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Valve held a Reddit AMA all about its upcoming virtual reality game, Half-Life: Alyx (via VR Focus).
The Reddit AMA has over 6,500 comments, so a summary has been crunched up and spat out here to give you all the important information about the new game. Firstly, the team will be implementing subtitles at launch for “English, French, German, Spanish-Spain, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish-Latin America, and Traditional Chinese,” but voice-overs in these languages is in consideration.
Half-Life: Alyx’s length is comparable with Half-Life 2, and the game is in fact done and dusted. “With the exception of some tweaks to the absolute final scene, the game is done. Lots of us at Valve, as well as playtesters, have played through the entire game multiple times,” said Valve. The developer is “confident” that the game is on track as it is “polishing and fixing bugs” until it hits its expected launch window in March.
Accessibility has been a priority, too, as Valve divulged that there will be “seated,” “left-handed mode,” and “one armed play” to accommodate varying styles of play. Motion is achieved through teleporting because playtesters preferred this, and “our weapons all require only one hand, but they can be optionally grabbed and steadied by your offhand.” An “over-the-shoulder contextual inventory system” keeps track of weapons, ammunition, and items, and there are “wrist bags” for special items.
We’ll be able to see how all of this works together when Valve publishes gameplay videos of Half-Life: Alyx. “Yes, it’s our plan to release gameplay videos in the leadup to launch. Our intention is to use these to showcase not just gameplay elements, but also VR-specific elements like different movement options.”
Finally, Half-Life: Alyx does continue the franchise’s fascination with transportation. “It’s actually illegal to ship a Half-Life game if you don’t spend at least a little time riding in a train,” said Valve. If you have no clue what they’re on about, the Half-Life series is free to play through Steam for two months.
Half-Life: Alyx will launch for PC VR headsets in March, 2020.
