News Valve Is Bringing Back Half-Life in VR

[Admin]

Valve announced a new Half-Life: Alyx VR game, as well as a major up to CS:GO.

Valve Is Bringing Back Half-Life in VR : Read more

 

[jimmysmitty]

Half Life has always been a demo for VALVe. Hell Half Life 2 was basically a massive Source Engine demo and each Episode showcased new features. Even TF2 (Phong Shading) and Portal (Portals and potatoes of course). And yes even Left 4 Dead which is basically all about the AI Director.

It makes sense that VALVe would bring this out as a way to show off how far they have come with VR. However if I were to take a guess, this is a VR experience from Alyx perspective and I doubt its going to further tha main game narrative beyond the end of EP2. They cannot do that. Fans would be very unhappy. We want to play as Gordon and get our revenge for Eli dammit.

 

[cryoburner]

How many of the original Half-Life developers even work at Valve anymore? I know a lot of the lead developers left, including the writer of the series.

It's been nearly 9 years since they released Portal 2, their last single-player focused game, and around 8 years since their last multiplayer esports titles DOTA2 and CS:GO came out. Since then, it's mostly just been content updates for their esports games, a brief VR tech demo, and a much-disliked pay-to-win lootbox card battle game that lost 95% of its player-base within two months and is now down to fewer than 100 concurrent players less than a year after it came out.

I can't say I have complete confidence that Valve will produce a great game at this point. For most of the last decade, they seem to have been primarily focused on maximizing profits through Steam and little else. They haven't been interested in anything that they don't think will rake in easy profit through Steam marketplace trading and microtransactions.

The competitive first-person shooter now has selectable in-game agents, and it appears that the series will have female avatars for the first time, too.

Aside from in the Asian markets, where the Counter-Strike Neo and Counter-Strike Online games have all had selectable agents including females. And really, the only reason they are doing these updates for CS:GO is to push a paid battle pass for the game, much like you see in games like Fortnite.

 

[jimmysmitty]

How many of the original Half-Life developers even work at Valve anymore? I know a lot of the lead developers left, including the writer of the series.

It's been nearly 9 years since they released Portal 2, their last single-player focused game, and around 8 years since their last multiplayer esports titles DOTA2 and CS:GO came out. Since then, it's mostly just been content updates for their esports games, a brief VR tech demo, and a much-disliked pay-to-win lootbox card battle game that lost 95% of its player-base within two months and is now down to fewer than 100 concurrent players less than a year after it came out.

I can't say I have complete confidence that Valve will produce a great game at this point. For most of the last decade, they seem to have been primarily focused on maximizing profits through Steam and little else. They haven't been interested in anything that they don't think will rake in easy profit through Steam marketplace trading and microtransactions.


Aside from in the Asian markets, where the Counter-Strike Neo and Counter-Strike Online games have all had selectable agents including females. And really, the only reason they are doing these updates for CS:GO is to push a paid battle pass for the game, much like you see in games like Fortnite.

Right because they haven't made Steam better in any way or improved anything in gaming in the last 10 years.

Except they have. Cloud saves, the ability to use any controller on a Steam game, Big Picture. Hell they have pushed harder on VR than a lot of companies have.

Steam will profit no matter what they do but they have made some great advancements for gaming. Hell most other launchers can't even match Steam feature for feature.

 

[cryoburner]

Right because they haven't made Steam better in any way or improved anything in gaming in the last 10 years.

I don't see how adding features to the Steam Client has anything to do with their ability to develop games. And again, that follows along with Steam being their primary concern. Valve isn't so much a game developer anymore as they are the operators of a game marketplace. They might improve that marketplace, but they certainly haven't been acting as the premier PC game developer they once were. That could change though, and maybe they will get back on track now that others like Epic have started putting pressure on them, but after so many years of no real game releases, one probably shouldn't get their hopes up too much.

Also, cloud saves are not a particularly good example, seeing as that feature was added more than 10 years ago. : P

And I would argue that their games were not tech demos. They didn't design the games to show off new features of their game engine so much as they updated the engine to incorporate unique features that they wanted to include in the games.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I don't see how adding features to the Steam Client has anything to do with their ability to develop games. And again, that follows along with Steam being their primary concern. Valve isn't so much a game developer anymore as they are the operators of a game marketplace. They might improve that marketplace, but they certainly haven't been acting as the premier PC game developer they once were. That could change though, and maybe they will get back on track now that others like Epic have started putting pressure on them, but after so many years of no real game releases, one probably shouldn't get their hopes up too much.

Also, cloud saves are not a particularly good example, seeing as that feature was added more than 10 years ago. : P

And I would argue that their games were not tech demos. They didn't design the games to show off new features of their game engine so much as they updated the engine to incorporate unique features that they wanted to include in the games.

Until Epic offers a feature for feature product I don't see any pressure on VALVe. Even EA, one of the largest game developers in the world who have multiple AAA games that even though people curse them do extremely well, is back on Steam. Still I wouldn't put making a game past them. While they have mainly been doing updates for games they still know how to keep their main games very attractive.

And yes their games have mainly been about showing off new features. Half Life was the Source Engine itself Lost Coast was a big HDR demo, back in 2005 when HDR wasn't even a big thing. EP1 was mostly engine enhancements but EP2 was big on physics, the bridge collapsing in the beginning is massive.

You can listen to their commentary in each game and they talk heavily about being able to bring something new to the table. Most every game has and while they don't say it blatantly look at what is being shown off now. The latest in Half Life is a VR game. After 12 years of waiting we don't get EP3 or just Half Life 3. We get a VR game. Because VALVe wants to use Half Life to show off what they can do in VR. I personally think Portal would be the better full VR game.

 

[cryoburner]

Well, Lost Coast at least was a tech demo. I don't think anyone really considered that as a standalone game. It was a single, relatively short level based on content cut from the main game during development, made available as a free download for those who owned Half-Life 2 to show off some new lighting effects.

As for Portal in VR, something tells me that would be pretty nausea-inducing, or at least the classic portal gameplay would be. They could make a game in the Portal series, but I don't think they would have it focus on the player flinging themself around at high speeds.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Well, Lost Coast at least was a tech demo. I don't think anyone really considered that as a standalone game. It was a single, relatively short level based on content cut from the main game during development, made available as a free download for those who owned Half-Life 2 to show off some new lighting effects.

As for Portal in VR, something tells me that would be pretty nausea-inducing, or at least the classic portal gameplay would be. They could make a game in the Portal series, but I don't think they would have it focus on the player flinging themself around at high speeds.

Thats why they had The Lab. Based in Portal but not quite classic gameplay.

But every Half Life has had some engine advancement. As has L4D or even Portal.

Its interesting. Half Life Alyx seems to have come from VALVe wanting to do a big VR game.