New Half-Life VR Game Announced by Valve.

[Polyvalent]

Today, Valve Software, creator of popular titles like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and Dota 2, has not only created an official (verified) twitter account, but made their first post an announcement of their new "flagship VR game," Half-Life: Alyx.

There's been a ton of speculation on the what this game will be about, but no concrete announcements have been made except for the title, and a promise to officially unveil the game this Thursday at 10am Pacific time.

 

My thoughts in a nutshell:

 

[Fasauceome]

THANK GOD VALVE MAKES A GAME WITH A GUN IN IT

 

seriously so tired of the emphasis on Dota and dumbass card games, TF2 is my favorite games, I love half life and portal, and even though I don't much enjoy CS:GO it's a solid title. Seriously, more shooty games please!

 

Spoiler

spoiler alert: It's just Alyx chilling at home. Valve bamboozle.

 

[Princess Luna]

[PlayStation 2]

Half-Life: Alyx shit has been leaked through tons of Dota, Artifact and SteamVR updates for ages now. Finally, they felt like they could announce it.

[Polyvalent]

4 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

snip

I'm optimistic that "flagship VR game" and "VR demo" are going to be very different products.

[Princess Luna]

Just now, Polyvalent said:

I'm optimistic that "flagship VR game" and "VR demo" are going to be very different products.

It's VR either ways... waste of time for a franchise of the weight of Half Life.

 

I suppose it's good news for the 1% of gamers who care about VR? I'm surely not one, sorry.

[werto165]

Very excited for this. I would be very tempted to play it at work cheekily  

[Polyvalent]

4 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

It's VR either ways... waste of time for a franchise of the weight of Half Life.

 

I suppose it's good news for the 1% of gamers who care about VR? I'm surely not one, sorry.

 

Hm, a bit of a hot take to call a game you haven't even seen yet a waste of time?  Time will tell I guess.

[Adorable Cat]

Honestly curious how many people will decide to buy a headset because of it.

 

Sure glad I got my Windows MR headset a few weeks ago for only like $140.

[Catsrules]

Welp, we have an announcement for the announcement. I am going to try and not get to excited between now and then and I will see that Valve has to say.  I hope they don't have like some 20 second trailer and then release date of Christmas 2030.

[Polyvalent]

6 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

Welp, we have an announcement for the announcement. I am going to try and not get to excited between now and then and I will see that Valve has to say.  I hope they don't have like some 20 second trailer and then release date of Christmas 2030.

I'm hoping they treat it like they treated the HL2 tech demos and just show off what the game can do and let that speak for itself.  However, Valve hasn't exactly inspired confidence from its fans the past few years...

[williamcll]

It is probably the HLVR game some of the devs were talking about since last year.

[Drak3]

Translated:

 

GabeN can't count to 3 confirmed.

[realpetertdm]

6 hours ago, Princess Luna said:

 

Guess you missed the flagship VR game thing written in the tweet. What part of "flagship" sounds like a tech demo? Are you thinking about The Lab, because that's a completely different game.

[Praesi]

Valve didnt release Episode 3 as promised. Now, a decade later they use the Name to sell their VR Stuff. Fuck 'em. Thats what i think.

[circeseye]

hey its valve way of getting people to buy the vive....you want a new half life here you go 800 vr head set required lol

[Humbug]

It's not a demo. It will be a proper feature length game.

 

6 hours ago, circeseye said:

hey its valve way of getting people to buy the vive....you want a new half life here you go 800 vr head set required lol

Not the Vive in particular. Valve wants a healthy VR headset and games ecosystem around Steam. The better PC VR does in general the better for Valve. Most of their money is via Steam and the VR ecosystem is another innovation to drive that forward.

[Otto_iii]

7 hours ago, Praesi said:

Valve didnt release Episode 3 as promised. Now, a decade later they use the Name to sell their VR Stuff. Fuck 'em. Thats what i think.

i agree, but tbf the writing was kind of falling apart from the bit i could read into the backstory for HL3 team falling apart.  I thought the original writer had conflicts with bigwigs or something, and tbh he seemed even in HL2 like he was writing a sort of different game. 

I know people love HL2 but to me i honestly thought they changed writers the first time i played it, it just never felt the same.  Atmosphere was decent, but all the important story-line tidbits got left out of the game and are facts you have to search for about on the net, important lore left unused, years after its release.  Things that would of been interesting to include, given its depth, but instead we got a crapload of uninteresting "how to" type dialogue or poorly acted out drama, where in the first game there was almost no dialogue, buckets of humor, but the story still made itself clear. 

[grss1982]

So Valve can't still count to 3?

[Polyvalent]

3 hours ago, grss1982 said:

So Valve can't still count to 3?

[FmPhenom]

At this point who really cares about HL anymore? Or home vr. It has been commercially available for a couple of years.

 

Most people who played the first 2 are in their 40s and out of gaming or are dead by now. That is no joke.

[Polyvalent]

45 minutes ago, FmPhenom said:

At this point who really cares about HL anymore? Or home vr. It has been commercially available for a couple of years.

 

Most people who played the first 2 are in their 40s and out of gaming or are dead by now. That is no joke.

Another flaming hot take, you can't seriously suggest the countless people who grew up with these games dont exist and aren't even 30 yet...  And commercially available does not equal commercially viable.  For the first time recently we are seeing genuinely affordable VR sets.  I'm pretty skeptical that this new HL game will be anything special, but I still don't see where this unfounded negativity is coming from over this game.

[Humbug]

 

[JZStudios]

That announce trailer reeks of BS to me. I've never seen any VR footage that looks remotely close to being that smooth. No jittery head movement, no loss of hand tracking, it looks like pure bullshot and 100% animated.

[Ithanul]

 

On 11/19/2019 at 7:37 AM, Otto_iii said:

i agree, but tbf the writing was kind of falling apart from the bit i could read into the backstory for HL3 team falling apart.  I thought the original writer had conflicts with bigwigs or something, and tbh he seemed even in HL2 like he was writing a sort of different game. 

Marc Lidlaw, the writer of Half Life, left Valve.  Along with Chet Faliszek, the writer of HL2 episode 1 and 2.  And, Eric Wodlaw left too.

 

So, good luck if we ever get a good warp up on the story.

 

Personally, I have no interest in picking up this game.  The wait been over a decade, there are a lot of other games that I rather play now.  Plus, that release window, oof.  That right around Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Cyberpunk 2077, FFVII remake, Doom Eternal, and a few other games.