It’s here. Sort of. Half Life 2 was released on the 16th of November, 2004. Now, 15 years
and 5 days later (Classic Valve-time), we finally get… the first video for Half Life:
Alyx. It’s not Half Life 3. But it might as well be. It’s a new Half Life! THAT’S
the important thing. Bit of a weird announcement, really. I guess
I had been waiting for it for so long, so many possible announcement dates and events
came and went, so many memes were generated about it, that I never thought the day would
come. But then it did, accompanying the release of a new operation for CS:GO.
Valve didn’t even try to generate any hype for it! Just ‘oh yeah we’ll launch the
trailer on X date at X time’. A few minutes before the trailer’s launch I panicked as
I realised I didn’t know where to go to actually see it. There was no live-stream,
nor anywhere official to hype it up. It just appeared on Youtube, quickly followed by the
Steam storefront and on Valve’s social media accounts.
And there it was- the reveal of what Valve had been working on for God knows how many
years. There was a lot to process.
Why should you be excited about this? In case you are too young or STUPID to remember why
Half Life 2 was such a big deal: Half-Life is Valve’s flagship product. They will not
tarnish its name on inferior stuff (Show shitty third party lol). The Half-Life series has
always been cutting-edge. Half Life 1 was the first proper 3D FPS that attempted to
be more than just a basic corridor shooter. Half-Life 2 came with PHYSICS and character
animations that were ahead of anything else by years. The series doesn’t just use cutting
edge technology, but is also used by Valve to launch cutting-edge technologies. They
used Half Life 2 to get people on Steam. As you might know, Steam became kind of a big
deal. Similarly, Half Life 3…
…Half Life: Alyx, is running on Valve’s latest Source 2 engine, and is being used
to push VR. And the technology certainly needs it. When you look to the future, what do you
see? Because if you’re not picturing us all wandering about with goggles on in VR
worlds then you’re doing it wrong! The only issue is how we get from where we are, to
there. It’s a chicken-or-egg problem. VR needs something awesome to attract an audience,
but until the audience is there, it scares away the companies that are in the best position
to make something awesome. A few decent indie-games have come out for it, but I don’t think
they can be described as must-have. But if I had to name a game that I’d consider to
be a must-have title… it would be Half-Life. It just happens to be made by Valve, who are
the only company that’s rich enough, crazy enough… and good enough to pull off something
this ambitious. Or at least, they used to be. The truth is,
while they’ve continued to be successful, we haven’t heard any real large announcements
from them for many years now. At least nothing awesome game-wise. I like to think that’s
because they’ve all been busy over there in Valve HQ doing weird projects with VR,
scrapping things over and over again until they got it right. And I also like to think
that Half Life: Alyx was announced because they got it right. I don’t think they’d
risk using the Half-Life name otherwise. Which is why I’m so excited about it.
I’m sad to see so many people complaining that it’s VR-only. But then again, people
would be complaining if it was ‘just’ a normal game as well. We ‘only’ had to
wait 6 years between the first and second Half-Lifes, and even then I remember a review
of Half Life 2 jokingly stating that expectations for it were so high that people wouldn’t
be happy unless it to come on a golden platter, delivered by Jesus himself. I don’t think
even that would satisfy some of the people I see complaining about it online these days.
While Valve will receive criticism whatever they choose to do, at least by going down
this route the experience will be incomparable to anything else out there. There’s nobody
out there who wouldn’t want to try it. It’s just the barrier of entry that’s the problem
here. With a VR system costing hundreds of pounds- and £900(!) for the ultimate Valve
model, it will put it out of reach of a lot of people- many of whom would LOVE a chance
to try it. I can’t even imagine what child-Philip would think, knowing that a new Half-Life
was coming but that there wasn’t a chance in hell that my parents would get it for me.
I think it would destroy me. I’m still waiting to see what plan- if any- they come up with
to allow more people the chance to experience it.
What’s with the name? Why isn’t it Half Life 3?
Obviously, there are superficial reasons, like because it’s a prequel rather than
a sequel. And because Valve can’t count to 3. And because you’ll be controlling
Alyx rather than Gordon Freeman.
Also, story-wise, Half-Life has been left on a silly kind of cliff-hanger
that everyone was expecting Half-Life 2 Episode 3 to answer, instead of a that being the job
of a full-on sequel. And the proposed plot was released just the other year by one of
Half-Life’s writers so I think carrying on with Half-Life’s story is a bit of a
minefield. Also, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 had almost completely different gameplay,
settings and worlds. Would it feel like Half-Life 3 if it merely picks off where Half-Life 2’s
left off? So there are these superficial reasons for
why it’s not ‘Half-Life 3’. But I’m sure the core gameplay would be the same as
‘Half-Life 3’s were that released next year instead, so I don’t particularly care
about those things. The cynical bit of me thinks they’ve avoided the ‘3’ in case
it’s a failure. If it is then at least Valve can be all like ‘oh well, Half Life: Alyx
was just an experiment, the real Half-Life 3 is still being developed!!!’. And if it
all goes well then maybe one day, in 2 or 3 hundred years’ time, Half Life 4 might
be announced, and we’ll suddenly know that this was Half-Life 3 all along. And we’ll
know that Valve still hasn’t learned to count to 3.
Will I get VR for Half Life: Alyx? Yes, of course I will. I’ve been waiting for this
moment for over a decade. My body is ready. My computer is ready. My room is ready. I
don’t even have a bed. I just have a mattress that I push up against the wall in the day.
I personally think this is the future, why would you want something you sleep on to take
up valuable potential gaming space? And not only will I have space to walk around- when
a headcrab inevitably jumps out at me it’ll be softer to run into a mattress than into
a wall. See, I’ve thought this all through. If this game is a success, no doubt other
companies will jump on the VR-gaming bandwagon to cash in on the audience for VR that Valve’s
efforts will have generated- similarly to how we’re seeing them all jumping on the
digital distribution service now that Steam’s as big as it is. If it fails, I still think
that VR will eventually ‘get there’- it’ll just be held back for who knows how many more
years. At some point, I am sure that it will become more than just a novel accessory for
richer and older gamers. The question is… how long will that take, and what will the
tipping point be? So now the wait begins. Check out the trailer
here- as if you haven’t seen it already! And here’s my nostalgic review of Half-Life
2, if you want to know what made it so special.