Half-Life: Alyx l Quarantine In City 17

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Captain Kinopio
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Captain Kinopio » Mon Mar 02, 2020 10:46 pm

Yea thought that was weird too.

It looks absolutely revolutionary though. Like it would be mind blowingly immersive. Shame it’s 2k to play.

Time for adventure
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CitizenErased
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by CitizenErased » Mon Mar 02, 2020 10:49 pm

Knoyleo wrote:The teleport movement has me a bit worried, and not just because it's not a personal preference. The second video makes it look like it's optional, but in video 3 it looks like an easy way to cheese firefights by warping from cover to cover, and they're going to have a hell of a job to find a good difficulty balance in combat when that's an option. It'll stick if you're penalised with much harder combat because you prefer a movement method that has you running around in the open, rather than magicing yourself to safety.


Valve are giving the following ways to play:

Image

Agree about the difficulty with balance but hopefully after waiting 84 years they get it right ;)

Edit: Seems Eurogamer has footage of the different ways to play

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-03-02-marvel-at-ten-new-minutes-of-atmospheric-half-life-alyx-gameplay-action

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Cheeky Devlin
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Cheeky Devlin » Mon Mar 02, 2020 11:17 pm

CitizenErased wrote:
Knoyleo wrote:The teleport movement has me a bit worried, and not just because it's not a personal preference. The second video makes it look like it's optional, but in video 3 it looks like an easy way to cheese firefights by warping from cover to cover, and they're going to have a hell of a job to find a good difficulty balance in combat when that's an option. It'll stick if you're penalised with much harder combat because you prefer a movement method that has you running around in the open, rather than magicing yourself to safety.


Valve are giving the following ways to play:

Image

Agree about the difficulty with balance but hopefully after waiting 84 years they get it right ;)

Edit: Seems Eurogamer has footage of the different ways to play

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-03-02-marvel-at-ten-new-minutes-of-atmospheric-half-life-alyx-gameplay-action

Yeah it's just the same three videos, but they point out how each one shows the different movement types.

I'm not worried about it at all though. Valve have been working on VR stuff for years and they know how important this is to the medium.

It looks phenomenal. Even small things like being able to pull the car door open to act as cover.

I might not be able to day one it (This is going to be a tight month), but as soon as I have the cash I'm in there. :toot:

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Knoyleo
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Knoyleo » Tue Mar 03, 2020 8:39 am

Yeah, I'm waiting until I've had a chance to upgrade my PC, which won't be until later in the year, realistically, so I'll be a fair way off day one on this as well. It'll be good to hear impressions about how the game handles challenge between the different movement options, but I'm not looking forward to trying to avoid spoilers between now and then.

pjbetman wrote:That's the stupidest thing ive ever read on here i think.
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Cheeky Devlin
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Cheeky Devlin » Tue Mar 03, 2020 9:17 am

I should say I won't be day 1, but I will be day 7 or 8 when I get paid. Unless I can find some spare change before then. :D

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Jenuall
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Jenuall » Tue Mar 03, 2020 9:25 am

I'm definitely down for this but I'm putting my PC build off until later in the year so I'll have to wait a while to get my Half-Life fix. I've been waiting since 2007 so a few months isn't really going to hurt! :lol:

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Zilnad
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Zilnad » Tue Mar 03, 2020 10:48 am

Realistically I need to save twice as much money before I can even think of getting this. I don't think my wife would appreciate if I spent all of my savings on a new PC build and then a VR headset on top of it. Maybe in another 1-2 years I'll have enough? :dread:

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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Winckle » Tue Mar 03, 2020 1:26 pm

How much space do I need for a Valve Index? I'm reading about base stations and all the pictures are of people with huge living rooms.

My PC is in a small office box room, and I'm worried I wouldn't have room.

We should migrate GRcade to Flarum. :toot:
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Cheeky Devlin
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Cheeky Devlin » Tue Mar 03, 2020 4:50 pm

I will say that I fully expect there to be some kind of big "surprise" in this game.

Something like the last ten minutes picks up at the end of Episode 2 and you play as Gordon for 10 minutes before it ends with a "Half-Life 3 - Jun 2020".

EDIT: That may just be wishful thinking though. :lol:

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Cheeky Devlin
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Cheeky Devlin » Tue Mar 03, 2020 4:52 pm

Winckle wrote:How much space do I need for a Valve Index? I'm reading about base stations and all the pictures are of people with huge living rooms.

My PC is in a small office box room, and I'm worried I wouldn't have room.


I'm not familiar with the Index, but a lot of stuff can be played seated. So as long as you have room to maneuver your arms freely you should be able to play a decent amount of stuff.

Unfortunately the reality is just that the more space you have the better it is.

