Half Life: Alyx announced by Valve

It has been more than 15 years since the game that made Valve into a giant that it is today, Half Life 2 was released. The game ended on a cliff hanger and since then fans have been asking for Half Life 3. The “Half Life 3 confirmed” meme has been quite popular in the gaming community. Valve has now finally announced a new game in the series; Half Life: Alyx. 

While not Half Life 3, the game is still the newest one in the series. Half Life: Alyx will be set before Half Life 2 and will only be playable on VR. Even though it is a VR exclusive, Half Life: Alyx will be a full length game. According to designer Greg Coomer, the game took playtesters almost as long as Half Life 2 to finish. Valve says the game will have exploration, combat, puzzles, and a completely different story. The game will be free to anyone who has bought Valve’s VR headset, the Steam Index. 

When Half Life 2 was released, it revolutionized the FPS genre with physics based gameplay, skeletal animation, accurate lip-sync in the cutscenes and more. It was a cutting edge game at the time. If anyone can pull a full fledged VR game off, it is definitely going to be Valve and what better game could it be other than Half Life. It is also assuring that this is Valve’s biggest project yet. This the biggest group of people Valve has ever worked with, and a third of the people have worked on the previous Half Life games. 

"Virtual reality has energized us," Valve’s founder, Gabe Newell says. "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. For that to come in the form of Half-Life feels like the culmination of a lot of things we care a lot about: truly great games, cutting edge technology, and open platforms."