It’s been 15 years. Through countless rumours and uncertainty, a light has emerged – the trailer for Half-Life: Alyx is here.
Valve – the studio behind the Half-Life franchise, Portal and Left 4 Dead – officially revealed the Steam VR game via a new trailer.
The long-awaited game is officially available for pre-order on Steam now.
Check out the trailer for Half Life: Alyx below:
After one of the most infamous cliffhangers in video game history, a brand new Half-Life game will be hard to believe for thousands of gamers.
As for what it’s actually about: it’s reportedly set between the first two games, with Alyx Vance and her father Eli building the resistance to the Combine’s alien occupation of Earth.
Valve programmer David Speyrer told The Verge:
It’s not a side story, nor an episodic one – it’s the next part of the Half-Life story, in a game around the same length as Half-Life 2. While it does take place before the events of Half-Life 2, we actually recommend that you play through Half-Life 2: Episode 2 before you play Half-Life: Alyx, for reasons that will become clear as you progress.
Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how people react to Half-Life: Alyx once it’s out, but we’d love to continue pushing forward.
Gameplay wise, it’s a VR exclusive and you’ll get to enjoy the manipulation of gravity with Alyx’s special Gravity Gloves – you can see her pick up a pistol from a distance in the trailer.
Here’s Valve’s description of what type of gameplay fans should expect in Half-Life: Alyx:
Lean to aim around a broken wall and under a Barnacle to make an impossible shot. Rummage through shelves to find a healing syringe and some shotgun shells. Manipulate tools to hack alien interfaces. Toss a bottle through a window to distract an enemy. Rip a Headcrab off your face and throw it at a Combine soldier.
It’ll be available to play on all PC-based VR headsets, not just Valve’s own Index – however, if you do own one of those, you’ll get Half-Life: Alyx for free.
Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell says VR has energised the company. ‘We’ve invested a lot of ourselves in the technology. But we’re also game developers at heart, and to be devoting ourselves to a VR game this ambitious is just as exciting,’ he said, as per PC Gamer.
Half-Life: Alyx is due to release in March 2020, and is available to pre-order now for $59.99.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.