We Talk Over: Half-Life: Alyx

Ben sitting in the chair like that is making me feel weirdly claustrophobic.

Pushing the reacts videos genre forward.

Yes! They caught the Artifact trailer on the site. I was laughing so hard when I saw it.

Awesome editing to show us what they're seeing with the trailer!

Something is broken with the fonts on Jeff's computer, that "Nier vibe" font he mentioned is not how the site is supposed to look like.

can't wait for the name of the feature where Alex plays through this

If this game is to play like how it looks, this seems fucking insane.

The flabbergasted tone in Jeff's voice as he talks about all of this is my spirit animal.

I'm excited, but it's such a huge surprise I'm almost in disbelief it's happening at all.

this game kind of seems like a bit of a cop out by Valve on the Half Life series

@onkel said:

The rumour doing the rounds is they have two announcements, one small and one big. The small one is Half-Life Alyx. On resetera a former valve employee said this. (sorry, don't have the direct link)

I wanted to see how Ben got out of the chair

Quality chairing there, Ben.

an excuse to dust off my VR. Am thinking they took their time to see what innovations took place before releasing. Glad I didnt sell it off now.

Oh no, I'm 20 seconds in and Ben's legs in that chair have me extremely anxious.

Half Life: Artifact

HALF-LIFE LIVES

Great, now I have a 4-months deadline to get myself a VR headset, and move into a new place where I actually have space for room-scale.

Worth it for that Artifact bit.

Do what hands do.

Jeff Gerstmann, the world's #1 SiN Half-Life fan.

Finally someone is speaking out against a cappella

It doesn't look like you need roomscale for this. You're moving with the analog stick.

Rendering arms in VR is complicated because of your elbow/shoulder/general range of motion. Lots of different ways for your arm to be positioned with your hand in relatively the same place. They’d need an elbow tracker for it to look right.

Some games do show arms by rough approximations of what position your arm is likely in, but they can be disorientating and occasionally very glitchy.

"Half-Life: Alyx" might turn out to be a fantastic game. It's also just a tremendous slap to the face to all the fans who have been waiting, let me check, 12 years now for Episode 3.

I still hope it'll be terrific, but.. Man, what a dick move, Valve.

All that frustration aside.. This is a preeetty good video.

VRodeo Endurance Run!

Yeah they specifically say in the notes for the game that you can play sitting down, so room-scale might be fun but it doesn't look like it's entirely necessary.

Rorie casually strolling by without his shoes on might be my favourite part of this video

@nethlem: yeah, thats kind of disappointing. i don't even own a gaming computer (i barely even own a computer full stop.) my home office is in a corner of an unfinished basement and i have a 1 year old- even if i wanted to spend the money (i do not) i'd be afraid of having something with wires running all over the place and i don't want to try it hook it up to an extension cord in my basement with my weird little desk space surrounded by storage boxes.

@do_the_manta_ray: Sure, but HL2 needed a big step up in video card, and they pushed costly tech with Lost Coast (totally different scale, sure). VR Half Life seemed like the obvious call for years, because Half Life always was half tech experiment. And I say this as someone with a Quest planning to play it on Link.

I guess it was only a matter of time before Valve played their ace in the hole to move VR headsets.

I still have never tried any kind of VR. I want to, but it's not anywhere near feasible for me. A Half-Life game doesn't change that. It just means there's a game I finally have mild interest in that I won't get to play.

@kentobi Oh, don't misunderstand me. The platform isn't what I'm taking issue with.
I'd have been okay with a VR Half-Life 3.

But after 12 years of waiting to see how the story ends, we're.. Not getting that. We're getting a prequel.

There's no stakes to this whatsoever. This is just them testing the waters to see if a Half Life proper might still be viable in the future.

@onkel: Did Valve say "you people" in that release Jeff read?

I applaud Ben's commitment to walking away out of shot still straddled to the chair.

I don't know if this will be some tremendous sea change that alters video games forever, but it looks like a good video game. If the great design style of Episode 2 has properly evolved, and as Jeff said all of the possibilities of VR (the freedom of just picking shit up and that also being reactive in the ways you'd expect) synthesized into that, color me excited. I think there's still a lot of room for those ideas to be deeply embedded into AI & level design and have it all be pretty dynamic and fun.

Hopefully it works well on the Oculus Quest + Link.

I was planning on getting Oculus Quest with Link anyway. Though, I'd like to know how good the Link actually is? Would be a good reason to do a new VR Rodeo. They also brought up Groundhog Day in a recent podcast and I was always curious about that -- it's just such a weird movie tie-in -- so hopefully they can cover that finally and some others that fell through the cracks.

This strikes me as the Google Stadia of Half-Life games. It's like Valve is creating a market and hoping people will buy into it. I'm not saying it's a bad thing that it exists, but creating a product that can be enjoyed by less than 2% of Steam users is a bit niche.

tight

*double tight, apparently even just buying the index controllers nets you a copy- I was ready to buy in but heyyy! Finally the buyer's remorse begins to lessen on those things. I fully expect people to be totally cold/pissed off by this half life thing be VR only, but...of course they are, how the hell wouldn't they be. I'm fucking stoked for a first party valve VR game, as they've been more or less the best in class fidelity wise as far as their demos go, so a full length Half Life game with that quality behind it- yup I'm in.

I'm starting to think Ben is Jeff's giggly sidekick

I wanted to see Ben escape that chair, and also a future feature involving that Intellivoice on Jeff's desk

@lonelyspacepanda: I’m sure Link mileage may vary based on your PC, but it’s worked quite well so far. I’m excited for the actual Link cable, because what I have right now is too short for room scale. But it really isn’t too far off from plug it in, and it just turns on. Steam games have run fine through it so far.

@do_the_manta_ray: And this is the big discussion that Valve can’t answer of what HL3 should be, or if anything would live up to the idea. Folks who have left Valve have made it pretty clear that there was no plot arc, that they were just making it up as they went along. And it sounds like some HL project has constantly been in development, but never got to where they were happy with it. This will be the third mainline HL game. That’s exciting for me.

Does this support the virtual boy headset?

Ouch, you made my legs hurt, Ben!

Is Ben still in the chair?

does Jeff star at Matt across from him all day?

A Half-Life game I can't play without barfing. Yay?

I came here to say this as well.

Looks neat enough, but who's going to write it? Didn't all key people, who wrote HL2 and the subsequent episodes, end up leaving over the last few years?

I'm both disappointed, but okay also. Valve is a company that sells it's products, and that seems more about VR than their previous flagship game. Yes, I know I am carrying a torch.

As a consumer, their VR won't happen for me, but Steam in my book has been a good thing. I appreciate this doesn't seem to be post Episode 2. There is always the hope they pop out of it and do a Half-life that both meets their standards and current development of story and such.

And it is not about VR.

The web fonts on that page are straight-up jacked on Jeff's browser. It's weird when that happens!