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Half Life: Alyx trailer and minimum recommended specs revealed

by Mark Tyson on 22 November 2019, 11:11

Tags: Valve

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As promised, Valve unveiled Half Life: Alyx yesterday. The new VR title is described in brief as "a new full-length entry in the Half-Life series, built by Valve for VR". Expected to be released in March 2020, the game is now available to pre-purchase on Steam (on sale today at £41.84) but if you own a Valve Index headset (before 2020 arrives) it will be free and you will get bonus content too. Alongside the reveal we got an announcement trailer and behind the scenes video to watch, as well as learning the minimum recommended PC specs.

Half Life: Alyx is a prequel to Half Life 2. You play as Alyx Vance, previously seen in Half Life as an NPC, and are pitted as "humanity's only chance for survival". As a member of the fledgling resistance you will be indulging in activities to defeat the Combine, learning more about the enemy so you can discover its weaknesses. You will be interacting in the deeply complex environment Valve has built, puzzle solving, exploring - as well as taking part in visceral combat.

The announcement trailer above you will see through the eyes of Alyx as you rummage through shelves for supplies and ammo, manipulate tools and objects and lean around corners and through shelves and windows. Talking about the new VR project, Valve said that "VR was built for the kind of gameplay that sits at the heart of Half-Life, and Half-Life: Alyx was built from the ground up for VR." You'll be able to play it on any SteamVR compatible system.

Minimum recommended PC specs listed on the game's page are; an Intel Core i5-7500 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600, a GTX 1060 or RX 580 with 6GB+ VRAM, and at least 12GB of RAM. That is a little above the VR minimum specs established with the introduction of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in 2016.

After release you can expect community built environments to start appearing. Valve has announced that 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. It adds that the Hammer level authoring tool has been updated with Half Life: Alyx VR gameplay tools and components.

HEXUS Forums :: 11 Comments

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Posted by mikeo - Fri 22 Nov 2019 16:35
Still waiting for HL3 like many people.
Posted by Mapester - Fri 22 Nov 2019 17:10
mikeo
Still waiting for HL3 like many people.

Me too. As this is VR and I dont have a VR headset it is a wasted opportunity for some sales of this game, unless its playable with mouse and K/b without any VR.

If they were to release HL3 or even Portal3 they would sell like hotcakes, as for VR not so much.
Posted by mikeo - Fri 22 Nov 2019 22:05
Mapester
…If they were to release HL3 or even Portal3 they would sell like hotcakes, as for VR not so much.

Could not agree more. It's been in my opinion, a wasted opportunity for them to make a fair bit of cash. Can't understand their marketing strategy here at all !!!
Posted by aniilv - Sat 23 Nov 2019 02:06
mikeo
Mapester
…If they were to release HL3 or even Portal3 they would sell like hotcakes, as for VR not so much.

Could not agree more. It's been in my opinion, a wasted opportunity for them to make a fair bit of cash. Can't understand their marketing strategy here at all !!!
They have yet to make a game that would push the boundaries and meet the expectations of what HL3 should be. I rather not see a game tbh than see slap dash thing with hl3 stuck on side just to “make money”.
Posted by ataru - Sat 23 Nov 2019 09:53
> a wasted opportunity for them to make a fair bit of cash

Isn't the strategy to push VR gaming a bit more mainstream. It's a Nintendo-like move, commit 100% to a new control strategy. They already went head first into VR and now they're using their biggest gaming property as the hook. To not do so would be like Nintendo releasing a new console and not putting Mario on it.

If it succeeds it would sell a lot of Valve VR gear and future games, and potentially be historically significant as the first really huge VR-only game. Since they run Steam, they have money to to burn, so they can afford to play games with the market, they don't need to make money on sales of a simple sequel like HL3, they have much grander ideas in mind.

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