I played through all of HL/HL2/Ep1/Ep2 IIRC, but I can barely even remember the story clearly it was so long ago. And it's such a blur maybe I never finished Ep2.
I was 21 when HL1 came out but I didn't get to play it till I was like 24 maybe when I had gotten out of school and got a nice computer & some money. HL2 came out when I was 27.. still playing games but I don't remember beating it till much later. Probably 2010, by which point I was married and had bought a house.
Now I'm 42 and I have a 7 year old.. so I'm old enough to actually remember this, don't really have the time to play anymore.. and I'd be looking at buying a new PC & VR equipment to play it.. yah no thanks.
That and I remember HL2 and Ep1/Ep2 taking forever. The whole thing was good, unlike time sinks like Oblivion and Skyrim that were full of filler, but it still took forever to play through.
Just seems like a small target of players who are old enough to fondly remember the original + still have time to play long form games + still have gaming equipment + have VR/are willing to buy VR.
Even as an engineer who knows more than a usual amount of gamers including younger players I'm not sure I know anyone who has VR equipment. If you're 15-20 do you care about this or do you just think it's your Dad's stuff?
VR, though, is a different story. That absolutely limits the market. That being said, I'd wager that a majority of people who play VR games on PC will likely buy this game, as it's probably the first true AAA title developed specifically for VR.
Personally, being the frugal sort, I'll wait until it is on special. By which time I'll have upgraded my headset to one I can wear for more than 30 mins without it becoming an irritation.
I do wonder if the demographic is bang on the money, with a large number of headsets in the hands of people in their late 30s and 40s who remember the original Half-Life. I had originally thought Valve would first reissue the Half-Life and Portal games for VR, or even reboot Half-Life.
I played video games in my teens, including the HL series. I stopped playing video games roughly five years ago. I will be building a computer to play this game.
Peers my age are also very excited for this. Not just because it's a new Half Life game, but because it's the VR game we have been waiting for since the VR craze started.
You really have to have been either a firsthand or secondhand part of that culture to appreciate Star Wars and similar IPs. Even if you didn't watch it when it was released, you probably heard everyone from your dad to SNL discuss it.
If that wasn't your experience growing up, I doubt you'll care much for it as an adult now
Why oh why would you need to play prequels to enjoy a game?
Half-Life is a series where you have guns and you kill shit in an inherently interesting setting: earth invasion. Getting dropped in medias res without knowing 100% of what is going on is just an ancient trope of story-telling.
Look how much people enjoy the latest Doom game. You don't need to have played the original to grasp the idea of demons pouring into earth through some sort of interdimensional gate. You aim and you shoot them.
The original Doom games intentionally had almost no story. The new Doom was a complete reboot so even if the old ones had a story it wouldn't matter at all. HL:Alyx is a continuation of the story that falls between 1 and 2.
It's certainly a trope. But is it ancient? I'm trying to think of ancient examples of this but I can't. Are you sure it's not a modern trope?
I'll have you know that this honor goes to the point-and-click adventure game / noir detective story that licensed the "Fables" comic book series, "The Wolf Among Us." It was great, and I may be the only point and click adventure game enthusiast who was also a fan of "Fables."
But seriously, I think that the low spread of VR is the whole point. Valve wants people to buy VR headsets. How do you convince them to do that? Create content that people want that needs a VR headset.
Are they making playing the previous games a requirement? Games can stand on their own, even if they are best enjoyed when you already have some emotional investment.
All I can say is that if you haven't tried some of the more unique VR games like Superhot, it's hard to express how amazing this game has the potential to be.
edit: it looks like it's actually already out
I have a very similar situation, with a 10, 8, 5 and 0 year old (yeah I'm a bit more crazy than you). Difference is that I actually do have a bit of spare time.
I also fondly remember all the half-life games, as memory permits of course.
For me this is a different story: The whole VR experience passed me by a bit, until now. By seeing this, my hands are itching to pull out my wallet and pay a crazy amount of money for this toy. The benefit of 40 year olds is that they probably can cough up the money for all this VR stuff.
I'm not sure yet, but there is definitely a strong itch now that I see this.
A new HL game probably also means some cool multiplayer games are coming up. I'm not only thinking about Counter Strike, but also Team Fortress.
85%+ of VR users are male, compared to say 70/30 male/female balance of say Fornite. (1/2)
Any way you carve it the audience for Alyx is going to weight heavily male.
