Half Life:Alyx without VR?

Valve certainly believes it’s possible to have Half Life:Alyx without VR.

The immensely popular Half Life:Alyx requires a VR headset to play the game. The game has been generally well received and has brought renewed attention to VR technology. But according to Valve’s Robin Walker, this all can change very soon.

The big change

Robin Walker has worked with Valve for a long time. He was involved in making the original team fortress mod for quake. He then went on to work with Valve for the original team fortress, counter strike, and Half-life. Being a former modder himself, he is aware of the existence of someone who is trying to change the game. Such that the strictly-VR game could be played with just a mouse and a keyboard.

It is a strange reality to accept when a game is played in a way the developers never wanted it to. When asked what Valve or its employees feel about it, Walker said:”The answer to this diverges significantly depending on which members of the team you talk to, so this answer is definitely just from me,”. He further simplified  “There are a set of people on the team that are concerned about that. Personally, I’m not concerned about it at all.”

Half Life:ALYX without VR? Yes, it’s going to happen.

The reason he gave for this was simple. The game won’t be as exciting as simply a VR game than in would as a standard PC game.

“It will clearly demonstrate to people why we did this in VR,” Walker explained. “It will be a very crisp way of seeing all the stuff we got for the move into VR. If people play [a modded version on a standard display] and say this is is just as good, that will teach me a lot. I will realize I’m wrong, and we didn’t get as much as we thought, and I love to know whenever I’m wrong.”

Yes, it’s going to happen. I’m fine with it, for the sake of the other members of the team I don’t want to say I encourage you to do it, but it’s going to happen,” Walker said. “I think people will then hopefully have an even greater understanding of why we decided to build the product in VR than they do now.”

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