The game's developers explain the reasons why they have decided that their star saga should be reborn as a VR title.
I want to believe. Years and years of speculation. Years of desires, of disappointments, of indifference. Half-Life 3 has never been announced, despite the pleas and hopes put by the players, but the saga is not over. This is what Valve has determined, which has confirmed the return of the franchise, although differently than many imagined. Half-Life: Alyx is a virtual reality video game, with a complete game entity, since they have already revealed that it will last the same as a main delivery. Why have you opted for this technology? Valve explains.
In an interview with Geoff Keighley, journalist, organizer and master of ceremonies of The Game Awards 2019, Dario Casali, of Valve, has assured that VR controls and helmets allow a level of playability that they could not “have done with mouse and keyboard " The developer has set an example of all possible interactions with a door. Of course, it is more interactive to open or close it with a flip of the wrist, but virtual reality, Casali defends, also deepens the immersion when it gives you the possibility of ajar it and look through the hole to shoot from it. It also lets you throw a grenade through the doorway, which becomes a unique experience.
Turn it into a traditional game, possible, but not a "good idea"
"The more we use the controls and the helmet, the more we realize the amount of interactions and possibilities it offers," says Casali. “When you move your hands autonomously with respect to your head, you are in a 3D space,” something impossible with a mouse and keyboard. Moving all this to a traditional experience is theoretically possible, but Casali is convinced that this would "lose many of those interactions", so it would not be a "good idea" to adapt the game to traditional systems.
Half-Life: Alyx was not born as a saga title. Robin Walker, also of Valve, underlines that the concept of virtual reality was born before they had the work with the franchise identity. “Where is the great VR game?” Asked the developers. And then they decided to make a video game of this style.
Robin acknowledges that in 2016, the option of developing Half-Life 3 was “a totally daunting perspective,” so working in VR was an escape route to fool themselves and think they could do it. “It was very easy not to try to think about the perspective of 'we are doing Half-Life 3' and simply focus on 'we are going to try to discover what people enjoy and we are going to make progress.'”
Portal was discarded
David Spyrer, from the development team, tells us that when the ideas of the new project began to be put on the table, two intellectual properties were identified as possible candidates for virtual reality: Portal and Half-Life. However, the first of the sagas quickly discarded, because it was thought that it could make you dizzy. On the other hand, Half-Life's DNA, which combines history, combat and puzzles, seemed ideal. A small group experimented with “very promising” VR mechanics and continued with the development.
Half-Life: Alyx will launch on Steam in March 2020 and will be compatible with all virtual reality helmets designed for PC.
Source | The Game Awards (via Eurogamer)