And research suggests that gender-swapping in VR is a profound psychological experience:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8260949
(1) https://www.rakutenintelligence.com/blog/2016/virtual-realit...
(2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/865625/fortnite-players-...
Before I say this, note I'm looking forward to playing as Alyx, and don't expect gender to make much of a difference in a game/story like this.
But as far as not having options, I disagree. Barney was already a playable character in Blue Shift, he's shown to be relevant to the plot in HL2. Not only that but he's undercover at least some of the time, opening up gameplay avenues that Alyx wouldn't have available. Not that I'm suggesting that HL in VR needs a Papers Please style minigame or anything...
There has been other games with a female protagonist, but the backlash was so bad against them that they were completely forgotten. I know it's obscure, but you can look it up, there's those two games called "Portal" and "Portal 2", and the two main characters are female. You've probably never heard of them because of all the misogyny.
... or something.
I think Alyx makes sense as a protagonist given how prominent of a character she was in HL2, regardless of gender.
What do you mean by this? As far as I can see there is no actual VR port of Portal. You can play it through something like VorpX, which gets you 3D display through a headset, but that can hardly be called "VR'd to hell and back".
- Most men don't mind playing a female character (think Lara Croft).
- Most women prefer to play a female character.
So the real question is why there aren't more game studios using female protagonists.
It's in a lot of good company in that respect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_games_featuring...
I doubt that VR is more than incremental in terms of creating an illusion of gender.
Unlike a third person game where you're controlling a character, I could see how having a different voice and hands in VR would be odd. I bet Valve realized that a mute protagonist no longer works in a story-driven environment.
I'll have to join vr chat as a girl tonight and see how things go.
That said I normally play star citizen w/ a female avatar, and other than thinking "the person I'm talking to might think I'm a girl" my mindset doesn't change much...
Or Samus, if you want to go back even further.
Come on, we know the inability to recruit and retain women in these fields is down to a culture that simply does not value the contributions of women in STEM as highly as their contributions in other 'industries'.
Here's a full walkthrough for those living under a rock when it came out:*)
By the way, back then I really liked the first stages of HL2 -- the dystopian intro absolutely rocks -- but eventually had to stop playing, partly because it was getting too long, and partly because of motion sickness. This really took me by suprise because I was a gamer, had enjoyed the original HL without problems... and suddenly there was a new breed of 3D games where I got motion sickness and had to quit.
I distinctly remember two games that made me almost throw up when playing: HL2 and Jedi Outcast.
I was wondering if it was simply a stage of my life, so I decided to watch your video and... instant motion sickness. I think it has something to do with the jerky point of view and the rapid motion, but also something about how the "lens" of the viewport deforms the image near the borders.
Does it happen to anyone else? :(
> "A set of Source 2 tools for building new environments will ship with the game, enabling any player to build and contribute new environments for the community to enjoy. Hammer, Valve’s level authoring tool, has been updated with all of the game’s virtual reality gameplay tools and components." [0]
They do have that feature coming with it? Or am I confused on what you are referring to?
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/546560/HalfLife_Alyx/ (appears in the description under the "Community-built environments" header)
EDIT: I misread what you meant. Haha I thought you meant overlooked by their team, as if they didn't include it.
But even Blizz couldn't reliably make maps using their internal tools that kept Reaper where he was supposed to be.
In all seriousness though – is there any studies done on potential PTSD-like effects that arise from this sort of VR game?
Over at Children's Colorado and they are also trying out VR for pediatric pain management. It seems to be effective thus far.
VR's killer app may well be Alyx, but there are a lot of potential uses that are out there that can really help out.
The only time I hit the ground was when I tried to go into a crouch and had the floor height misconfigured. That left a mark.
Weird, this study shows the exact opposite with regards to regular video games.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6370668/
Conclusion from above study:
>Accumulating evidence led to a clear consensus that a high frequency of exposure to violent video games significantly alters important interpersonal behaviors in negative ways (Bender et al., 2018). Atypical disadvantageous defensive reactions and higher vulnerability to PTSD symptoms, revealed in the present study, add to other shortcomings for the heavy players themselves.
I would assume the same in VR, if not more significant as it is more immersive than regular video games.
I do not have a study for VR video games however as I do not know of any that have been done off the top of my head.
I would like to add, I by no means want to make light of the impact PTSD due to real life trauma. I personally know a few people who suffer from being in active combat and would never wish that upon anyone.