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Jenuall
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Jenuall » Tue Mar 03, 2020 4:57 pm

Cheeky Devlin wrote:I will say that I fully expect there to be some kind of big "surprise" in this game.

Something like the last ten minutes picks up at the end of Episode 2 and you play as Gordon for 10 minutes before it ends with a "Half-Life 3 - Jun 2020".

EDIT: That may just be wishful thinking though. :lol:

People would literally lose their gooseberry fool if that happened. :lol:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:
Winckle wrote:How much space do I need for a Valve Index? I'm reading about base stations and all the pictures are of people with huge living rooms.

My PC is in a small office box room, and I'm worried I wouldn't have room.


I'm not familiar with the Index, but a lot of stuff can be played seated. So as long as you have room to maneuver your arms freely you should be able to play a decent amount of stuff.

Unfortunately the reality is just that the more space you have the better it is.

I think I read that you need a clear 2m by 2m space, but presumably some space around that is needed to setup properly and yeah I think bigger is always better.

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Cheeky Devlin
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Cheeky Devlin » Wed Mar 04, 2020 1:21 pm

https://www.gameinformer.com/interview/ ... o-be-in-vr

Reading this just now but seems to be an interesting short interview with Valve.

Especially like this part:

Do you think that Alyx will give fans some closure on the end of Episode 2?

It's not a bad idea for players to have refreshed themselves on the events of Episode 2 before starting Half-Life: Alyx.

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Jenuall
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Jenuall » Wed Mar 04, 2020 4:51 pm

strawberry float episode 2, I want closure for what happened to Corporal Shepherd from Opposing Force! :lol:

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Zilnad
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Zilnad » Wed Mar 04, 2020 4:54 pm

Jenuall wrote:strawberry float episode 2, I want closure for what happened to Corporal Shepherd from Opposing Force! :lol:


Didn't G-Man dump him on Xen, without any weapons, to be killed by armies of aliens?

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Jenuall
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Jenuall » Wed Mar 04, 2020 4:57 pm

Zilnad wrote:
Jenuall wrote:strawberry float episode 2, I want closure for what happened to Corporal Shepherd from Opposing Force! :lol:


Didn't G-Man dump him on Xen, without any weapons, to be killed by armies of aliens?

I think the ending marked his status as being detained "pending further evaluation" or something like that. The G-Man clearly took a bit of a shine to him so I believe he is out there somewhere, just waiting to return! :lol:

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Cheeky Devlin
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Cheeky Devlin » Thu Mar 05, 2020 3:14 pm

The more I read about this and the more I think about it, I really can't see Valve going back to a standard flat-screen FPS for any future Half-Life games after this.

They've always been about pushing the medium forward and doing new and different things and I just don't see what they can do in traditional games with HL that would have that kind of impact.

VR at least has that "new frontier" element to it and for me it makes sense for them to be one of the companies that are charting that.

Making HL3 a flat-screen experience with a mouse and keyboard would just seem like such a step back after this.

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Green Gecko
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Green Gecko » Thu Mar 05, 2020 3:16 pm

One has to wonder what came first. "We're going to make HL3 but this needs to be something different, boom VR" or "VR, hmm, now we can make HL3 different!"

I'm fairly confident this was the plan all along and Vive etc. was just HL3 R&D in disguise.

It's pretty nuts that the Portal and to some degree the gravity gun are just "how we interact with gooseberry fool in VR" before VR was actually a consumer thing.

tl;dr Valve were already doing VR stuff in HL2 and they were mucking about with interaction with gooseberry fool properly in first person with HL1 rather than just shooty shooty bang bang in corridors.

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Cheeky Devlin
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Cheeky Devlin » Thu Mar 05, 2020 3:22 pm

Green Gecko wrote:One has to wonder what came first. "We're going to make HL3 but this needs to be something different, boom VR" or "VR, hmm, now we can make HL3 different!"

I'm fairly confident this was the plan all along and Vive etc. was just HL3 R&D in disguise.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if HL:A is essentially a 15hr playable teaser for HL:3.

They've already stated that refreshing your memory with Episode 2 wouldn't be a bad idea.

My prediction is that the whole thing is a dream/memory Alyx has just after the death of her father and it ends with her waking up and a HL:3 tease at the very end.

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Cheeky Devlin
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Cheeky Devlin » Thu Mar 05, 2020 11:03 pm



Great interview where they discuss some of the design that went into the basic mechanics like movement and the gravity gloves.

Sounds like a real step forward from what we've seen before.

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Victor Mildew
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PostRe: Half-Life: Alyx l March 23rd 2020
by Victor Mildew » Fri Mar 06, 2020 1:40 pm

I can't wait for this.

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