Half-Life: Alyx - Valve's full-length flagship VR game set between HL1 and HL2

[Sentinel]

This is just a sidenote,

Spoiler

but you can see the G-Man to your left in the ending when you're Gordon Freeman.

 

[Prehistorik]

Spoiler

I think the only explanation that makes sense, without creating "branching history", "pocket universes" etc is that there is only one timeline, and everything that happened in HL:A really happened. Once Alyx frees GMan he releases her, maybe alters her memory, and events of HL2 proceed.
Then he just pulls her in the end of Ep. 2.
Death of hear father didn't really happen, it's like the alternate ending in HL1 where you refuse, it's just to show what could have happened.
Also I like the idea that GMan intentionally created this situation with her father, so that he could make a "deal" with her in HL:A. That's why he wanted her to come to that station at the end of Ep. 2 so that she could be pulled.
But then it would make more sense if that ending conversation in HL:A happened with "future" Alyx, and after freeing GMan she just blacks out and wakes up somewhere safe and proceeds with the events, to have all this conversation with GMan at the end of Ep. 2.
But it's clearly a young Alyx who doesn't know Gordon, so yeah...

 

[Dexter]

I'm about 13 hours in now and around starting Chapter 7.

Fights against 4 Combines or 2 Combines and 3 Manhacks in Chapter 4 were already a lot more intense since they actually had weapons themselves. Lotsa ducking behind things, throwing nades and better aiming required than your standard zombie shuffling towards you.

Weapon Upgrades work as intended in that they make the weapons feel and sometimes handle completely different. Not sure about the Laser Sight on some weapons, might make aiming a bit too easy. While the Reflex Sight has you lining up the weapon at your eye level to take a shot you can basically freely aim without having to do that with the Laser Sight from any position, although it works less well in high-light environments, since you sometimes visually lose track of where it's pointing.

Mag Extender for the pistol turned it from a weapon where you hide around a corner when you run out to frantically eject the mag, put a new one in and chamber it in the earlier Chapters to being able to put two full mags with 20 shots into it and always being able to eject the second mag when you're down to less than 10 bullets, so you barely ever run out.

They did a really good job to make you feel and see the Upgrades on the weapons in how they look and function differently after.

Loved the Hotel in Chapter 5 and some of the mechanics and level design, finally some variation from crawling around through Metro tunnels and Sewers in the first half of the game. Good Mix of classic interior and creepy/eerie alien shit and vertical level design where you try to get to the top, but have to backtrack down at times:

Fighting the Lightning thingies possessing bodies was fun.

Also wut does this say?

For anyone's who's wondering what City 17 looked like at the start:

Spoiler

I don't really like this, it feels directionless and like one of these games put together from asset packs without a coherent style. Although there seem to be some influences from that and this in Alyx:

On another note, I've discovered the game has a Sinister Anti-male agenda:

 

[Dexter]

Half Life: Alyx will easily sell 2-3 million copies in its first year or so, will help sell Headsets including the Valve Index and will likely be one of the go-to titles for people to buy as they get a VR HMD.

It's apparently sitting at somewhere between 500k and 1 million estimated copies sold after Week 1: https://steamspy.com/app/546560

And that's with Headsets constantly being sold out since about the time of my post. If they release it on PSVR V2 for the PS5 at the end of the year, I might've even low-balled it.

 

[Jenkem]

 

[Lyric Suite]

I just can't get over the fact they remade Half Life 2. Is there a single new location?

 

[Dexter]

The more interesting Mod for Half Life: Alyx:

 

[ADL]

I just can't get over the fact they remade Half Life 2. Is there a single new location?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with City 17. It is a hell of a location. That being said I hope we get the grimmer Raising the Bar version one day. Perhaps in North America.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I just can't get over the fact they remade Half Life 2. Is there a single new location?

You know, maybe people care so much about Half-Life 2 because Valve never finished it, and not because it was some ‘knewl’ console game they played on their Xboxes. Console gamers don't even give a shit about Valve.

They care because they have no taste and they think a knewl art style means the game is deep with an "amazing" story.

With that said, episode 1 and 2 had some new locations if i remember. Are they bringing anything new to the table here, or is it basically Half Life 2 all over again except now with added VR gimmicks? I'm getting the sense this game is to Half Life 2 what Half Life 2 was to the first one: nothing but pandering. In Half Life 2 it was "hey Gordon, remember the crowbar?", now it's "hey guys, remember the head crabs? Remember the Combines? Remember the G-man?".

 

[Doktor Best]

By this logic, every sequel is "pandering". And every game set in the same enviroment is a remake. Absolutely sound logic right there.

 

[Jenkem]

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...he-wheel-every-time-you-make-a-sequel.126017/

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Well, yes, but that doesn't mean the game is shit, it just means they're retarded. It reminds me of all those Marathon fanboys who always claim the games have some kind of incredible narrative when it's actually just a mildly interesting sci-fi adventure.