I personally feel that PTSD developed due to real life trauma will always be far more severe than any sort of PTSD developed through video games or other virtual means.
While not PTSD, I can totally imagine you can find ways of using VR to cause PTSD or similar. Like forcing someone to have a VR headset on with disturbing experiences for a long time and the person would surely eventually go insane.
Bravo Valve. This is why anyone interested in this should get a Vive and stay well clear of Oculus/Facebook's headsets. They are busy trying to capture the VR market by setting up exclusivity arrangements with studios to lock games to their platform to cut others out which just divides up the already small market.
Value have built a cross platform framework and SDK and are releasing their games for all headsets.
I thought Oculus touch did support finger tracking. Wikipedia describes it as a "system for detecting finger gestures which perhaps is different. I've only ever used a Vive, so I'm not sure.
But seeing as this is a prequel (or midquel or whatever) instead of actually Half Life 3, my prophesy of HL3 launching as a Linux/SteamOS exclusive may yet still be fulfilled.
Also, the IK-system would not be able to mimic the exact movement of your own arms, making them feel foreign and weird.
And trying to use ik / kinematics to infer the player's pose by just using head and hand positions creates a very jarring effect when it is inaccurate.
It turns out to be much more immersive with the floating hands than you would at first think.
If you don't believe me just load up Echo VR and look at your arms. Valve probably just doesn't want them blocking your view.
Comical and also accurate.
What I mean is, I get the sense Valve is unhappy that VR hasn't had its system-selling killer app yet, and I wonder if Alyx is trying to be that. If so, I'm reasonably hopeful they'll push hard to make this a genuinely good game that shows VR's full potential, rather than a disposable gimmick.
I actually kinda am. Because they created a really great platform that has helped the market thrive even for tiny nobody indie devs. They've set a seriously high bar for digital store fronts and distribution services. I think I've got a lot more enjoyment from the games Steam has enabled to exist and find an audience than I have from any game Valve itself produced.
Hell, they even made Linux gaming a significantly less laughable concept than it once was.
I am still curious to see how they will handle the character of Alyx, she was little more than an admiration delivery device in half life 2. They will have to do a lot more now that she is the center of the game.
Actually if anything she was the primary driver of the plot. Freeman, being a passive mute, follows what Alyx and co are doing for the majority of the plot(s).
Why does she fall in love with the mute player character at first sight ? Don't she already have relationships ?
What exactly does she find attractive in that mute guy that appears and disappear ?
She is here to as a reward/carrot for teenage boys, not as a full fledged character with her own wants and needs :/
The eps made me genuinely care about her, as much as one can for a fictional character.
The fucking ending of Ep 2 haunts me to this day.
My 3-year old video card (bought for $300 then) is still kicking butt in any VR title I throw at it.
My PC sits in a very small room, and yet I can use VR. It does not sit in the living room.
Size of the room is less of a deal than obstacles. You may have to rearrange some furniture out of the way while you play. I have to move my desk chair out of the way if I'm not playing Elite.
Usually you don't move all that much – but stuff has to be out of your arm's way. Most games only require you to be stationary. It's just more immersive if you can move a bit.
I didn't see any indication in the trailer that this will be anything other than the best iteration on this formula yet.
Unless VR becomes a lot more compelling, I don’t see a significant chunk of gamers being willing to go down to the local VRcade to do their gaming on a regular basis.
And imagine the cost. A VRcade would have to have a lot of space per player, they’d have to be staffed, cleaned, maintained. A good game these days takes at least 40 hours to play through. I’d wager that 40 hours of VRcade time is going to be a lot more than people are willing to pay for a game these days.
Note that I did not mention price. It will come down – even more, that is.
Also, they need Half Life 2 Episode III. The series ended in a cliffhanger.
This local maxima of design and hardware may be a fad, but if it is, I expect in my lifetime to see another fad in maybe 10 years. The tech is just getting too cheap for people to not risk throwing a few mil at it every so often.
Maybe it's because I'm older now, but this didn't "knock me out" like that did.
3DOF trackers (like Google Daydream) and low-fidelity 6DOF trackers don't capture that dimension of data, and even if you don't consciously notice it's missing, strapping into anything of equivalent fidelity to Oculus Rift or better makes you really notice the difference. It's night-and-day.
Where HL1/2 were focused on making the objects, enemies, and places you interacted with feel like real life. HL:A will be focused on the character you control, giving you complete autonomy with finger capture and motion control.
