Expected in March and in VR only, Half-Life: Alyx marks the return of the legendary Valve license. During a question-and-answer session, the developers gave some small additional information.
First, we know that main development is complete, and that currently, 80 developers of the game are working on the final scene, stability, bugs, and a whole bunch of little balances, to be implemented before the release. Therefore, Valve is very confident about the announced release period, although it still needs to be specified.
With the exception of a few adjustments to the final scene, the game is over. Many of us at Valve, as well as testers, have played the entire game several times. Right now, we’re mainly fixing bugs, and that’s where we hoped to be at this point in the development cycle.
Also, this session on Reddit allowed to learn that Merle dandridge, actress who lent her voice to Alyx Vance in the previous games, had participated in the title at the start of development, before the production finally decides to change its voice:
We worked with Merle early in the development of Half-Life: Alyx, but in the end, we felt that we wanted to go in a different direction. We love Merle, and her work in Half-Life 2 helped bring Alyx to life, so we hope to work with her again in the future.
On the side of the adversaries, players will find Barnacles, head crabs, but also Combine Soldiers, who will have variants to create new game situations. The studio wants to keep a few surprises for the release, however, and has not released the entire bestiary. Another question that has often come up is that of handling of weapons in this VR game:
Our weapons all require only one hand, but they can possibly be grabbed and stabilized by your (second) hand. We really wanted to focus on two-handed simultaneous play throughout the game, so we needed the player to always have a free hand. We keep this hand quite busy with gravity gloves, movements, interactions with the world, a flashlight, etc. (…) We also have some inventory and weapon selection systems, all designed to keep players’ eyes on the environment as much as possible. So we have a contextual inventory system above the shoulder for ammunition.
–
Finally, one of the most interesting answers concerned the provision of development tools. As you probably know, the engine of Half-Life has given birth to many games, mods, and this, for many years. On this subject, Valve declares:
We do not currently plan to upload a full SDK (development kit). We would really like to release one at some point, but it’s a huge job, as Source 2 is a new set of tools, much of which has yet to be released. (…) Consequently, we thought that it was not appropriate to promise anything before the exit. Generally, this is how we made the SDKs in our previous titles (running under) Source 1: making the game a priority, and after that, we start to look at what will follow.
video">Half-Life: Alyx Trailer
–
– 
Through MalloDelic, Journalist jeuxvideo.com
MP
—