A while back I was looking into the Marathon games as I really wanted to play something new that I could run on my older computer and as these games were often praised I decided to try out their PC ports.
For the time they might have been pretty impressive if people wanted to play something else than Doom but with a bit more narrative and for the time the storyline wasn't that bad but it has become very overhyped by its fans, like you said as if it has some deeper meaning. (I think regarding narrative driven gameplay System Shock really improved on it)
It spawned quite a shitload of articles/essays on how it ties into Marathon and Destiny and how concepts in it have philosophical meanings (well the writer does dabble with a few interesting sci fi concepts).
But the gameplay these days? Definitely for very old school FPS players. I was never that much of a fan of the Doom era of FPS games, for me the genre really took off with Half Life, Unreal, Jedi Knight.

I still would not mind playing a remake of it reimagined as a FPS as they were made in the early 2000s and not FPS from later years with all those damn restrictions and limitations to make it run on a console.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

If you haven't figured it out yet, Lyric is only here to start shit.

Half Life 2 is the console shooter. Most people don't remember the original, they only remember the "amazing" and "totally revolutionary" sequel because it was the one they played on their Xbox, and console gaming is all that matters now while PC might have as well never existed.

Legitimately one of the dumbest takes I've read on this website.
"Console Franchise!!!" said the man posting in a thread about a PC exclusive made by a studio that hasn't released multiplatform since 2011 and couldn't even bother to self-publish when they did.
"Original Half Life is forgotten!!!" - posted the same month Black Mesa, one of the largest fan remakes EVER, has its official 1.0 launch.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I'm about 13 hours in now and around starting Chapter 7.

Also wut does this say?

7 Days (name of newspaper)
The Black Mesa Disaster (why head line in English is mystery)
Question which asked by prime-minister. By people. By All World.
WALLACE BREEN, WHO ARE YOU? (big letters, also asking real questions here)
Breen and "Catastrophy in Black Mesa": What really happened? Page. 3 (letters on red background)
Editorial team (small bold letters below of text with red background, after this comes text of article)
"We are living in chaos, countless millions of people died. But person in charge has nothing to say.
UN claim, that Wallace Breen prevented human casualties of much bigger scale.
We know, that Breen was elected not by parliament, not by referendum, not by people's movement.
And we know that in rare performances on television Breen offered us (can't see word) empty banality... (viewable text ends)"

 

[schru]

I'm getting the sense this game is to Half Life 2 what Half Life 2 was to the first one: nothing but pandering. In Half Life 2 it was "hey Gordon, remember the crowbar?", now it's "hey guys, remember the head crabs? Remember the Combines? Remember the G-man?".

How exactly was the crow-bar thing pandering? It was an iconic weapon in the first game, so why not bring it back? Barney's line about it was just a charming little allusion. As a weapon, it also works better in the sequel: the headcrabs die from only one hit with it, so it's actually useful to switch to it when encountering them and it's satisfying to kill them in mid-air. It sounds less grating and it animates better too, the strikes aligning with how close the object struck is, and also breaking wooden things with it is much more satisfying, which was its main function in the original game, really. It does feel flimsier, though, probably because of how swiftly you can swing it.

Anyway, I think Alyx should be treated as an unusual expansion pack. The setting remains the same as in HL2 but it doesn't seem like the player visits a single location from that game. The VR is a curious experiment and it probably feels interesting to play around with it, but yeah, it's disappointing that they couldn't be bothered to make a normal FPS.

By the way, I was curious, Lyric Suite, did you dislike the Episodes even more than HL2 itself?

 

[Lyric Suite]

"Original Half Life is forgotten!!!" - posted the same month Black Mesa, one of the largest fan remakes EVER, has its official 1.0 launch.

And you lost the argument right here lmao.

I've skimmed randomly on an long play of this Alyx shit, and it's basically retarded garbage. Brain dead mini puzzles in the City 17 sewers, empty apartment and cabinets with some sporadic zombie or combine shooting that sucks because VR. It's literally Half Life 2: MOAR gimmicks edition. And you have to pay a really expensive gadget to play it.

 

[catfood]

"Original Half Life is forgotten!!!" - posted the same month Black Mesa, one of the largest fan remakes EVER, has its official 1.0 launch.

And you lost the argument right here lmao.

I've skimmed randomly on an long play of this Alyx shit, and it's basically retarded garbage. Brain dead mini puzzles in the City 17 sewers, empty apartment and cabinets with some sporadic zombie or combine shooting that sucks because VR. It's literally Half Life 2: MOAR gimmicks edition. And you have to pay a really expensive gadget to play it.

The whole point of VR is to give the player improved environment interaction. Of course it would be full of puzzles and gimmicks. What did you expect, fast paced action a la Quake?