Valve is pushing forward gaming with Half Life once again
Not sure if I share this sentiment, I read elsewhere Valve is treating this as their next "flagship" release, a true first class VR game (hopefully not just some 30 minute "experience" that ends right as it's getting good). It this were literally any other game studio I'd have an eyebrow raised right now, but when Valve puts their full muscle and creative energy behind something as a flagship, lead-off hitter, they've yet to disappoint.
>Due to some of the technical limitations with people (motion sickness does not make a popular game) I don't think this is not going to be an open spaces and free-movement heavy game like HL2. Not having some really good expansive panorama scenes would be a disservice to the VR tech but don't expect to be able to drive a go-kart around in them. I'm expecting a lot of semi stationary scenes where the player is free around a small space as the environment smoothly and steadily around them (like all the various freight elevator and rail car scenes in HL1). I expect that in typical Half-Life fashion there will be lots of object manipulation and head crab batting practice while the player remains nearly stationary.
So based on the trailer it looks like I was decently right. I think you're gonna spend a lot of time solving puzzles with one hand while defending yourself with the other. I really hope they nail the cinematic aspect of it like they did in HL2 since that greatly contributes to how immersive the game feels.
This is interesting to me, though I haven't played many VR games. Is this common with other games?
I play games that benefit from low reaction time and precision and my body is the main source of latency and mistakes. When I watch recordings of my own gameplay, I notice how my brain usually operates a few hundred milliseconds ahead of what my hands controlling mouse & keyboard are capable of executing. Throwing your untrained and sometimes unhealthy body into this mix doesn't seem like a beneficial strategy.
Also, characters in the games I play do things that are completely impossible for a regular human body to accomplish. They're running faster, jumping higher, aim and swing swords better than I or any real human even could. Why would you want your character to be a mirror of your real-world tired and untrained self?
They say that the biggest sell of VR is immersion. How can something be immersive when it has no capability to provide any kind of feedback besides audio/visual? You can't swing swords in VR cause it has no capability to communicate weight of the thing you're holding back to you. A light sword feels exactly the same as a huge two-handed sword because all you're actually carrying in a lightweight plastic controller. You can't punch a wall because there's nothing in reality to stop your hand from going through. You can't hide behind cover because the object you're trying to lean on doesn't exist in real life. You can't feel an impact of receiving a fatal blow or taking a rocket in your face, cause there's nothing to actually push you in real life.
I think VR is dumb and I haven't seen any games yet that would want me to spend money on it. I was a huge fan of HL back in the day, but I guess I'm going to skip this one.
Try it before forming opinions, then.
Look and see if there are any VR arcades near you. For only a few dollars, you can test out a lot of games.
You can subscribe to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrMEAJ54k0d2Gvjof4GF6Vg/vid... if you want a daily update on HL3 news. But the other comment's link to the writer's conclusion is worthwhile for closure since we'll probably never get the game version.
Basically anything the Rift can do, the Quest can do too.
Good to see them releasing something, even if it is a narrow market. Seems to be a lot of doubt in them after lackluster Artifact and Epic Store entering their space.
Although I won't be able to buy it for a while due to hardware expenses, I really applaud them in going the VR route. Personally wouldn't have done a prequel. This would have been a perfect HL3 fit. I'd love to hear why they chose a prequel to HL3. Buuuut, what's done is done and I'm sure they did a great job.
Are the newer things getting better?
However, it really depends more on what is causing your specific discomfort. For some people it can be the locomotion or just bad visuals. The comfort/heat of the headset also can cause issues. If I don't use VR for awhile, then I get a little nauseous my first 1 or 2 times in, but after that I can handle just about anything for many hours.
IMHO, I think Portal VR would have given a more immersive experience, along with less locomotion issues. However, I'm sure Valve has done their research.
My concern is, if this isn't met with favor, will Valve bow out of game development permanently? It just feels as if they are losing interest in new game development and would rather buy other studios and keep Steam chugging along. More money there..
This was covered in the interview video[1], Valve employees mentioned that they considered Portal but they thought that a game where you spend a significant amount of time jumping through portals at high speed would make you sick.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/08/half-life-3-plot-marc...
Looks like I'll be picking up that Quest, upgrading to Ryzen 4900X and a Nvidia 3060 when they're out next year for this game.
Community built environments are possible - that's a pretty huge thing!
Valve : "Hold my beer, lets give them what they wanted in 3D, in VR"
