It might have taken its sweet time, but a new instalment in Valve’s legendary Half-Life series is finally, officially, almost here. But as the shock starts to wear off, there are questions to be answered – with one of the most frequent ones seemingly being, exactly why is Half-Life: Alyx, after a wait of over a decade, exclusive to VR?
Luckily for everyone, Geoff Keighley is on the case, and posed that very question in a video interview with key members of the Half-Life: Alyx team. And the answer, according to Valve’s Dario Casali, is simply that VR controllers and headsets permit a degree of gameplay detail that “we couldn’t possibly do with a mouse and keyboard”.
One example given by Casali revolves around the sort of interactions possible with a simple door. Sure, you can open it and close it in a more intuitive, immersive fashion in VR, but, Casali suggests, it’s the additional interactions around that door – opening it a fraction to peer through the gap and see what’s on the other side, firing your weapon through the crack, or even slipping a grenade through onto the floor – that makes for a truly unique sort of experience.
The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx — Behind Closed Doors at Valve Interview Watch on YouTube
“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,” explained Casali, “When you can track your hands separately from your head, they’re all 3D space, all simultaneously tracking and moving, you can’t really get that with a mouse and keyboard.”