Valve
Just as fans gave up hope there would ever be another entry in the Half-Life series, Valve surprised the world with the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx, set between the events of the first and second entry.
This title will be entirely in VR, so you’ll need to own one of those if you want to experience the next installment in this beloved franchise.
If there’s one game that can push those virtual reality headsets, it’s this, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Valve Index and other headsets fare following this release.
As for why the Half-Life franchise has remained dormant for so long, that has remained a mystery to fans.
Half-Life 2 was, and still is, considered to be on the best games of all-time, so it seemed odd for there to not be a follow-up on this title.
ValveHalf-Life: Alyx is the first game in the series in quite a while.
Redditor MontyAtWork asked why it took 12 years for the developer to mention the franchise again and why they didn’t even celebrate anniversaries for the series.
As it turns out, there’s a very simple explanation as to why there hasn’t been any talk about the series. Valve simply didn’t have anything to say about the franchise because there wasn’t anything going on.
“Half-Life isn’t like Fight Club- there was never a first rule of “we must never speak of it!” over the last decade or so,” said a Valve developer. “The real answer is super simple: We didn’t talk about Half-Life for a long time because we weren’t actively working on a Half-Life game. Once Half-Life: Alyx became a reality internally, it was already clear to us that this was something we wanted to involve the community in. We’re going to be doing more of this in the next few weeks as we prepare to launch it!”
This answer came in an Ask Me Anything on Reddit that the developers had with fans. A lot of interesting tidbits came out of this, including the team saying they are sure Alyx will not be delayed.
The explanation for this is because the game is already pretty much done, outside of having a few tweaks to make.
Half-Life: Alyx is currently set for a March 2020 release date exclusively for Steam, but an exact date has not been revealed.
It will be interesting to keep an eye on how this done since it’ll end up being a true flagship VR title. The success of this title will go a long way into determining the future VR holds in the industry.