After some initial rumors, leaks, and over a decade of speculation, Valve has formally announced Half Life: Alyx. In accordance to those most recent leak, the game is a VR title. However, Valve did not go into more detail and will reveal more on November 21, 2019 at 10 AM PT.
Valve announced this “surprise” game via tweet at a random time on a random day. Other than the time, title, and saying it was the team’s “flagship VR game,” Valve did not reveal anything else about the mysterious title. The announcement came with the image below that had the logos of Valve, Steam VR, and Half Life itself.
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We will learn more about it at that time but, given the accuracy of the most recent leak, it’s possible we already know a bit about the mysterious title. The transcript of an interview from The Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley revealed much more about the game including its projected release date: March 2020. Keighley is even reportedly going to shoot an episode of The Final Hours on Half Life: Alyx, which is one of his deep dive series where he goes behind the scenes on an upcoming game. He has also done this with other Valve games like Portal, Half Life, and Half Life 2 in addition to other titles like the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, Titanfall, and Mass Effect 3.
According to this leak, players also won’t be able to play a non-VR version of the game. Valve even addressed this by saying it wanted to explore VR even though the team would “love to be delivering a version of this that you could play with a mouse and a keyboard.” The studio also seemed unsure if this would lead to Half Life 3 or if it would continue making VR games as the attitude was to “wait and see what the reception is like” first before moving forward. Regardless, we will see more this Thursday and, if more rumors are to be believed, even more at The Game Awards on December 12.