After well over a decade, people can finally stop asking about Half-Life 3. Valve has finally revealed the third game in the series, Half-Life: Alyx.
And to mark in this monumental installment into the series, Valve is properly heading to the future to do so. It seems that Half-Life: Alyx is going to be a Virtual Reality exclusive.
“Set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2, Half-Life: Alyx is a new full-length game built from the ground up by Valve for virtual reality,” the developer states in the description of the trailer.
So this presents an interesting twist. Will the highly-anticipated sequel be a VR exclusive, leaving those of us who don’t (or can’t) use virtual reality in the dust?
With that in mind, let’s look at the trailer itself. The graphical style manages to be both fantastically modern and reminiscent of the style of the old games. It seems wonderfully polished, and given that this is only our first look, there’s a good chance it’ll look even better at release.
The gameplay seems like an interesting mix of a first-person shooter and a puzzle game, with stealth elements tossed in for flavor. We watch in the trailer as Alyx, the protagonist, sneaks around to avoid Combine soldiers and to not get headcrabbed. Oftentimes Alyx shoots from cover, both to stay hidden and to avoid enemy fire. Whether shooting from cover will be a cover-based mechanic or is simply there for realistic flavor in the trailer, who knows.
To meld the virtual reality controls and the gameplay, Alyx wears a pair of gloves that provide her with a sort of magnetic telekinesis. This allows plays to have things come to their hands easier, presumably for more fluid gameplay.
And suffice to say, there might be a bit of a horror element in there as well. Seeing Combine soldiers marching down on you is always nervy, but watching a headcrab jump directly at your head in virtual reality sounds like the best kind of nightmare available.
All in all, there’s still so much more to see. This minute-and-a-half announcement trailer is all we have now, but for fans of the series, all we’ve needed was a confirmation for so, so long.
Even better, the announcement trailer ends with the most wonderful of all announcements: a release date. Half-Life: Alyx will be coming to virtual reality in March of 2020, just a scant four months away.
