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Here's why Valve's new title Half-Life Alyx is a VR exclusive

Here's why Valve's new title Half-Life Alyx is a VR exclusive

It's official - PC games giant Valve has announced a new Half-Life title in VR exclusive Alyx.

In a video interview with The Game Awards' Geoff Keighley (below), the studio said that the title began as an internal VR experiment before it became a Half-Life game, with the title becoming exclusively for virtual reality due to the level of interaction it gave users with its world.

"It began as an exploration of VR and the more we used the controllers and the headset we realised the amount of interactions this gives, the amount of possibilities these things give us, the more we explored it and the more we realised that there's so much opportunity that we can't really translate back to the keyboard," Valve's Dario Casali explained.

"When you can track your hands separately from your head. They're all 3D space, all simultaneously tracking and moving, you just can't really get that with a mouse and keyboard. And when you put that into game mechanics, the kinds of interactions that we can do now we couldn't possibly do with a mouse and keyboard. Like interacting with doors is one of the most obvious things, I mean you've played so you've seen. No, but it's so fun, and I think the thing with what I'll say about the combat stuff is when, you know, you're pulling a clip and put it in the gun, and ducking for cover, I mean there's funny videos of me playing this thing where you're literally on the floor and ducking, I mean it's like the combat is truly immersive and visceral and it reminds me of classic Half-Life, but it's so much different, and I mean you could potentially map some of that to a mouse or a controller but it's just, I think it's just better."

This project follows Valve's return to game development last year with Dota card title Artifact. That game, sadly, bombed after release with the studio promising a complete overhaul in the future.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.