 

[Dexter]

WOW, another DOOM and you're still playing the Doomguy and slaying Demons? Fucking pandering. And this franchise being revived after 16 years still plays in the same universe and features some of the same characters? Pandering bullshit I say! Why would you even want to "pander" to fans (please your customers in other words) when you can pull a Rian Johnson and "subvert their expectations" or a Nu-Star Trek and deliberately "piss off and provoke" people?

 

[Lyric Suite]

By the way, I was curious, Lyric Suite, did you dislike the Episodes even more than HL2 itself?

I don't remember much from them. I vaguely remember some interesting set pieces but that's about it. All i remember is that i had to force myself to finish both the main game and the expansions.

How exactly was the crow-bar thing pandering? It was an iconic weapon in the first game, so why not bring it back?

It's iconic to us. It makes no sense to be referenced as iconic in the game world. Why would Barney know or care about it? It was just something you picked up first because it was laying around in the lab. You, the player would remember the crowbar, but Gordon Freeman wouldn't care and neither would anybody from the lab assuming the guard you meet in the beginning, since this is who Barney is supposed to be, survived the ordeal.

And don't forget, this is in a game that broke any continuity with the story in the original for no apparent reason, introducing a new random location and a new threat with no explanation on how anybody from Black Mesa ended up there and no reason anybody should regard Gordon as some kind of messianic savior, but that's how you are treated by the denizens of City 17.

Half Life 1 had this nice, X-files style sci-fi story with secret labs, government cover ups and aliens from another dimension. Gordon was no hero he was just a guy who survived because he had the suit. They didn't explain why he was good with guns but you can retcon some military background as well, which wouldn't be unusual. But now you are literally Jesus and everybody has to constantly remind you how awesome you are for every thing you do. At that point in the game i had a few questions though:

1) Where the fuck is City 17, and how did everybody from Black Mesa ended up there?
2) The alien invasion must have been world wide, where as the events of Black Mesa happened in a secret base in the middle of the desert how would anybody know what happened there or care? Did the scientists from Black Mesa spread the tale of Gordon Freeman? Why?
3) Who the fuck are the Combines? And if the military of all the world governments failed to stop them, what they expect you do to?

You know, somewhere in my brain i'm also starting to suspect they picked that setting because whatever retarded hipster came up with it probably thought he was making some kind of artistic statement by referencing WWII and the Nazis, which totally fits with the story of the original which was about the dangers of scientific experiments and even has a sciency name like "Half Life".

 

[Lyric Suite]

"Original Half Life is forgotten!!!" - posted the same month Black Mesa, one of the largest fan remakes EVER, has its official 1.0 launch.

And you lost the argument right here lmao.

I've skimmed randomly on an long play of this Alyx shit, and it's basically retarded garbage. Brain dead mini puzzles in the City 17 sewers, empty apartment and cabinets with some sporadic zombie or combine shooting that sucks because VR. It's literally Half Life 2: MOAR gimmicks edition. And you have to pay a really expensive gadget to play it.

The whole point of VR is to give the player improved environment interaction. Of course it would be full of puzzles and gimmicks. What did you expect, fast paced action a la Quake?

If that has to become a central aspect of the game, i don't know, make them hard to solve? They don't seem any harder than the "puzzles" from Half Life 2 itself. The game is really less of a game and more of a walking simulator.

 

[Egosphere]

City 17 is in Russia. The combine did forced resettlement after the war.
As for the combine, Marc Laidlaw (the lead writer) had a twitter account, BreenGrub, where he wrote from Breen's perspective after his consciousness was transplanted inside the host body. It sheds some light on the combine.

But now you are literally Jesus and everybody has to constantly remind you how awesome you are for every thing you do.

This is pretty bad, I agree. It becomes almost unbearable in Episode 2, where Alyx seems to dote on Gordon incessantly.

 

[Lyric Suite]

WOW, another DOOM and you're still playing the Doomguy and slaying Demons? Fucking pandering.

nuDoom has even more retarded pandering than Half Life.

Rip and tear amrite? Lol huge guts! We are totally referencing the Doom Comic, we are like, totally retro my dudes!

 

[GewuerzKahn]

But now you are literally Jesus and everybody has to constantly remind you how awesome you are for every thing you do.

In Half Life Alyx Gordon Freeman is really a Jesus like symbol/prophet for the Vortigaunts->


In the first two hours you find a big mural with Gordon Freeman (with his crowbar in one hand) in the center.
It's kinda narcissistic in a way.


edit: Wow, the audio mixing is really bad in that video.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So Lyric Suite is one of those people who brainfarts his way through something then complains that it made no sense at all because thinking is too hard. I guess this is what brain damage does to a person.

More like Half Life 1 was a one hit wonder and Valve had the brain farts trying to come up with a follow up.

 

[taxalot]

I am pretty sure that by this point, Valve is looking at mouse and keyboard mods and has already decided that if modders can't do it, they'll release it with a mouse+keyboard option for cheap when the game is a couple of years old.