Today the world gets its first look at Half-Life: Alyx. In addition to the trailer, the company has released the first Half-Life: Alyx screenshots. If you’re familiar with Valve and the Half-Life series, you know what kinds of art style, environments, and enemies to expect, but you’ve never seen a Half-Life game this detailed.
If you didn’t already catch the trailer, released date, and pricing for Half-Life: Alyx, head right over here. If you’ve already seen that, you’re surely interested in seeing the first high-res screenshots of Half-Life: Alyx revealed by Valve. Let’s cut right to the chase:
If you’ve played Half-Life 2 you’ll be immediately familiar with most of the environments depicted here, but what’s quite striking is just how much detail Valve has poured into this world compared to what we saw 12 years ago with the last game in the series, Half-Life 2: Episode 2.
More of Today’s Half-Life: Alyx News
- ‘Half-Life: Alyx’ Trailer Revealed, Release Date Set for March 2020
- Valve’s Gabe Newell: ‘We’re excited to return to Half-Life, VR has energized the studio’
- ‘Half-Life: Alyx’ Will Run on All SteamVR Headsets, be Free for Index Owners
- Source 2 Tools Will Ship with ‘Half-Life: Alyx’ for VR Content from the Modding Community
Granted, some of what we’re seeing is quite new. Valve calls the gloves worn by the player ‘Grabbity Gloves’, which will likely be built into the narrative as a precursor to Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun (after all, Alyx will be set between HL1 and HL2), while functioning as a convenient way for players to ‘force-grab’ objects in the world a a distance (an increasingly common theme in VR design).
It looks like the gloves will indicate player health as well as some other info. The glove screenshot also appears to confirm that the game will use floating hands, a VR design choice which appears to be on its way out (considering the likes of recent titles like Asgard’s Wrath, Stormland, and the upcoming Boneworks).
In the indoor screenshot with the Combine enemies, we see what appears to be a new combine soldier type holding a new gun. The player is also holding some sort of grenade-like device. In the sewer screenshot, a barnacle-like create appears to be controlling a zombie-like corpse.
In Half-Life: Alyx Valve has promised “all of the hallmarks of a classic Half-Life game,” citing world exploration, puzzle solving, visceral combat, and a strong narrative as the title’s core gameplay.
While the studio’s prior VR projects were based on Unity, Valve confirmed today that Half-Life: Alyx is built on the company’s own Source 2 engine.
