HomeNewsHalf-Life: Alyx
People already got the basics of Half-Life: Alyx working outside VRFar from polished
Far from polished
Tyler McVicker of the Valve News Network was one such prodder, digging aroundon Twitchlast night. Yup, he was soon scampering about with standard controls and no goggles.
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Full playthrough of the first sequence up till the second elevatorpic.twitter.com/TnIsdgunTz— Casey Billadeau (@caseytube)March 25, 2020
Full playthrough of the first sequence up till the second elevatorpic.twitter.com/TnIsdgunTz
— Casey Billadeau (@caseytube)March 25, 2020
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I assume it’ll take some actual rebuilding to make Alyx a solid non-VR game, work beyond the scope of debug console commands.
Before the launch of Alyx, Valve’s Robin Walkertalked to Polygonabout the possibility of people getting a non-VR version running. He said some people on the team were concerned about that but he wasn’t.
“Yes, it’s going to happen. I’m fine with it, for the sake of the other members of the team I don’t want to say I encourage you to do it, but it’s going to happen,” Walker said. “I think people will then hopefully have an even greater understanding of why we decided to build the product in VR than they do now.”
It’s not just Half-Life in VR, after all. It’s designed to be a different sort of game with a different focus and flow, more about inhabiting a body than shooting through a space, but y’know if you just want that HL story and world it is there. But Walker thinks it’ll be a bit disappointing.
“It will clearly demonstrate to people why we did this in VR,” he told Polygon. “It will be a very crisp way of seeing all the stuff we got for the move into VR. If people play [a modded version on a standard display] and say this is is just as good, that will teach me a lot. I will realise I’m wrong, and we didn’t get as much as we thought, and I love to know whenever I’m wrong.”
I’m not gogged up myself but even just reading our Graham’sHalf-Life: Alyx review, I can tell some parts just wouldn’t be as good outside VR. Here’s G-Man gabbing about his encounter with an old monster trope, the big beastie which can’t see you but can hear you:
“Picture: me, the hungry contractor, crawling around fixing wires, only to accidentally knock a glass bottle off a shelf. It smashes, and the big brute comes charging towards me like a foreman with a clipboard. I have to put my trembling hand over my mouth to avoid breathing spores, and run off to hide in the corner of the room. It is the most frightened I’ve ever been while playing a game, and yet the absurdity of my real-world actions made it in some ways delightful, too. I was laughing at myself, even in the midst of panic.”
That wouldn’t sound nearly as special or interesting without VR.
