gameplay video.
I’m assuming these are set in similar locations because the same tiles on the walls are used,
the same alien stuff is everywhere… and you can see a lot of dirty linen just below
her here. And the fact that she’s heading UPWARDS implies she’s already been down
below, though I still don’t know why there are still zombies alive down there at the
start, and these combine structures suggest that it’s more than just a laundrette. But
whatever. Where she goes next is a bit of a mystery,
but I expect when she’s not trying to save her Dad from being captured (AGAIN), she’s
trying to shut down these weird electrical things powering that floaty ship, which I
think is this game’s equivalent of the Citadel from Half-Life 2. Which is also in this game.
I get the feeling the third gameplay video is a bit later on in the game. It just seems
like the guns she’s using, and the enemies she’s facing, are more advanced. Plus, the
sun’s almost setting. She appears to be fighting her way into this building, which
it looks like leads to these walkways. I feel this is the case because in this scene from
the original trailer, the sun has just set, and this building has the same windows as
you can see in the 3rd gameplay video. I’m aware they could just be reusing the same
assets over and over and that the whole game is set in similar-looking warehouses. But
I don’t think they’d do that. I expect there are many places we haven’t seen yet,
and many creatures and enemies that they’re deliberately keeping a secret… because otherwise
it would be boring, wouldn’t it.
And then all of the scenes set at night look like they’re deep inside Combine territory,
beyond the combine wall. And it looks like it’s got a bad case of the ant-lions, making
it a three-way fight between Alyx, the combine and the aliens. In Half-Life 2 you got this
‘bug bait’ item which let you control them. Wherever you tossed these things, they’d
rush off to. It was my favourite bit of the game and it would be a real shame if you don’t
get bugbait again cos that thing made the most satisfying sounds that I’ve ever heard.
Imagine being able to lob these about in VR! Imagine SQUEEZING THEM! Game of the year guaranteed
right there.
Many of you won’t have sat around waiting for Half Life 2 to be released, but I did.
I memorised all of the teaser videos and where they were set. You might think that doing
this will make it less fun when you reach these places in person. But I disagree. I
love to speculate and to debate. It’s like how talking to friends all day about a movie
you’re about to see makes it more exciting than just randomly going along with them to
see it. It hypes you up, it gets you thinking of the possibilities and it starts painting
those places with memories before you even get there in person. I have no regrets with
how I approached Half-Life 2, and if anything, was more surprised because of how these places
deviated from my expectations. No matter how much you prepare, no matter how many times
you rewatch the trailers, it’s always different when you finally set foot there yourself.
I hope you’ve liked this video of wild speculation and assumptions. I’m sure there will be
more.