On a technical and visual level, the Source 2 engine not only overcomes the restrictions of VR, but is one of the most impressive games in any medium. The gravity gloves you use in the game are not only a worthy successor to Half-life 2’s gravity gun, but a wonderful innovation that deals with VR’s longstanding problem with finer environmental interaction. It straddles technology and Valve’s trademark narrative creativity in a way that dwarfs anything the studio could have done on a flat screen. It’s hard to appreciate just what a perfect continuation Alyx is of Half-life’s legacy unless you put on a headset and experience it. It just found a whole new dimension of gaming to play in and pioneer. But Valve, being a privately traded company of unthinkable wealth, wasn’t restricted by those concerns. VR was, and still is, treated with caution by most major publishers - largely due to its relatively small market not making it terribly appealing to bean-counters and shareholders. That opportunity would eventually arrive with VR, which finally gave Valve its chance to make a mark worthy of the Half-life name while championing a legitimately groundbreaking technology.
Geoff Keighley’s Final Hours documentary gives rare insight into why Half-life games are such a rarity (Image credit: Geoff Keighley) Valve designer Dario Casali told IGN that part of that was down to Valve’s philosophy to make Half-life games disruptive in one way or another, as they were “looking for what is going to make the next big impact”.
Geoff Keighley’s Final Hours documentary reveals that Valve began work on no less than five Half-life projects - Half-Life 3 among them - that were aborted for various reasons. It was - and still mostly is - a time where improvements in video game tech were becoming more incremental and granular than the spectacular leaps Half-life helped drive around the turn of the millennium. Valve was searching for a spark, an opportunity to create a technical breakthrough big enough to justify the next Half-life.īut between 20, that breakthrough was not forthcoming. Newell said: “The big gap really is- maybe we’re stupid- but it didn’t seem like there really was an obvious- we don’t just crank Half-life titles out because it helps us make quarterly numbers”. Talking about why it took so long to make another Half-life game until Alyx, his stop-start response got straight to the heart of Half-life’s meaning to Valve. The idea of Half-life games as ‘disruptive by design’ was echoed by Valve CEO and founder Gabe Newell in an interview with IGN.