Half-Life: Alyx: everything you need to know about Valve’s return to Half-Life – The Verge

Half-Life: Alyx gives us a big hint about Gordon Freeman’s future

2020-03-27T14:14:16-04:00

Half-Life fans have gotten used to uncertainty over the fate of hero Gordon Freeman. Gordon last appeared in Half-Life 2: Episode Two, an extension of the 2004 game Half-Life 2. But the follow-up Episode Three was canceled. The newly released Half-Life: Alyx is set five years before Half-Life 2 and stars Gordon's ally Alyx Vance, so it doesn't majorly advance the story. Even so, the new game includes a big hint about Gordon's future journey… especially if you play through the credits.

We posted a spoiler-light review of Alyx, so if you're planning to play it, you might want to stop reading. Otherwise, let's talk about what Alyx means for th …

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Half-Life’s Alyx Vance, explained

2020-03-26T13:53:58-04:00

It's been a tumultuous couple of weeks for residents of Earth. City 17, formerly one of our planet's finest remaining urban centers, has been destroyed. A nearly spontaneous uprising has destabilized the Combine Empire's two-decade stranglehold on humanity. It's a time of danger, but also hope, and we owe much of it to one woman: Alyx Vance.

Vance hasn't received as much attention as her colleague, the theoretical physicist and military hero Gordon Freeman. But a recent chronicle of her early time in the Resistance has sparked renewed interest in her background and achievements. The story itself is worth hearing in full. If you've been rest …

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Why Half-Life’s City 17 was pivotal to gaming’s post-Soviet obsession

2020-03-25T09:30:00-04:00

Half-Life: Alyx.

The underground labs of the original Half-Life were set somewhere among New Mexico's towering desert canyons. It wasn't your prototypical blockbuster locale, but it was still Hollywood-esque, reminiscent of Cold War-era sci-fi films like Them!, where US Army men battled against giant irradiated ants below a blistering American sun. The setting of Half-Life's sequel, on the other hand, felt markedly different: colder, darker, and altogether more otherworldly.

Half-Life 2 didn't just give us an original setting; it introduced many in the West to a whole new style of landscape, geography, and architecture. City 17 may have been fictional, but …

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How Half-Life: Alyx’s designers built an escapist dystopia with a spot of hope

2020-03-24T12:28:20-04:00

I'm writing this story under self-quarantine for novel coronavirus exposure. I've been sequestered for over a week while the city outside my apartment has become America's COVID-19 epicenter: 13,000 known cases and 125 deaths so far. The governor has ordered six feet of space between all residents in public, and my days are punctuated with the screams of ambulance sirens; at a hospital nearby, doctors have resorted to cleaning used face masks with hand sanitizer. I feel fine, but many New Yorkers are dealing with lost jobs, suddenly shuttered schools, or with the disease itself - deadlier and more contagious than the flu, with no vaccine or …

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Half-Life: Alyx is a satisfying return to City 17

2020-03-23T13:03:40-04:00

Half-Life: Alyx is definitely not Half-Life 3. It is a full-fledged game that expands the Half-Life universe. And City 17's exploding barrel industry is still going strong.

These are answers to some big questions Valve Software raised last year when it announced the first new Half-Life game since 2007 - but exclusively for virtual reality. Many series have VR adaptations or tie-ins, but Valve promised to deliver "the next part of the Half-Life story" in a package that could help take VR mainstream.

That's setting a very high bar, and, for now, I'm not sure Alyx clears it. The game is fighting VR's inherent hardware limits, a pandemic-relat …

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Which VR headsets can you actually buy at the launch of Half-Life: Alyx?

2020-03-20T09:00:00-04:00

It's 2020, and the selection of VR headsets has never been more varied - or more sold out. If you haven't been keeping up with the onslaught of news, most virtual reality headsets that will be compatible with the game from the likes of Oculus, Valve, HTC, and Samsung have been in extremely high demand but with low supply.

Why the demand? Half-Life: Alyx, of course. It's the VR-exclusive game from Valve that could be the immersive medium's first killer app, and it's coming out March 23rd.

Why the low supply? The coronavirus, of course. Since the new Half-Life game was announced in November 2019, people have been scooping up headsets in anti …

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Black Mesa is the perfect way to get into Half-Life before Alyx

2020-03-11T13:47:05-04:00

Upon its release in 1998, Half-Life instantly became my favorite game of all time. That wasn't saying much, really, since we'd only just set up our first family computer, and I'd barely started playing video games. But history has proven my hot take to be a pretty solid one - Half-Life's blend of first-person shooting and narrative storytelling was incredibly influential, and it went on to spawn a series that stokes near-unparalleled hype and reverence to this day. Just witness how Valve still isn't able to make enough $1,000 headsets to meet demand for Half-Life: Alyx, which is coming out in a couple of weeks.

Half-Life 2, though, I never …

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Valve shows off how you’ll fight and move in Half-Life: Alyx

2020-03-02T15:16:24-05:00

Valve's much-anticipated virtual reality game Half-Life: Alyx debuts on March 23rd, and it just offered a little more detail on what we'll be playing. It released three short videos today showing off combat and puzzles in Alyx, as well as the game's overall vibe.

The videos showcase some things we already knew about Alyx. First, much of the game is about semi-realistic gunfights, including manually reloading while being mobbed by enemies. Second, there are a lot of hand-based interactions - in the demo videos, we see Alyx Vance tip over buckets to search for items, grab grenades from midair, pull boards off a barred door, and flip a dead he …

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Half-Life: Alyx will launch on March 23rd

2020-02-13T14:42:19-05:00

The long-awaited next Half-Life is coming very soon. Half-Life: Alyx, a VR spinoff that was revealed last year, will launch on March 23rd. Valve previously said that the game would be available sometime in March.

Announced back in November, Alyx is the first new Half-Life game in 13 years, and it's exclusive to virtual reality platforms. Valve says that it will be a full-length title designed to be played for hours at a time. "Today, we generally see playtesters go for 2-3 hours before taking a bathroom break," programmer Robin Walker told The Verge. And if it's a success, Valve says that there could be more Half-Life titles coming in the f …

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Watch Tested explain how Half-Life: Alyx will work on every big PC VR headset

2019-12-19T18:00:35-05:00

Valve Software's Half-Life: Alyx is less than six months away, and since it requires a VR headset, lots of players might be considering a major hardware purchase right now. The gold standard is Valve's own Index, with its high-end construction and unique controllers - but that requires a lot of setup and almost $1,000. The cheaper all-purpose option is the Oculus Quest, which can now be tethered to a PC - but it's got simpler controllers and a front-heavy design. And what about old headsets like the now-retired consumer HTC Vive?

Adam Savage's Tested might offer some helpful guidance. Valve invited Tested founders Will Smith and Norman Chan …

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